By-election loss should help to end the comic and tragic rule of Boris Johnson

The constituency where I live, North Shropshire, has returned Conservatives in general elections since the Great Reform Act of 1832. So, the astonishing Liberal Democrat victory in the by-election on Thursday should help end the darkly comic and tragic reign of our present Prime Minister (pictured yesterday).

Your sins do seem to find you out, and a multitude of them are in hot pursuit of the PM. He can’t hide beyond the summer, I suspect, unless he manages to perform another set of populist tricks. But, the old routines are no longer funny.

The immediate crisis is covid, especially omicron, which seems to behave like a wildfire. That crisis may last for just a few months, maybe not much more. A clear out at Number 10 will have to wait until omicron is tackled.

There could be one exception, however. If omicron does become a catastrophe, and the PM will not bring in even stronger measures because he is afraid of his increasingly ridiculous right wing, his sensible colleagues would need to intervene.

Responsible cabinet ministers, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, even Michael Gove, and Jeremy Hunt on the backbenches, would have to act. The handful of extremely reactionary conservative MPs who are clearly ringleaders would need to be quickly and brutally sidelined, in the national interest and in the interest of sanity. That would take courage from those seeking election as Tory leader.

The next few months might be terrible, the next few years should be far better.

As speculation grows about the Downing Street succession it might be tempting for Unionists to try to make sense of the runners and riders through the prism of their likely stance on the Protocol. I think this would be a mistake. They are all likely to be equivocal on this issue.

What matters more is that our next Prime Minister should be a serious, decent person, and that Unionists should continue to point out not just the commercial but also the political and constitutional damage that the Protocol is doing. That mix of Unionist argument and new, sensible leadership in Westminster might deliver a fair result in the end.

No final resolution can be achieved, to the Protocol and so much more, until sense returns to Westminster. The entire UK can only find itself once again when the madness of the last two and a half years comes to an end.

There is, at least, now reason to believe that we will stop the national self-harm fairly soon, and rediscover some hope, confidence and vision. Perhaps it’s now reasonable to start dreaming that we, as a nation, can find our guiding star once again.

Making the most of North Shropshire’s 15 minutes of fame let me quote the great essayist and radical William Hazlitt, who grew up in Wem over 200 years ago :-

“Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence and see all things in the light of their own minds ; who walk by faith and hope ; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar. “

John Gemmell,

Wem, Shropshire