In a certain sense, you almost have to admire Boris Johnson. Please note: I said "almost." In his final appearance last week for the always-entertaining ritual performance of Prime Minister's Questions before the House of Commons (seriously, watch it sometime if you're inclined to believe the British are unfailingly polite), Johnson seemed exactly the same as ever — a mischievous, intelligent and unreliable schoolboy, overstuffed with expensive chocolates, entirely unrepentant and largely upbeat — only days after having been driven to resign by his own party in one of the most humiliating political collapses of recent history.
And from his blasé, Oxbridge, upper-class-wag, profoundly narcissistic point of view, why not? What Johnson told the honorable members in Westminster was pretty much true (which is a point to keep in mind as we go on): He had conquered the dominant political party in Britain and re-engineered it, pulling in large numbers of working-class voters in the north of England for the first time and leading the Tories (i.e., the Conservative Party) to their largest electoral majority since the days of Margaret Thatcher. He had accomplished the seemingly impossible and quite likely undesirable task of extracting the U.K. from the European Union (i.e., Brexit), something his own party hadn't previously much wanted to happen.
