Boris Johnson, You’re A Coward

This morning, after some of his supporters had passed severely adverse comment on the decision of Michael “Oiky” Gove not to support his candidacy for Tory leader, London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson summoned those supporters and the Westminster media to let them know that the next leader of his party was not going to be him. His leadership bid was over.

A complete Muppet. And Elmo from Sesame Street

It had not been an auspicious start to the morning: as Bozza left his London home earlier, a passing cyclist told the assembled hacks that The Blond couldn’t be trusted to run a bath. Gove had pulled the rug from under him, and with it the much-needed endorsement of the Murdoch and Rothermere press. He had been out-manoeuvred and unceremoniously thrown under one of his own vanity buses. The game was up.

So the Tories would, for the time being, have no need of the dirt the party was rumoured to have on Bozza. Nor, more importantly, would Bozza have to face up to the consequences of his “victory” in last week’s referendum on Britain’s EU membership. Like his days as a member of the Bullingdon Club, he had trashed the place, but left someone else to pick up the tab. He is not just an unprincipled liar, but is totally spineless with it.

Why he chickened out is already the subject of much speculation: it is rumoured that Rupert Murdoch had such grave misgivings about letting Bozza go for the top job that his attack dogs would cause The Blond’s private life to be laid bare, probably splashed across the pages of the Sun. With a cupboard full of skeletons and a growing family, such leverage could prove conclusive, even with a loose cannon like Johnson.

It’s also possible that Bozza’s tenure as Mayor of London would finally come back to bite him: the right-leaning press had turned a blind eye to the vanity projects, the broken promises, the caving-in to interest groups, the appalling housing record, the lousy industrial relations, the lack of vision, and above all the lack of attention to actually doing the job he had been elected to do. It was all there, ready to be turned against him.

Worst of all is the suspicion that being Prime Minister right now would be too difficult for Bozza. There would be none of the “just turning up to cut the ribbon” of the London Mayoralty, while leaving it to one of his many deputies to do the real work. Being PM during the next few months would mean hard work, long hours, and taking tough decisions. Bozza would rather leave that to the grown-ups, thanks very much.

All of which adds up to one inescapable conclusion: Boris Johnson is, deep down, a coward, utterly incapable of taking responsibility for the mess in which the country finds itself as a direct result of his grandstanding. When the real challenge came along, he turned tail and ran away, more interested in sounding off in the Telegraph than getting off his backside and putting in the kind of hard work he claims to admire in others.

Boris Johnson is Frit. Yellow. Chicken. He’s a coward. And now he’s been rumbled.