Boris vs the Blob: the real reason John Major can’t stand the PM

The embattled denizens of Downing Street must be quaking in their loafers as another incoming missile streaks in. This one – typically late in the day – is fired by one of our growing squad of embittered ex-prime ministers, Sir John Major. It takes the form of a speech to the Institute for Government titled ‘In democracy we trust?’.

Sir John’s sense of irony in choosing this subject is clearly not strong considering he spent much of his spectacularly undistinguished premiership struggling to subsume British parliamentary democracy under the proudly undemocratic European Union. Nonetheless he chips in with the usual tropes of the anti-Boris brigade: the PM is demeaning standards, undermining probity, telling fibs. We all know the familiar words of the song.

But in belatedly clambering aboard the creaking anti-Boris bandwagon over partygate, Major is at least demonstrating one thing that becomes plainer by the day: the chorus of denunciation of Johnson and his administration appears to have less to do with illicit parties, wine glugging, and cake scoffing, than with the ‘Blob’ exacting revenge for Brexit.

Give or take a couple of Brexiteer Tory MPs, by spooky coincidence almost the entire choir of Boris loathing backbenchers who have submitted letters of no confidence – or say they intend to – come from the wringing wet Remainer wing of the party.