are we nearly there yet?
Are we almost at the end of the Boris Johnson journey? Given it was only two short years ago that the PM was celebrating an eighty-seat general election victory and excited tory talk was of an undisputed ten-year reign, this may seem an impertinent question and one to which the answer is a resounding no.
Without going over old ground, everything that has come to light over the last six months, and culminating in last week’s slender vote of confidence, would obviously have finished-off any common-or-garden politician, but Johnson, as we’ve come to realise, does not fit that mould. Normal rules do not apply. Furthermore, losing the imminent by-elections of Tiverton & Honiton to the Lib Dems and Wakefield to Labour will have precious little impact on our Teflon-coated Conservative leader. He has survived so much and will continue to do so for the duration of this limp, ineffectual government’s full term. Two more years would be my guess.
And then what for the tainted tory? The good news is that Johnson stands to make in excess of £5m a year when he’s finally punted out of office. And he knows it.
The astronomical figure will be sweet music to the ears of a prime minister who has often complained that, citing his several divorces and many offspring, is shockingly hard-up. Notwithstanding his salary of £155,376 placing him firmly in the top 1% of UK earners, Johnson believes he’s worth far, far more wonga and, in reality, he’ll have no trouble making it in the very near future. Incredulously, in his backbench days, when he was raking in over £800,000 for various newspaper columns referencing ‘pickaninnies with watermelon smiles’ and ‘burka-clad Muslim women as letterboxes and suicide bombers’, he regarded this as “chicken feed” and almost unworthy of his attention.
Johnson’s memoirs alone are guaranteed to earn him in the region of a cool million but the biggest bucks are to be made on the celebrity lecture circuit. Why, in an arena where even Theresa may, by no means a garrulous and charismatic speaker, has managed to rack-up over two million quid since July 2019, Johnson will be able to comfortably double that and a minimum figure of £100,000 per speech will be the invoice of the day. Mind, if recent speeches are anything to go by, the audience may well be wanting their money back. Last week’s rambling, incoherent speech in godawful Blackpool was a shocker and lamentable musings on Peppa Pig, James Bond and Kermit the Frog have all missed the mark and fallen flat. Johnson’s trademark boosterism, deflection and comedy shtick is wearing thin.
My issue to this are twofold. Firstly, high office has come to be seen as nothing more than a rotating-door to future riches and secondly, that the record of those individuals whilst in office, appears of little importance and relevance. The experience outweighs the competence. Mind, it’s hardly surprising when you realise that Johnson wanted only the position of ‘King-of-the-World’ for every material thing it offered him thereafter. Hard-work, graft, consensus-building and achievement seldom featured. The PM’s right-hand man, Jacob Rees Mogg, is right when he says Boris Johnson is “an electoral asset” but my only question is – for which party exactly?
