I see you at the podium, your eyes flicking to your notes as you hit the gas on your patented brand of hollow optimism. I see the carefully tousled mop of your hair, now cropped just short enough to take the edge of your inherent buffoonery. It’s time for your political resurgence, a call to arms after weeks of lying low and taking advice on how to present yourself from half a dozen media hacks determined to push your particular dead horse over the finish line. I see Ian Duncan Smith clapping, his face contorted in that weird roar he always seems to do when he gets overexcited, like a banker who’s just popped an erection at a dogfight. You’re unstoppable, Boris Johnson, and never before has a man with so many hollow promises been so very void of actual promise.
If the last five years have been a deliberate attempt to push us all to the point at which we finally snap and run away to go live in a cave in the hills with a scarecrow made of plastic bags and filled with sticks and shit as our leader, this has to be the coup de grace. We’re a month away from a reality where Boris Johnson, a man who just ten minutes ago was singularly failing to rise to the occasion of the only ministerial position he’s ever held, will be the Prime Minister. We now live in a world where the only two vague contenders for his crown are the most reviled health and education secretaries in modern history, a pair of shameless incompetents and ideologues who ripped the souls out of the very infrastructures they were charged with protecting.
It is insane, a fevered cheese-dream of a nightmare, a turd-whittling contest that can only ever conclude with utter chaos. Michael Gove in his never-ending failure to appear human decided that the best way to pass through the Uncanny Valley unscathed was to declare to us all that the horrible, fawning little oik before us that currently sets our nerves on edge was once buzzed off his tits on beak and spraying bored women at cocktail parties with spittle as he talked about himself. Jeremy Hunt is now a ‘serious statesman’ as opposed to the demonic cuckoo in the nest of our health service. Rory Stewart is still clinging on, the only vaguely sane man in the room, his nervous little voice trembling like a vicar confronting a shotgun-wielding burglar before he inevitably gets blown away. If there’s one small crumb of comfort to take from all of it it’s that Esther McVey has once again had her own popularity shown to her in all its stark and trembling horror but it’s not like any of these shameless monsters have a shred of self-awareness anyway.
The party faithful are rallying around you, Boris Johnson, energised and frothing at the mouth at the prospect of a charismatic jingoist with the populist pull to see off the threat of Corbyn’s dull pragmatism. Never mind that they all know you to be feckless, shameless and indolent, a self-serving liar with a nasty vein of thuggery behind the facade. All they see are the polling figures. Never mind the reality – that Brexit means backstop and the EU are never going to back down on it. All that matters is that Boris offers the sense of undiluted optimism that’s been sorely lacking from every part of the process and it doesn’t matter that they all know it to be snake oil. He’s got about as much hope of securing significant changes by October as Corbyn has of winning Alan Sugar over. None of that concerns the Conservatives now, as singularly obsessed as they are with keeping Labour out of power at all costs rather than actually delivering any meaningful progress.
There are so many terrifying spectres looming over the possible future of a Johnson administration, from his general incompetence to the inevitable support he would throw behind the Trump regime’s apparent determination to engineer a war with Iran. None of that matters when the short-term gains seem so desirable. He’ll continue to pump the gas, fuck business and fuck the consequences.
I see you, Boris Johnson, your face set in grim determination as you grip the handrail in the grey and bleak control room. You’re here in the bowels of the Conservative Party HQ and you’re in charge, a man of years of experience, surrounded by a nervous nightshift with their pathetic worries about safety and backstops. I smell the cigarette smoke and I see the nervous eyes flicking back and forth behind the thick glasses.
The pressure from on high is immense, Boris Johnson, your promise to deliver weighing down on your shoulders like an anvil. You’re a party man through and through and this is your big test. For far too long now the Conservative reactor has been running at half power, slowly ticking down and petering out, the readings far below what the gibbering fools around you insist is a safe threshold. You’ll hit it with a burst of something new, raising the pressure, building everything back up until Brexit Reactor Number 4 is screaming along and the country is beaming in the light of a new day.
I see you glare as the alarms start blaring, Boris Johnson, nervous little men scampering around you as the numbers tick higher and higher. I see the hand slam down on a button. I hear the roar, and I feel the building shake as somewhere nearby the whole facade explodes and erupts in a shower of death and graphite.
I see Rory Stewart emerge from under a control panel, his hands shaking, his lips trembling. I hear you bark at him, Boris Johnson, ordering him to go and find out just what the fuck went wrong. This was supposed to be your moment, your legacy, your glorious climax.
It’s just 3.6 roentgen, Comrade Boris. Nothing to worry about. No worse than an X-ray, really.
I see you, Boris Johnson. I fucking see you.
