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Boris Johnson has been a disaster for Britain. He was always unsuitable. He had the wrong temperament, the wrong relationship with the truth, an excess of self-interest, a complete disregard

for other people and an inability to build consensus. It was clear from the start that his time in power would end quickly and in catastrophe. And now has is responsible for the messiest

and most damaging departure from office by a British Prime Minister. He has stretched Britain’s constitutional arrangements to their very limit, going far beyond all previous prime ministers

in his determination to cling to power. Like Donald Trump, he refused to recognise that the end had come. When yesterday Michael Gove told Johnson that the game was up, the PM responded by

sacking him. By his overbearing vanity and bull-headed intransigence, Johnson has set a dangerous precedent. He ignored all prime ministerial convention on the transfer of power, and sought

to justify his belligerence with reference to “his” mandate of 14 million votes, achieved at the last General Election. This “mandate” was raised several times in his resignation speech

outside No10. But this is politically illiterate, dangerous nonsense. Unlike the US, the British electorate does not vote directly for its leader. We do not have a US-style presidential

system. The only people who voted for Johnson are the 25,351 constituents in Uxbridge who elected him as their MP. That was the scope of his mandate. It went no further than that. It should

not be surprising that Johnson has corrupted Britain’s constitutional norms and bent them out of shape with his willingness to do and say anything to retain power. He has failed to tell the

truth so regularly that new revelations pass almost without comment. Asked yesterday during a Liaison Committee meeting whether he had met the oligarch and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev

when he was Foreign Secretary and whether he had done so without his Foreign Office officials, Johnson finally confessed that yes, he had. It is a mark of how debased British politics has

become that amongst the tidal wave of Johnsonian deceit, calamity and disaster, this extraordinary admission was almost lost in the swell. In his resignation speech yesterday to the Commons,

Sajid Javid recognised the corrosive effect that Johnson has had on public life and he expressed alarm about the long-term consequences. “I am deeply concerned about how the next generation

will see the Conservative Party on our current course,” Javid told the house. “Our reputation after 12 years in government depends on regaining the public’s trust.” He is right to identify

the damage Johnson has inflicted on the Conservative brand and on British politics more broadly. In a democratic society people need to feel an affinity, not so much for specific policy

decisions, but for the prevailing political culture. They should have an instinctive feel that the values that underpin it are close to their own. But if they see a political culture that is

divisive, that seeks out confrontation and in which political parties are consumed with arguments over their own interests — particularly the interests of the individuals in charge — to the

exclusion of the concerns of the average voter, then that political culture becomes repulsive. Johnson has brought British politics to that point. His supporters sustained him and urged him

on for the twin reasons that he delivered Brexit and gained a reputation for being “a winner”. Both have since turned to ashes in the mouth. Johnson negotiated a Brexit deal so flawed he

has since tried to re-write it. His reputation for being a “vote-winner” has been crushed by his inability even to win the votes of his own MPs. Politically, he has been a complete failure.

In his resignation speech Johnson attempted to spin that record. He waved his electoral “mandate” in the air and mentioned the “fastest vaccine rollout in Europe” as evidence of his personal

success, even though that rollout was entirely overseen by Kate Bingham. He also claimed that, under him, Britain was “leading the west in standing up to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine” a

claim that will raise eyebrows in Washington. As for his own departure from office, Johnson said that a “timetable shall be announced next week”. This suggests that he intends to stay on in

a caretaker role, while the Conservative party appoints a new leader. But the thought of Johnson lingering on as PM is absurd. Can he really re-appoint all those ministers who have recently

resigned so devastatingly from his Cabinet? Can he really expect them to accept his authority at the point when he has none left? He has to go, and go immediately. Johnson is no caretaker.

He has only ever taken care of one thing — his own career. And we have all had quite enough of that. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every

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