Was Boris doomed anyway?

Boris Johnson has stepped down as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip with immediate effect, but is it a case of jumping before he was pushed? With the threat of a by-election looming over him after the Privileges Committee recommended a ten-day suspension for his conduct over partygate, it appears Johnson was not willing to gamble on the good will of his constituents to see him through.

Last year in January as a local reporter I spoke to Johnson’s constituents to see what they thought of him. This was several weeks after the partygate scandal had broken and, with the Omicron variant of Covid still spreading throughout the country, Covid was fresh on peoples’ minds.

Strikingly, of those I spoke to, few had good things to say about Johnson. One local called him ‘nonexistant’ as an MP. Another, a paramedic who had worked tirelessly through the pandemic spoke poignantly of the revelations coming out about parties at Downing Street.