The fact is that Boris Johnson’s latest departure from Parliament is indeed a case of political suicide, not regicide 🖋️ paulwaugh for ipaperviews
Paul Waugh: ‘Johnson could have offered a heartfelt apology to all those who did follow the rules, but preferred to stick to his belief that any hint of mea culpa would show weakness’ the Privileges Committee report into Boris Johnson’s contempt of ParliamentSome 14 months in the making, this verdict felt not just damning but definitive. In contrast to the angry,last week, the Committee’s report was a coolly crafted, 30,000-word indictment of his lifelong habit of slipperiness with the truth.
He could have offered a heartfelt apology to all those who did follow the rules, but preferred to stick to his belief that any hint of mea culpa would show weakness. What’s bitterly ironic is that Johnson’s political success relied on him seeing the bigger picture, the wood for the trees. Yet he couldn’t see the utter public revulsion for his justifying a boozy leaving do on the grounds that either he was boosting morale of hard-working staff or to “steady the ship” after squabbling aides quit his administration.
Politicians are often too obsessed about their personal “legacy”, and no one can take away from Johnson that without his 2016 Vote Leave leadership or his 2019 election triumph, Brexit would never have been a reality. Yet this Committee clearly wants to bequeath a bigger legacy beyond their own individual records: that no future Prime Minister can be allowed again to get away with a casual approach to truth and standards in public life.
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