The Boris-bashers should be ashamed

Throughout this fractious summer, one thing has united all the warring pundits and politicians. Left, right; Leave, Remain, everyone at least agrees that it was crazy to leave the country in Boris’s hands. He’s not serious, they say, looking, as they make this pronouncement, jolly pleased with their own relative gravitas.

They should instead be ashamed. The endless jeering at Boris isn’t justified — he was a decent mayor of London — and it is not in good faith. What purports to be considered criticism is almost always just sour grapes.

Why the bitterness? More often than not, Boris-bashers — in Parliament or press — are his contemporaries. A lot of them went to Oxford with him and they measure their success against his. It makes them cross. Even if they console themselves that Boris is lightweight, as an author or politician, there’s still his celebrity to contend with, here and (more galling) in America.