The real reason Boris has gone

Boris, your leader, hasn’t gone because he handled ineptly the fall-out from deputy chief whip Chris Pincher’s well-lubricated non-consensual bum-fun. Nor even because he lied about all that stuff as well. He has gone because Conservative MPs no longer believe he could win a general election.

This may seem a blindingly obvious thing to point out, but when I made the same argument as to why Boris SHOULD go a few weeks ago in this magazine, it was met with a howled, anguished and rude response from many readers, as if they had blue dyed hair, were 13 years old and I had suddenly misgendered them. Dimbos. Listen, we all fasten our flags to the mast of a ship of fools from time to time. But let me suggest that it is better to do so with Velcro, rather than superglue.

Who will come next? I don’t much care: none of the fancied pack are Conservatives. They are all liberals. And that has been the party’s great failure these last 12 years: it has refused, at almost every juncture, to be properly Conservative. Especially on the woke stuff, which you may consider a side issue but is actually a concerted attempt to destroy our history, traditions and indeed science and common sense – it is MUCH more important than the economy. But then they’ve ballsed that up too, haven’t they? For the same reason: not Conservative enough. My abiding suspicion is that we won’t much care if the next Prime Minister lies from time to time, so long as he stops police cars waving the rainbow flag and lowers taxes. But he, or she, won’t. And Stonewall and the Tavistock clinic and BLM will all continue to hold sway. Unless you all, in your despair, join us in the SDP.