Boris Johnson is a liar – there could be no more fitting epitaph

It is a shame that we could not say it sooner – perhaps fewer people would have suffered, writes Tom Peck

Boris Johnson is a liar (PA Wire)

Boris Johnson is a liar.

Boris Johnson is a liar.

Boris Johnson is a liar.

Several MPs, like for example Labour’s Dawn Butler, have been ordered to leave the House of Commons for daring to utter words to that effect.

But not anymore. The SNP’s Pete Wishart said them over and over again, as did many others, and the speaker barely glanced up from his chair. It’s fine now. It’s official. It’s not merely because the privileges committee have found him to be so. But also because Boris Johnson is not even no longer prime minister, but also no longer an MP either. They can say what they like about him now – and they certainly did.

“A rogue…a scoundrel… a disgrace...” they took it in turns all afternoon to pile up their carefully rehearsed vituperations. For a while it looked like they wouldn’t even get a chance to vote on whether or not to uphold the report; but in the end, a division was called. 345 in favour, seven against.

It’s probably not quite where Johnson imagined himself to be, still a very long way short of the five-year term he won with a massive majority in December 2019: drummed out of the commons in complete disgrace.

The last long afternoon of talking about Boris Johnson – a seemingly never-ending national pastime – was technically a complete waste of time, in the sense that Johnson had long since jumped before he could be pushed.

For most present, it was an exercise in catharsis, but it was still not short on shame. The prime minister Rishi Sunak didn’t turn up at all, leaving the tedious work of standing up for the integrity of parliament itself to one of his many recent predecessors – there are still a few about, though not as many as a week ago.

“It is important for us to show the public that there is not one rule for them and another one for us,” said Theresa May. “Support for the report of the privileges committee will be an important part in restoring people’s trust in this house.”

More than 200 Tories didn’t vote at all. The most absurd of them did their non-voting with great fanfare.

Brendan Clarke-Smith, who has emerged in the last days as the real idiot’s idiot, thought it more valuable to photograph himself on a train wearing a tie with a kangaroo on, an insidious attempt to undermine his own colleagues on the committee. It was especially confusing however, given he also boasted of his intention to spend the afternoon watching The Ashes instead, and the kangaroo emblem is not ordinarily associated with wanting England to win.

Though it is possible to read too much into such things. It may have merely been a gesture of solidarity with Nadine Dorries, who is still almost certainly best known for eating kangaroo testicles live on air.

So it’s clear, then, why Sunak didn’t fancy it. It’s easy to forget that, along with Pippa Crerar, now of the Guardian, and ITV’s Paul Brand, Rishi Sunak has done more than almost anyone to remove Boris Johnson from public life. Yet at this important moment he declined to offer any public criticism of the man.

It is, arguably, somewhat naive. David Cameron happened to also be showing his face in public again today, at the Covid inquiry. It is not that long since he was so concerned with peace within the Tory party that he accidentally took his country out of the EU. Rishi Sunak should have worked out that he won’t be thanked for his fragile attempts to maintain an impossible peace.

Leadership, in this instance, required his saying what needed to be said, not getting Theresa May to do it for him. That won’t be forgotten.

For Johnson, meanwhile, it was most certainly the end. There is no coming back.

Boris Johnson is a liar. Boris Johnson is a liar. Boris Johnson is a liar. It’s been written into the record books and chiselled into his political gravestone. There could be no more fitting epitaph. It’s just a shame no one was allowed to say it until now. Rather less people might have suffered; less people, quite possibly, might have died.