BoJo banished - Liz Truss down. Is Rishi next for the toaster? **threadbans in OP**

Rumours of MP's who put letters in are now withdrawing them now. No chance they get to 54 after today and even if they did no chance he will be ousted.

They got way way more done than Johnson and a lot of the economic problems were there no matter who was in charge.

Yes, he's really toast .. Line of Duty interview on FB!

@breezy1985 sorry my mistake

Easily the most untrustworthy person in media right now when it comes to this government

None of this is even about Johnson, really. The Brits have shown time and time again in the last six years that they are more than happy to be treated like complete fools, and vote again and again for people who have no respect for them and consider them beneath them.

I’d put good money on the Tories getting another majority at the next general election, regardless of who the PM is.

I don't believe a word of that.

I just can't believe that a 5 week old survives very bad Covid. Survives Covid ya but not a massive hit of it.

Ha ha another one!

I still dont think he is done for. He will weather this I'm pretty sure. Everything will be "investigated" and they will just generate noise around it all (while burying any reports).

Then something else will kick off and it will be forgotten (until election time, but even then - May is a long way off for this to be forgotten about).

Well, it's interesting. Johnson is famously "anti-rules" and - until now - this was a large part of his appeal to his constituency. Now, suddenly, it's not.

Brexiters have consistently presented themselves as championing "the people" against "the elite". This is actually a pretty bizarre notion, for two reasons. First, Brexit was only supported by 52% in the referendum, while 48% opposed it; this implies that "the people" are a rather smaller group than they are commonly supposed to be, while "the elite" are very much larger. Secondly, not only Johnson but many other Brexiter leaders (Gove, Farage, Cummings, Carswell, Lawson, Rees-Mogg, Hannan, Redwood . . .) are on any view well-ensconced in the UK's traditional privileged and arrogant elite - public schoolboys, Oxbridge educated, wealthy, background in the City. So how on earth do they pull off their populist confidence trick of posing as champions of "the people"?

I think the answer has something to do with the notion that, for their supporters, "the elite" does not refer to the privileged establishment which controls the UK politically and economically. "The elite" are people who think they can tell you what do do, what to think - the liberal finger-waggers, the human rights brigade, the "woke police". They are patronising and interfering; they won't let you be yourself, or they try to shame you for being yourself. They lay down rules for you. Johnson, etc, are different; they do not lay down rules for you, and they do not accept for themselves rules laid down by others. They are their authentic selves, and they let you be your authentic self.

This anti-ruleism, I think, is the foundation of Johnson's claim to be the champion of the people against the elite. And it explains the appeal of the "taking back control" slogan - that wasn't just about the UK taking back control from the EU; it also suggested to the ordinary voter that he could be free from the control of "them" - free to "talk about immigration", to be politically incorrect, to fly the England flag without being sneered at.

So the Brexit movement could draw together a variety of ideologies and emotions with the common theme of "freedom from the rules". And the Brexit movement has continued with these theme after winning the referendum - their outrage at the idea that "the rules" meant that Parliament had to be involved in triggering Article 50, and their vitriol directed at the judges who enforced this rule is an example, but there are numerous others - their brazen proclamation of their intention to violate international law over the Internal Markets Bill, for another example, or the refusal to sanction Priti Patel for violating the ministerial code by bullying staff. They were all battles over whether ‘the rules’ (laws, conventions) had to be followed or whether ‘the will of the people’ trumped such niceties. And of course  Johnson was an ideal front man for all this because of his own disdain for rules in any form.

This anti-ruleism has continued to play well with their supporters - until now.

The wheels started to come off the project when coronavirus came along. This was the kind of national threat that could only be met with some fairly vigorous rule-making and strict rule-enforcing (much like the Second World War, in fact, which Brexiters constantly reference). Johnson was exactly the worst possible Prime Minister to have in this situation, with his instinctive distaste for rules. When he was, belatedly and reluctantly, persuaded that rules were necessary, he was unable to introduce them without repeated nods and winks to indicate that rules are made to be broken. And, as we now know, he was utterly unable to comprehend that these rules might actually apply to him or to his associates.

And, in this situation, anti-ruleism started to look un-British. It may be a myth, but its a trenchant myth with powerful appeal that the British way, when faced with crisis, is that they are a law-abiding people of orderly queues, fair play, pulling together for the common good, all in it together, etc — a people who do not disdain but embrace the rules. Ironically, the Brexiters' constant invocation of the Second World War must have done much to ready the British people to slip exactly into this role when faced with the Coronavirus pandemic.

Not that everybody has adopted this view of the situation, of course, but enough of them have to fracture the coalition that was held together by Brexit. Johnson's flagrant and persistent disdain for Covid restrictions has angered a lot of people. Attempts by the likes of Michael Fabricant to pass concerns about this off as the preoccupation of the elite chattering classes have failed miserably; there is genuine and widespread public anger about this, and it plainly crosses the Leaver/Remainer divide, as we can see from the evaporation of the Tory lead in the polls and the panic and dismay among Red Wall Tory MPs - they know exactly how this is playing with voters who were won for the Tories by Brexit. The political capital that comes from having "got Brexit done" has been pretty much exhausted, and Johnson's anti-ruleism, which was his main political asset, is now a massive liability. I don't think he can come back from this. He may not be ditched immediately, but it's only a matter of time; he no longer has anything to offer the party.