Boris Johnson must be destroyed. Or rather, Boris Johnson must be given the opportunity to destroy himself. David Cameron has a gift amounting to genius for disposing of rivals by placing them in a position where they have no good course of action. In a friendly and reasonable tone, he tempts them to take a step that may seem to promise great things, but turns out to be fatal. Anyone who doubts this should think of what happened to Nick Clegg, who had 57 MPs when he accepted Cameron’s “big, open and
comprehensive offer” to join the government in 2010, and came out with eight.
A similar ruthlessness is evident in his handling of the Mayor of London. Johnson was faced with an unbearable choice. He could, if he wished, become a cog in the Cameron-Osborne machine. In return for backing the Remain side in the EU referendum campaign, he would be made into a very grand cog with a magnificent office, because, it was intimated to him, he could expect to become foreign secretary in the “unity reshuffle” that will follow the vote. But as everyone knows, foreign policy is decided in Downing Street, and Johnson’s freedom of action would extend to making unnecessarily amusing speeches, and arranging conferences with Angelina Jolie.
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