Whatever his myriad faults and foibles, Boris Johnson has the one essential quality that Napoleon demanded of his generals: luck. A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister was on the point of being dethroned by his own MPs. Today, thanks to two men, Vladimir Putin and Rishi Sunak, he strides the stage again, basking in the praise of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s most doughty and effective international defender.
Johnson owes his survival and resurrection to his firm response to Putin’s brutal invasion, but also to the abrupt political implosion of the colleague who was being lined up – not least by himself – to succeed him: Chancellor Rishi Sunak. As the war in Ukraine grinds on into a bloody stalemate, the partygate affair is returning to the headlines and may yet endanger the PM. But even if it does, one thing is now certain: Sunak will not inherit the Crown.
Sunak raised taxation to its highest levels since the 1940s, while failing to offer anything to society’s two most vulnerable groups
Few political descents from hero to zero have been so sudden or so swift.
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