Boris Johnson may not feel like it, but he has already achieved what he set out to achieve. Even the past week has been a ringing success for his political project.
Rolling resignations and endless speculation made for a captivating carnival. Breathless journalists announced they’d never seen anything like it, as though they were reporting on Simone Biles’ latest flips. Seasoned practitioners harrumphed that this isn’t how it was done in their day. And voters became more angry with politics than ever.
Johnson won his election in 2019 – and, in fact, his elections to the London mayoralty in 2008 and 2012 – by playing on the strong sense across the country that politics is broken, that “they’re all the same”, that “nothing ever changes”.
