Long Boris
Historians are familiar with the concept of the long century. Eric Hobsbawm amongst others argued that the nineteenth century only ended in 1914 with the start of World War One. Equally, although this is a provisional point, the twentieth century might be said to have ended in 2022 with the death of Queen Elizabeth 11
The concept as applied to a political actor is arguably more difficult. We can certainly talk of Long Blair with his rare but regular public interventions.
Long Boris is also, again provisionally, a theme. Johnson resigned as PM in July 2022 following a series of scandals. He was later found to be guilty of lying to Parliament and would have been suspended had he not by then resigned as an MP.
A series of BBC programmes by Laura Kuenssberg has thrown more light on Johnson’s No.10 period. The BBC usually has a political editor who is sympathetic to the Government of the day. It makes at the least for more informed reporting even if it does, and did, raise questions of partiality and balance.
In the second programme Kuenssberg looked specifically at Johnson as PM. It was a chaotic picture with Dominic Cummings in effective control, Johnson being a front man for the Brexit project.
Despite all this Johnson is still around. He writes a column for the Mail, warmongers on Ukraine, where he seems to have found a like minded character in Zelensky, and has slammed Rishi Sunak’s u-turns on climate and HS2.
Quite how long, Long Boris, will go on for may not be irrelevant to how badly the Tories lose the next Election
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