LOVE him or loathe him – and most voters still seem to love him – everything in Britain today is about Boris.
His policy on cake — “pro eating it and pro having it” — has come to pass.
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He is blamed for Brexit, Covid, taking the knee and cancelling summer.
If England are kicked out of the Euros, he will probably be blamed for that, too.
Yet this PM gets Brexit done, bamboozles Brussels and wins sensational landslide elections . . . except in true blue Chesham and Amersham, which opted for the two-faced Lib Dems.
Tory deserters will return to the fold next time if the hope is to stay in power.
For the Conservatives are now The Boris Party, taken over by the single most electable political figure on the planet.
What Brexit voters remember and Remainers will never forgive is that only Boris Johnson could have won the 2019 election with an 80-seat majority.
He might win the next one by an even bigger margin.
Even the fickle French would vote Boris over mirthless Emmanuel Macron right now.
But just as New Labour had to ask after Tony Blair was finally driven from power, what next?
What does the BoJo Party stand for
And what happens when, in the words of ex-Downing Street Svengali Dominic Cummings, their great leader goes off to “make money and have fun”.
As with Blair’s Blue Labour, they risk being left an empty shell, with all their traditional signposts to sound economics dismantled.
Cummings’ characterisation of his old boss as a “shopping trolley, smashing from one side of the aisle to another” will be ringing in Tory ears today after Thursday’s by-election.
TEETER ON BRINK
The PM allegedly told Cummings he loves chaos because “everyone needs me to sort it out”.
Indeed, Boris has lived his life according to the chaos theory.
His clothing, speeches, marriages all teeter on the brink until they either succeed or collapse.
Some Conservatives think this is no way to run a party, still less a government in the throes of peacetime’s biggest health, social and economic crisis.
They don’t like the PM’s Lottery winner “spend, spend, spend” approach to public finances or his sudden conversion to crippling and dubious green policies.
They are not comfortable with England bending the knee at Wembley or Boris flip-flopping over this American gesture.
They don’t want an HS2 high-speed rail link and they certainly don’t want a costly bridge or tunnel across the Irish Sea.
Nor do they like the way the PM announces huge economic decisions without consulting Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
This partly explains last week’s revolt in leafy Chesham and Amersham and the mutiny by 49 Tory MPs against his “totalitarian” decision to axe today as Freedom Day.
Boris avoided a humiliating Commons defeat, but only with Labour support, a point not lost on lifelong Tories who resent measures they associate with Labour and the trendy Left.
They particularly dislike the idea of higher taxes to bail out former Labour constituencies in the Midlands and the North, the famous Red Wall.
Their only consolation — and the reason Boris keeps one step ahead of his critics — is the truly shocking disintegration of Sir Keir Starmer’s official Opposition.
It is hard to see who will fill this vacuum but it will not last for ever. In the meantime, unruly Tory backbenchers are doing their best.
KICK FOR GOAL
One day, Starmer will wake up and use these rebels to defeat the Government
My money remains on Boris.
But for Covid, this PM would have enjoyed a flying start, with an 80-seat majority and a robust economy raring to make the best of Brexit.
The important thing about a crisis is not how you go into it, but how you come out of it.
Boris deserves credit for delivering the miracle jabs long before the clod-hopping EU and for rolling them out to all high-risk groups at record speed.
To borrow one of his colourful phrases, he must not drop the ball now, just as it comes loose from the scrum.
Today should have been Freedom Day — he should kick for goal by July 5 at the latest.
