Analysis: The Boris Johnson report and the end of a self-styled Cincinnatus
After all that. Waiting for Sue Gray, waiting for the Metropolitan Police, and waiting for Harriet Harman, Johnson’s detractors appear to be about to have their day.
The report is excoriating in its findings against the former prime minister. It sets out that he “deliberately misled” the House of Commons and committed “serious contempt”.
MPs on the committee – which represents parties across the political spectrum – even say Johnson was complicit in the “abuse and attempted intimidation” of their work.
However you slice it, it’s quite a staggering finding against a politician of his standing.
A former Prime Minister no less.
But if nothing else, Johnson’s story has always been one of contrasts and extremes.
This is a man elected to the highest office in our land, who led the nation through perhaps our greatest peacetime crisis since the Second World War, who – even now – some would have you believe, aspires to a comeback not unlike his longtime hero, Winston Churchill.
He secured a sweeping, 80-seat Conservative majority in 2019, knocked chunks out of the Red Wall, and led the Tories through the legislative mires of Brexit – while expelling Churchill’s own grandson from his party.
A man who measures himself against sweeping historical figures – penning tomes on Rome, and, allegedly, Shakespeare, and longing to ascend as ‘world king’, he has now made history all of his own.
No other prime minister “in history” has been found to have deliberately misled the House and there is “no precedent”, it states, for a PM to have been found to have acted in this way.
There will be more to come in the coming hours – and days – with MPs even slated to vote on whether to enact the report’s findings on Monday, June 19.
The significance of that date? Boris Johnson’s 59th birthday – and the three year anniversary of his being ambushed with a cake.
Vindicta dulce, as Westminster’s own Cincinnatus might put it…