Joining the dots (with a six inch brush)

Is there any connection between the personal and continual campaigns against Boris Johnson and the embittered Remainer rump? Bears and their sanitary habits in woods spring to mind. Even the Graun recently confessed that the Islington literati loved Boris the clown as Mayor of London but turned against him as a Person when he opted for Brexit and have been out for revenge ever since. So not much news in this Times comment piece (subsciption reqd) on Monday February 14 2022 

Of course Remainers are out to get Johnson

“By spooky coincidence,” writes Nigel Jones in the Spectator, the bulk of MPs who have sent or plan to send letters of no confidence in Johnson also come from “the wringing wet Remainer wing of the party”

H Rifkind is the actual author, a Guardian stalwart usually, and his own view is: 

if it is not a Remainer plot then it damn well should be....There was a reason that Boris Johnson made for such an effective champion of Take Back Control and then Get Brexit Done, and we all know that it was not his sober risk/benefit analysis of differing modes of integration with the global marketplace. Right? In my view — and I downgrade it to “a view” merely to be conciliatory [so much for journalistic balance then] — it was because he is an opportunist, unbothered by consequence. It was because he tells people what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, and feels not a shred of responsibility for what follows

As usual Rifkind cannot possibly grasp what might explain the continued determination to carry on with Brexit though, and can only resort to insults:

True, not all of Johnson’s critics are Remainers. There is also Dominic Cummings, best understood as the human version of the venomous arachnid in the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog. (Look it up.) [Chance to flaunt a bit of cultural capital there] There are also European Research Group hard Brexiteers such as Steve Baker and Andrew Bridgen, who seem to move according to rhythms and influences simply unknowable to the rest of us [we smug minority that is] , which I suppose might have something to do with the moon.

[It was always a lie to think] a Britain heading for Brexit could have ended up being led by a sane, sober, responsible cool-headed technocrat who had genuinely wanted it, because that couldn’t have happened, because there weren’t any.

So, no doubt he feels better now nice and smug and superior, relishing the media campaigns and urging on the constant tide of stories of crisis about parties, police incompetence, undue influence by Carrie (bit of a tricky one),corruption, foreign policy cock-ups etc. People like C Newman and the editors on C4 News can always remind us of the links with Brexit as we have seen in recent posts.

However,  Remainers have not learned lessons from their earlier campaigns, perhaps because they cannot. By confessing that it was always about Remaining, they have now lost any moral authority they might have had in protesting about parties or rule-breaking -- they didn't really care about those issues after all, they were just a way to discredit Johnson. The morality informing these crusades always looked pretty petty anyway, of course, despite efforts to extend them into issues such as 'one rule for us and another for them' which did run for a bit.They ran the risk of extending the common cynical view towards all politicians including that nice 'Keir'. Now media commentators are players too, it is apparent.