Why I’m not celebrating Boris Johnson’s downfall

I know it’s the season of ‘dunking on Boris’, which is fine. He deserves a bit of dunking for the errors of judgement he made over Partygate and Pinchergate. But if only for the purposes of brief respite from all this Boris-bashing, I think we need to reflect on the one good thing he did. The thing that will fortify his place in the history books. The thing that elevates him above the rest of the political class.

It’s quite simple, really: he stood up for working-class voters when hardly anyone else in the establishment would.

This week has been a strange experience for me. From many of my middle-class colleagues in the media, I have seen only Borisphobia. Their Schadenfreude is off the scale. Ding dong, the toff is dead, they proclaim, as they congratulate themselves for the role their twittering thumbs played in toppling the dastardly Etonian.

But from the distinctly un-middle-class people I know from the other part of my life – old friends, family members – I have seen mostly sadness.