Stewart Paterson: Boris Johnson departs as Prime Minister leaving another fine mess

Another Old Etonian Prime Minister prepares to depart the office he was groomed for, leaving behind another fine mess for someone else to deal with.

Boris Johnson is the 20th Prime Minister to have been schooled at Eton, David Cameron was the 19th.

At the last count, my old school had none. Surprising really as my Possilpark classmates and I could be equally relied on to make a total pig’s ear of things as much as any public school.

One or two might even have done a decent job.

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Johnson made a career out of being the jovial, fun loving character who sticks it to the stale and stuffy establishment.

In the early days he was dismissed as a clown, not to be taken seriously and one who would never achieve high office.

He knew different.

It was the very established elite he was pretending to be railing against that got him where he was every step of the way and kept him there, until now.

In truth, Johnson is as elite as it comes.

He couldn’t be more elite if he had been written by Jane Austen.

And every step of the way, while climbing the pole, he was doing damage but onwards and upwards he charged.

First, he gets plum jobs as a journalist on the Times, Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

He didn’t get those jobs down to hard work and talent alone, if at all.

He got the Times job after an introduction at a party at a stately home belonging to his then fiancée’s family. C’mon we’ve all been there haven’t we.

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As a journalist, he was responsible for some of the most outrageous and anti-EU stories designed purely to discredit and ridicule the organisation and its personnel. Their basis in fact has been questioned by many and found wanting.

Then he becomes an MP, handed one of the safest Tory seats to ensure he is elected.

Again, a seat like Henley is prized among Tories. His predecessor, MP Michael Heseltine, left him a majority of just under 25,000.

The seat had been Tory since 1906 and only changed hands once, briefly, since its creation in the 1880s.

While Margaret Thatcher had tramped up and down England looking for a seat, Boris Johnson walked into one of the safest in the Commons.

The Tories spotted a popular figure, a vote winner, someone whose personality they can use to pull the wool over the eyes of the public.

He stepped down as an MP to contest the London Mayor election which he won twice.

But Johnson always had his eyes on the main prize, the keys to 10 Downing Street.

He said of Cameron, his former Eton and Oxford contemporary: “I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest."

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And it was Cameron who set in motion the chain of events that allowed Johnson to complete the final part of his plan to be Prime Minister.

In giving in to the Eurosceptics, Cameron ushered in Brexit and the fine mess that it has caused.

Yes, Johnson, and others like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove may have led the charge in the leave campaign but the mess was created by Cameron’s inability to deal with the Europhobe element of his party.

Others, Thatcher and Major, had managed to keep it in check but Cameron caved and Johnson was waiting.

Now Johnson’s dream is over. And he reluctantly will leave the office he craved.

The last few days have been like an unruly toddler’s bedtime routine.

“it’s nighttime, it’s time to go to bed Boris.”

“But I DON’T WANT to go to bed.”

“I know, I know, but you really have to.”

And now the race begins on who will replace him.

There may be a change of personality but it is likely the same agenda will be pursued.

Since Cameron took office in 2010 until now, poverty has rocketed, the poor have been demonised and blamed for their own situation.

An army of so-called gig economy workers are toiling in precarious jobs, with reduced rights and ridiculous conditions.

The rich have got richer and are getting richer still, many on the back of those mentioned above.

Johnson will no doubt go on and make even more money out of office using the power and privilege of his background, as he always has.

He and his ilk are in positions of power right through the United Kingdom. They think it belongs to them. And currently it does.

One way or another the grip that the upper class, self-serving public school elite has on this country has to be ended.