FAREWELL LETTER TO BORIS

Dear Mr Johnson,

I am writing to express my appreciation for the time you spent in office, and the contribution you made to the political legacy of this once great country.

It can’t have been easy; in the three years of your Premiership, you had to preside over three uniquely challenging issues of unparalleled complexity.

First, you had to preside over the death throes of Brexit, and choreograph our exit from the EU. An exit aided and abetted by your previous duplicitous shenanigans, I might add.

‘Oh don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player,’ you may well say – and perhaps you are right – for the real architect of this piece of imbecilic self-destructive folly was David Cameron. You were merely the hand that sprinkled the confetti of lies and false promises that gullible, poorly educated xenophobic saps gobbled up and voted for.

Your “oven ready” deal was short of a few key ingredients, as it turned out; as was your pre-Brexit claim that “… the NHS  [is] about to enjoy ‘a record funding settlement’, with 40 new hospitals and 50,000 more nurses.”

‘Um – err … did I really say that?’

Indeed you did, Mr Johnson. This was simply another example of the “rancour and uncertainty” that plagued your first year in office in 2019. “Rancour and uncertainty?” I think not … just pure horseshit … straight from the horse’s mouth.

Let’s move on.

So what came along during your second year in high office? Ah yes, I remember … Covid, or The Chinese Flu”, as your opposite number across the pond referred to it.  I won’t mention his name, but yesterday I had a crossword clue that went like this: “an irritatingly stupid person” – five letters, the first, T and the last letter P. Twerp … you’ve got it … Mr Twerp.

I digress … back to Covid. We can’t really blame you for that, can we? Although I have sometimes wondered  – and please pardon the cynicism – if your hospitalisation was genuine, or was it just part of the script? An act that screamed, “look at me! Look at me … I’m just like you! Okay, maybe you didn’t go to Eton and Oxford, but I am not impervious to this virus … I am vulnerable like, you … you … hoi poloi!’

No, Mr Johnson, Covid was all hands to the pump, and you rolled up your sleeves and washed your hands while singing Happy Birthday twice.

And you might have come through it unscathed had it not been for Partygate.  Now, personally, I had no problem with this. The crap I give about whether you hosted parties in No10 or not wouldn’t even tarnish toilet paper. I hosted parties during the pandemic as well – the only difference was that no one turned up, because I was in Poland. You might have even got away with it, had you not denied it. But with Partygate you presented a bandwagon for the weak and the needy – and the people who, for some reason, were beginning to question your integrity – to jump upon.

“I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis,”

‘But,’ you say, ‘I survived the vote of no confidence, so that wipes the slate clean for another year, doesn’t it?’

Well, that might have been so, had it not been for the alleged homosexual “man groper”, Mr Chris “Ass” Pincher. You know, the fellow you appointed as deputy chief whip, a senior role involved in maintaining discipline among fellow Conservative MPs, and responsible for their pastoral care. So what’s wrong with a bit of ass fondling, you might ask? After all, we all went to boarding school, didn’t we?

And you might even have got away with that, had you not declined to suspend him and lied about knowledge of the accusations. Dear me.

So that was it … as reported in The Guardian: “MPs, angered by the latest instance of Johnson’s erratic relationship with the truth,” had reached the end of their tolerance. The rats began to leave the sinking ship faster than anyone over the age of 12 who had accidently strayed into a Justin Beiber concert.

But I, Mr Johnson, am genuinely sorry to see you go.

For one thing, I found your bumbling bluster and gung-ho sense of Public School bravado-without-consequences quite enchanting. You had a certain “je ne sais quoi” that brought a little colour to the grey palate of politics. You were the polar opposite of Gordon Brown. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that you were charismatic, but some of your Borisisms certainly put a smile on my face.

You absolutely nailed it when you said: “Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House-Elf, he [Vladimir Putin] is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant.”

And saying “I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis,” tickled my fancy as well.

Of course when you said, “it is easy to make promises – it is hard work to keep them”, well … who could argue with that? And congratulations for going on to prove this.

But, hang on … aren’t we missing something?

‘Ah yes,’ you say, ‘look at my record with Ukraine. I’ll bet Dobby is pleased to see me go! And look … it says, and I quote from The Guardian, “Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed sadness at the resignation of his key ally.” There, you see, not everyone hates me!’

Okay, let’s take Dobby first – Putin’s spokesperson said: “He doesn’t like us. We don’t like him either.” I mean, that’s pretty clear, isn’t it? And what a wonderful example of world-class statesmanship.

‘But Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed me as a “friend”,’ you say, ‘writing [as reported in The Guardian] “all Ukrainians were saddened by the news of the resignation of the leader of the Conservative party”’.

I will miss you Mr Johnson … I will miss your “Peppa Pig” moments and the cut and thrust of your bluff. You are no Churchill, but you are no Trump either. And, like Richard Nixon, perhaps your biggest crime was to get caught.

But the main reason I will miss you is because there is no one there to pick up the poisoned chalice you discarded. The list of inappropriate candidates is a frighteningly long one: Priti (which she isn’t) Patel? No thanks. Rishi Sunak? Ditto. Liz Truss? Sajid Javid? Nadhim Zahawi? Jeremy Hunt? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Grant Shapps?

Oh … the list just goes on and on, doesn’t it? It’s all so tiresome and they are all so dull, and half of the voting hoi poloi have never even heard of these people. Not that that matters, because they won’t get a chance to vote on who becomes the next Prime Minister anyway.

But for my money, there is only one person for the job – David Cameron.

Yes, Mr Johnson, read that again: David. Cameron.

I don’t care if he doesn’t want the job. I don’t care if he’s retired to France to put his trotters up and write his memoir. He was the one who started this whole sorry Brexit mess, and that has led us up the path to where we are today. He should be forced – if necessary – to get his trotters off that table and be dragged back to No10 to sort this mess out.

And you never know, Mr Johnson, when he fails with that, you may even get a second bash at it.