What did we do to deserve Boris Johnson and how will we remove all those scratches and stains?
Mr Sheen will struggle with the crusted blotches and burns bequeathed by the former prime minister’s endless lies, dodges and deceptions. How to clean what oozed from his pretend-clownish exterior, like spillage from a bin-bag?
Let’s not forget the staining potential of his furious narcissism. Or his arrant cowardice, that way he has of rowdily running from responsibility, shouting like a posh Bart Simpson bloated with entitlement, “I Didn’t Do It, Nobody Saw Me Do It, There’s No Way You Can Prove Anything!”
A tough job for Mr Sheen, as I said, so let’s hand the microphone to Mr Shakespeare…
“He’s a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy your lordship’s entertainment…”
That’s from All’s Well That Ends Well, but it might as well have been written about Boris Johnson (thanks to Shakespeare Replies @TheBardAnswers for reminding me of the quote). This is a different drama, one called Nothing Ends Well When That Charlatan’s Around.
As soon as he learned that the privileges committee report on whether he intentionally misled parliament was not turning his way, Johnson shamelessly resigned as an MP with a bitter 1,000-word parting rant, naturally blaming everyone else, for nothing in Boris Johnson’s world is ever his fault.
He baselessly called the committee a “kangaroo court” and complained of a “witch-hunt”. How pathetic that a man with an ego like a raging boil about to burst should reduce himself to being a Trump tribute act.
Johnson’s departure was as cowardly as you’d expect. He got his sour retaliation in first then stomped off, unwilling to face Parliament or stand in a by-election.
A funny thing, though, that a “kangaroo court” should have allowed him to have legal representation – paid for by us, mugs that we are. As for that “witch-hunt”, oh, come off it. All parliamentary process was followed, and had the committee found in Johnson’s favour, he would have been singing its praises, rather than ranting like a pub bore freshly fallen from his barstool.
Johnson, Trump and Brexit – all arrived more or less in the same fetid political breath. The first two have been exposed as liars and sour losers; the third has turned out to be a gigantic con-trick of benefit to no-one at all, however much Johnson “got it done”.
And yet, in that scrappy piece of resignation graffiti, he claimed he was being got rid of because of Brexit, spinning out his own branded conspiracy theories for his followers to parrot.
As for his supposed world-beating election success, all kudos to Professor Colin Talbot for pointing out on Twitter that Johnson’s popularity is a myth, as he won “just 1.2% or 329,767 extra votes” to Theresa May.
His 80-seat “landslide” was due to our first-past-the-post voting system, helped by having Jeremy Corbyn as an opponent.
He’s the very worst of us, but he’s gone (for now, hopefully for good). But I will take a deep breath now. Perhaps the good that can come from this, apart from the Tories tearing each other to shreds, is that we can stop thinking about bloody Boris Johnson at all. God knows, we’ve wasted more than enough time and energy on that terrible man, the first prime minister to be convicted of breaking the law while in office.
Let Max Hastings have the last word, as he knows Johnson – “He is perhaps the most selfish human being I have ever met, indifferent to the welfare of anyone save himself… He is a stranger to truth, a lifelong liar about big things and small.”
Yup, that wraps it up.