It’s been a bad week for former political leaders

The week of the three downfalls has been an interesting one. Boris Johnson resigning from parliament, Donald Trump going to court to face serious charges, Nicola Sturgeon arrested as part of a probe into SNP finances. I wouldn’t like to prejudge any of these cases, for I am – secretly – a fair-minded person.

Of course, had Sturgeon not been involved, various leftist writers would now be penning articles claiming a great linkage between these events. Probably about the downfall of ‘populism’. But since Saint Nicola is involved this will not happen. Because as I have noted here before, our age sees all nationalism as poison, except for the Scottish and Irish varieties, which are inexplicably progressive and just.

Imagine we had been discussing at any point in recent decades how Boris Johnson’s political career might end. Most people would have said that it would likely implode amid a blizzard of fibs. Perhaps not one great big Watergate-sized lie. But a set of mini-lies that builds until nobody around him believes him any more because he has lied to everyone and run out of friends.

Johnson is currently railing against the Commons Privileges Committee that censured him, and I have some sympathy with his anger. There is something off in Parliament these days where powerful committees and investigations can be set up by the most second-rate bureaucrats and effectively end the careers of democratically elected politicians. So I don’t blame Boris for having a go at the injustice of the thing.

His problem is that the matters under investigation – parties at Downing Street involving wine and, on at least one occasion, a sponge cake – all seem like things Johnson might be involved in. Although the rule-breaking was hardly on a mobster level, he had instituted insanely draconian lockdown measures on everybody in this country.