Boris Johnson never ceases to surprise. His latest stunt is to resign from his parliamentary seat, “stepping down forthwith and triggering an immediate by-election.” Is this the end of BoJo? As he writes in his resignation letter, “it is very sad to be leaving parliament — at least for now . . .”

First, why the resignation and why now? The story around Westminster is that Mr. Johnson received the confidential report from the Parliamentary Privileges Committee that was investigating whether he lied to his House of Commons colleagues with respect to his actions and those of his team during Partygate.

While the details of the report won’t be made public for at least two weeks, the options before the former prime minister were, at worst, to face sanction or recall, subject to an open vote in the Commons. That he decided to jump rather than be pushed, may be fairly indicative of the report’s findings.

Thus Friday evening, Mr. Johnson, without the prior knowledge of Conservative Central Office or its whips, announced his immediate departure from Parliament. His resignation rant is full of recrimination against the “witch hunt underway, to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result.”

What next for Mr. Johnson? Speculation is rampant. One, he will lead a revanchist group to recover “conservatism” — in partnership with the right-leaning Reform UK party — committed to delivering Brexit as set out in the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto.

That Boris will take up the squib once more is almost certain. A column is merely his for the asking, in addition to fulfilling several book contracts already underway. While on air at GB News, presenter Mark Dolan officially offered the former premier a role at the broadcaster.

More surprising still, the strongest rumor (tacitly supported by his staff) is that Mr. Johnson will seek re-election in the seat vacated mere hours earlier by his former Tory colleague Nadine Dorries, who resigned ostensibly after having been snubbed a seat in the House of Lords. 

As can be imagined, speculation will swirl for days to come. Make  no mistake, though. Beyond BoJo’s theatrics today, this is all a diversion — to distract from the woeful state of the Tory party and British politics and Boris’s participation therein. 

Even Mr. Johnson’s fiercest critics will admit to his talent and enviable political flair. Your Brexit Diarist believes this joie de vivre was instrumental in getting 52 percent of Britons to vote for independence from the European Union in June 2016 — after, it would be churlish to deny, years of Herculean efforts by Nigel Farage.

Mr. Johnson’s salesmanship was no less vital three years later, when Theresa May’s minority government was stymied by a hostile House of Commons from getting Brexit done. It was BoJo who came to the rescue after the Tories were trounced at local and (yes) EU elections that forced Mrs. May from office.

Now atop the “greasy pole,” as Disraeli called it, Mr. Johnson was continually thwarted by the Commons and its Speaker, who defied convention and deemed themselves the de facto Government. After weeks of frustrating parliamentary maneuvering, Prime Minister Johnson succeeded in dissolving Parliament, stomping to victory in December 2018 with an 80-seat majority.

Through it all, Mr. Johnson opposed the naysayers of Brexit and UK independence. In tribute, I turn to the words of Francis Bacon: “For many a man’s strength is in opposition” — but no less telling is Bacon’s concluding observation — “and when that faileth, he groweth out of use.”

For while Mr. Johnson’s resignation has the audacity to upbraid, sotto voce, Prime Minister Sunak for betraying 17 million votes for Brexit and 14 million votes for Tory manifesto commitments — “my removal is the necessary first step” — he is the principal author of the Brexit backdown.

For if the promise of Brexit was “maximal liberty and minimal government,” it seems like Mr. Johnson’s intent was simply to revert the order of Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges Speech, where she famously declared: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level.”

To Mr. Johnson’s shame, the statist shackles of the Europe Union were merely traded for those forged in Westminster and, more precisely, Whitehall, where an anti-Brexit bureaucracy deemed itself anointed to frustrate the will of the people. As such, Boris’s backbone proved no bulwark in its efforts to backtrack on Brexit.

How did he falter? Let me count the ways. It began with a bloated budget dedicated to white elephant infrastructure projects and financial tribute to the reigning orthodoxies on climate change and “sustainable energy,” through Net Carbon Zero and curtailing cheap fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

Then came Covid-19, and billions of pounds wasted on lockdowns and furlough, and a controversial vaccine program. Mr. Johnson capped his official career by becoming the official cheerleader of Nato’s proxy war against Russia on Ukrainian soil. A true statesman would have preferred ceasefire and peace to the continuing carnage.

Dare we forget ballooning immigration, housing shortages, failing healthcare, highest taxes in seventy years, cost-of-living challenges for average Britons, and woke culture war against traditional Britain — all courtesy of Boris’s Conservative administration? Any of these alone should have condemned Mr. Johnson’s premiership. 

Yet it was on the question of Covid lockdown, and the cynical response by Downing Street officials (and the bureaucracy that served them), that brought down BoJo in July 2022 over the Partygate allegations.

So now Mr. Johnson charges that a “kangaroo court” is intent to “find me guilty, regardless of the facts,” as the Privileges Committee continues to dredge up dirt over allegations of lockdown malfeasance. In this, he is partly true. “The Blob” — Britspeak for the “Deep State” — has it out for anyone who defies its self-identified “Divine Right” to govern.

Mr. Johnson, though, should remember that Britons voted instinctively against the Blob — whether at Brussels or Whitehall — in 2016 and 2019. BoJo was to be their champion, and he betrayed them. Boris Johnson is being consumed by the dragon he failed — and will always fail — to slay. His cause is lost. It remains for another, more worthy paladin, to defend the promise of Brexit.

BrexitDiarist@gmail.com