This morning, in an opulent home in Oxfordshire, a man with a stocky build and blonde hair is working on refining his impression of Al Pacino: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” Boris Johnson has not been absent from news coverage in the slightest since he handed up his resignation less than a week ago. The former Prime Minister made a hasty exit before the devastating findings from the Privileges Committee could be delivered to him, and he labelled the committee “a kangaroo court” in his resignation letter.
This committee came to the conclusion that Johnson was guilty of multiple instances of contempt of parliament and that he had an attitude towards democracy and truth that was comparable to that of a mafioso, namely that they were absolutely unimportant. “I knew what I had seen, with my own eyes, and like the current PM, I believed that these events were lawful. “If I did see an illegal event, and register it as illegal, then why was I on my own in this? ” Why not… the then-Chancellor, who was walking in the same halls at the time?
It would appear that Johnson’s campaign of fratricide is going to carry on. This morning, Politico’s Playbook claimed that three distinct figures had confirmed the claims that Johnson is the secret new writer for The Mail, where he will be paid a six-figure salary to participate in more Sunak-bashing. The rumours have been circulating for some time that Johnson would be writing for The Mail.(This is the same man who, years ago, referred to the $250,000 that he earned annually from his Telegraph column as “chicken feed.”)
However, there wasn’t much of a mystery around it because the news had been prominently displayed on the front page of the Mail. After emerging from the petty fighting that characterised the Johnson administration, Conservative MPs began to believe that they could offer a veneer of respectability. However, the old Don drags them back in. The former Prime Minister has, of course, neglected to investigate his new position with Acoba, the parliamentary organisation that investigates the activities that MPs engage in during their spare time. Oh dear. Once more into the breach.
