Alexander Boris and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

This Jonathan Pie is a little long, but it's choice British invective:

"If you cared about integrity why did you put him in in the first place?"

All I wanted to say about the thing is sort of in there. There's an irritating tendency here on the tubes to make it all about us, an object lesson, showing how bad America is because their Tories are more "honorable" than our Republicans:

Of course Boris Johnson’s own party turned on him and demanded his resignation. He led an armed insurrection against parliament and tried to hang his own Vice President. He left his party no choice but to demand he resign. His party’s honor was at stake. Amiright? 😃

— FakeJoeBiden (@fake_biden) July 7, 2022

No, you are wrong. 

Not in suggesting that Johnson's crimes are less spectacular and varied than Trump's, which they are, or that it's a good thing they've managed to dump him, as it no doubt is, but they didn't do it because they thought their honor was at stake; they did it because they thought the next election was at stake.

Labour has opened up a 10-point lead over the Conservatives, which could put Sir Keir Starmer on track to win a Commons majority, according to an exclusive i poll.

The survey by BMG Research found that Labour would win 42 per cent of the vote in a general election, with the Tories trailing on 32 per cent. The Liberal Democrats were on 11 per cent with Reform UK and the Greens each picking up 4 per cent of the public’s support.

The poll was largely carried out before the resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid and does not factor in any potential change of leader.

And lost two important by-elections a couple of weeks ago, by startling margins:

LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a double blow as voters rejected his Conservative Party in two special elections dominated by questions about his leadership and ethics.

The party's chairman quit after the results early Friday, saying the party "cannot carry on with business as usual."

The centrist Liberal Democrats overturned a big Conservative majority to win the rural southwest England seat of Tiverton and Honiton, while the main opposition Labour Party reclaimed Wakefield in northern England from Johnson's Tories.

The latest round of lies over Johnson's naming of a sexual harasser and groper, the appropriately named Chris Pincher, as deputy whip, pretending he knew nothing about that when he was very specifically informed, is bad, but the reason the ministers resigned was that the public is finally starting to notice how bad it is.

And they also did it because they can, probably without any unpleasant consequences. When American cabinet secretaries resign, they are giving up their jobs, with a status and power they may never again attain; when British cabinet ministers resign they're still MPs, with a pretty high likelihood of getting back into government under the next prime minister. When US representatives and senators are running for re-election, they often have to make it through a primary, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, but in the case of Republicans in the time of the Trumpery is pretty bad; when UK members of Parliament are running, they've been selected by party higher-ups, who will be inclined to reward them for helping them to get rid of the abominable Boris.

Oh, and they'll still be Tories. We could argue all day about the relative merits of the Westminster and Washington systems, but Conservatives are conservatives, with the same insuperable problem of needing to buy votes from people whose interests they do not share, as in the problems in present-day Britain of underfinancing in healthcare and housing and education, raging inequality, and the stupidity of Brexit, with no real aims other than to stave off a general election and hold on to that majority as long as they can, and no chance that yet another prime minister will be able to resolve their intrinsic contradictions than that Old Etonian twit David Cameron, or the deer-in-the-headlights Theresa May.

The Conservative party chose Boris Johnson, a notorious liar, cheat, and all-round wastrel, as their leader and prime minister because they didn't know what else to do—and they still don't. They're not profiles in courage, they're just politicians, with a decent set of survival skills, wbich is also not in itself a bad thing: it's what democracy runs on, when it runs at all.

The good news is that the British citizenry is finally starting to get fed up enough with it to put democracy to work and force some change. Perhaps there's some hope in that for us as well.