Squealing piglet?
As the Russian tanks roll into secessionist parts of Ukraine, Boris Johnson has had a good few days as he rallied Western leaders to the sanctions cause, striding with confidence on the world stage. Like the well-oiled slippery piglet, to which David Cameron once likened him, he has once again escaped from the clutches of those in the media and politics who have been calling for his resignation.
With the expansionist Vladimir Putin rewriting history to include a raft of European countries and NATO members within his purview, and to suggest that they might be reunited with their Russian motherland, it would look petty and self-indulgent for the Conservatives to precipitate a leadership election anytime soon.
Lifting covid restrictions
Indeed, with critic after critic forced to welcome the ending of covid restrictions, Boris Johnson has a new head of steam and political momentum, such that we should not be surprised that even if he receives a fine notice from the police in relation to “party-gate” the Prime Minister brazens it out, just as he did with the Sue Gray report (remember her?).
Even David Davis MP, who so recently called in the Commons for Johnson to resign, has now welcomed the latter’s covid announcement. Indeed, there is a sense in Westminster that with the pandemic lockdown behind us, a conspicuous role on the world stage, and still with no big beasts in the Cabinet wanting to take him on, we might be seeing peak Boris.
Having survived the Tory rebellion of last December, and defied the pork pie plotters in January, Johnson’s position now seems unassailable, at least until the unavoidably grim (or so the BBC tells us) results of May’s local elections come in, reflecting as they could a mid-term protest rap on the knuckles for the government.
The parade moves on.
Yet, the grounds for criticism levelled at him by the Covid Reform Group of Conservative backbenchers, are now Boris’s to own. The parade has moved on and there’s no challenge to be made retrospectively by that camp.
Boris is not resigning any time soon, and I suspect will do another squealing pig escape after the local elections which won’t be as bad as the sneering BBC elite, who have predicted at least half a dozen times that his premiership was on the line, like to speculate.
No, we’ve not reached ‘peak Boris’. He’s going to bounce higher yet.
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