Boris Johnson Is Unfit For Public Office

Any party that could seriously consider being led by Boris Johnson is itself profoundly unserious.

We are famous the world over for our humour. That is because we are fundamentally a serious country. There are joke countries, and they are not remotely funny to live in.

But Britain is not a joke country, and it does not want a joke Prime Minister.

Johnson is unfit for public office.

He has admitted that he always knew the case for the Iraq War was a load of rubbish, but that he voted for it anyway.

No doubt this admission is true of many then-MPs, some of whom are still there. They, too, were and are unfit for office.

The Conservative rebellion was proportionately as well as absolutely far smaller than the Labour one, although it included the now-retired MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Sir John Randall, who had resigned as a Whip in order to vote against the war, and whose shoes Johnson is therefore unworthy to fill.

But the Conservative Party was the Official Opposition, making its failure to oppose an even greater dereliction of duty.

The same was true of the Labour Party, as such, over Libya, although of course one of its MPs who voted against that intervention is now its Leader.

Has this country ever gone to war without the support of the Official Opposition? I cannot think of a case.

The Conservatives could have kept us out of Iraq, as Labour could have kept us out of Libya.

That said, Labour MPs, as individuals, who voted for war while knowing that it was all lies, as most of the general public had no difficulty in recognising, were and are no better than any other MPs who did so.

It is one thing to have been hoodwinked, although MPs ought not to be.

But this was, and is, something else.