Dear Boris Johnson, even Churchill would’ve been booted out by now

Imagine, if you can, that Churchill had been caught during the Blitz selling petrol on the black market, or fencing a stolen consignment of nylons, or ignoring the blackout rules

Kyiv won’t fall if the 1922 Committee tells Johnson the game’s up (PA)

One of the worst arguments to keep Boris Johnson is that “there’s a war on”, as if ditching the disastrous leader of a country not up to the task is some sort of silly indulgence by the political classes while everyone else is fighting hard for national survival. It is the inversion of truth, as Chris Whitty would say.

In fact, a time of crisis is precisely when you need to get rid of a fool who’s not up to the job, even if it is a bit of a faff. As is now well noted, getting the right leadership in an existential crisis is why Neville Chamberlain, architect of appeasement, had to make way for Winston Churchill, and the effete HH Asquith was pushed out in favour of David Lloyd George.

Churchill and Lloyd George are thought of today as towering figures, as men who won wars, and their statues occupy favoured positions on the plinths in the lobby of the House of Commons, but they wouldn’t be there unless the parliamentarians of 1916 MPs decided that the middle of a war of national survival was precisely the right time to ditch a duffer.

There’s plenty of other precedents, such as the Tories ousting Margaret Thatcher in the run up to the first Gulf War in 1990. According to the scholarly MP Chris Bryant, the list goes on. Four times in the war in Afghanistan; in the Iraq War; in the Korean War; in the Second Boer War; in the Second Opium War; in the Crimean War – it’s fair to say there might never have been a British Empire without a few choice defenestrations.

You might also observe that the French might be about to install a perceived neo-fascist as their president during the war in Ukraine, though I grant you that’s not a helpful move. The thing is that although it’s true that the third world war has already started and the fight for freedom in Ukraine is crucial, Britain isn’t actually at war with Russia at the moment. We’re not being bombed. The Red Army hasn’t taken Dover. We can change the leader of the Conservative Party without fear of national collapse. Indeed, it’s probably a good idea.

President Zelensky was kind to praise Johnson and right to do so, as Britain has done so much for Ukraine, though much of the prescient preparation was by Ben Wallace at Defence. But our policy won’t change if Johnson is ousted and Kyiv won’t fall if the 1922 Committee tells Johnson the game’s up.

Not so long ago, you may recall, we were in a war of survival – the war against Covid. That was the war we lost – with one of the worst death rates in Europe, and with a prime minister who didn’t really believe in his own public health laws, the ones he was telling everyone else were so vital. He did not “deliver” the vaccine any more than he delivered the suitcases of booze from the local Co-Op, though he happily made use of both.

To listen to the likes of Grant Schapps, you’d think Johnson was a modern day Alexander Fleming. The image is touching. Our dedicated prime minister in his white coat working on his centrifuges and petri dishes 24/7, hardly taking a break to go to the loo, and single-handedly inventing the Covid vaccine.

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It’s absurd. He wasn’t slaving away; he was partying. We’ve seen the pictures. We’ve got a fixed penalty notice to prove it (and potentially more to follow). We’ve got witness accounts from Dominic Cummings about how Johnson was almost reckless with the life of the Queen. Boris Johnson didn’t want to put the lockdowns in place that saved so many lives. Through the pandemic he lifted the restrictions too early, and delayed re-imposing them until it was too late.

He said he’d rather see the “bodies pile high” than close the pubs again. He at first thought coronavirus was just another bird flu-style false alarm, and then wanted to let the virus rip and let herd immunity develop. He failed on test and trace. The government wasted billions on useless contracts. In short: he got the big calls wrong.

Now, we all know Churchill enjoyed his champagne and his whisky, and that he took more out of alcohol than alcohol took out of him. Fine. But imagine, if you can, that Churchill had been caught during the Blitz selling petrol on the black market, or fencing a stolen consignment of nylons, or ignoring the blackout rules? And then he’d gone to the House of Commons and said with a smirk that he didn’t realise that petrol was rationed and the nylons had been nicked.

The public would rightly have told him he could keep his blood, sweat and tears, and found themselves a prime minister who could be trusted and who commanded their respect. Don’t we know there’s a war on?