Anyone but Boris

If Boris Johnson is, once again, the answer it is worth asking what the question can be. The simplest response must be that he is, at least as far as some Conservative MPs are concerned, the man most likely to save their jobs at the next election. But a better question, for the country anyway, would be to ask if Boris Johnson is fit to be prime minister? 

And the answer to that is obvious. We are asked to believe that, despite being a conspicuous failure at the foreign office, Johnson could be a plausible prime minister. But what, precisely, in Johnson’s history gives anyone confidence he might be a fit and proper prime minister? That the same question might be asked of Jeremy Corbyn and receive precisely the same answer in no way advances Johnson’s claims. 

‘Only Boris can beat Corbyn’ his backers say as though this was enough. It might be a necessary condition for the next Tory leader but it is not a sufficient one.