IF Boris Johnson did actually resign over Partygate, then nobody would love it more than Vladimir Putin.
The chorus of virtue-signalling jackals demanding that the Prime Minister quit — Labour, the SNP, the Twitterati, our scrupulously impartial BBC, where they report a nine-minute birthday party as if it was like torching an orphanage — would all squeal with orgasmic delight if Boris resigned.
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But nobody would squeal with orgasmic delight quite like Russia’s Putin — and his fellow autocratic fuhrer, China’s Xi Jinping.
These brutal, nuclear-armed dictators firmly believe that the free world is in terminal decline.
If Boris Johnson — a leader who was democratically elected with an 80-seat majority — quit because of a £50 fine for lockdown infringements, the new fuhrers would be proved right.
The West would have proved itself too decadent, too spoilt, too self-indulgent, and too far up its own Wembley Way to live in the real world.
Who is going to fine Vladimir Putin for being a naughty boy? Who is going to slap Xi Jinping’s wrist in Beijing for eating illegal cake?
Look — by all means be incandescent with rage that far too often this Government acts as if the rules are for the little people.
And by all means boot Boris and his entitled, tired, high-taxing Tories out at the next General Election.
But let’s all admit one bright, shining truth. Boris — for all his multiple and self-evident faults — has got Ukraine right.
And this barbaric war is the greatest issue of our time.
When the West was wavering — when a weak, pudding-brained US President drooled in January that the US could tolerate a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine, when Germany was sending 3,000 crash helmets to Ukraine but one billion euros a day to Russia for lovely cheap gas — Boris Johnson was the one Western leader who saw Putin’s threat clearly.
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Putin is the first psychopath in human history who has nuclear weapons.
We are now closer to World War Three than at any point since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a crime against humanity that threatens the peace of the world.
We are playing for the highest stakes imaginable — for Ukraine, for Europe and for the human race.
It took courage for Boris to walk the streets of Kyiv last weekend with Ukraine’s President Zelensky.
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Yes, of course the roly-poly old ham loves a good photoshoot opportunity.
But Boris’s passion for Ukraine is real and heartfelt, and it has shamed the rest of them into action — all those European nations so pathetically addicted to Russian gas, and the Biden administration that couldn’t flee from Afghanistan fast enough.
Putin has got exactly the opposite of what he wanted and expected.
Nato is energised, given a new lease of life, united as it has not been for years.
If Finland and Sweden take the plunge, Nato could even expand.
The European nations who have built their economies on cheap Russian gas understand now that they are — quite literally — funding Russian war crimes.
And as the unimaginably horrific stories emerge from Ukraine — the total destruction of peaceful cities, the systemic gang rapes by Russian soldiers, the mass graves of civilians shot in the back of the head, the half-burned naked bodies left to rot by the roadside, the Russian marine who sexually abused a Ukrainian baby — craven neutrality is no longer an option.
And even if Boris Johnson was dancing the lambada in the Downing Street Rose Garden at the height of lockdown, nobody can deny that our Prime Minister has led the opposition to Putin and his morally bankrupt regime.
If Boris resigned because of what has been revealed about Partygate — and all that is yet to be revealed — then the Western alliance is undeniably weakened, and Putin is undeniably emboldened.
We can’t let that happen.
‘Who is going to fine Vladimir Putin for being a naughty boy? Who is going to slap Xi Jinping’s wrist in Beijing for eating illegal cake?’
Putin is on the run and the war crimes of his drunken Red Army rabble are shocking the entire world.
The Ukrainian people are lighting a torch for freedom that will burn for ever. But this is not yet victory.
On April 24, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the final vote of the French presidential elections.
A touch of pure hysteria
Perhaps you hate Macron for his petty spite towards the Brexit- voting British.
Perhaps you hate the mouthy little monsieur for the way he smeared the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab for his own political gain.
I know I do. But Marine Le Pen is no friend of the British, and no friend of Brexit, and no friend of freedom.
She is, however, great mates with Putin. Mad Vlad even featured on Le Pen’s election pamphlets.
Like all the former groupies of Putin, Le Pen is backing off now that they are opening the mass graves of Ukraine.
But would she really be a trustworthy ally as the West fights for its life?
No — the election of Marine Le Pen would place a Putin stooge in Paris.
Whatever they tell you on Twitter, Boris Johnson’s resignation would be an act of national self-harm that would have global implications.
And — whatever you think of BoJo and the way he has carried his fun-loving bulk in office — there is no denying that calls for his resignation are always tinged with a touch of hysteria.
I suspect that in some secret chamber of his heart, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer suspects he will never beat Boris Johnson in the polling booth at a General Election — and that the SNP’s Member of Parliament for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, Ian Blackford, realises the prospects of Scottish independence are receding with every passing year that Boris remains in office.
No matter how many times Starmer and Blackford get up on their hind legs and demand the PM’s P45, it is the British people who should decide Boris Johnson’s ultimate fate.
Unless he loses a vote of no confidence, which is unlikely, or calls an early election — also unlikely — then under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, the next General Election is formally set for Thursday May 2, 2024.
That fateful day will come around soon enough. And as Joe Strummer of The Clash once said, the future is unwritten.
Boris Johnson’s fate should not be decided by those who have always hated him.
As Lord David Frost has argued, an international crisis — even one as big as Ukraine — does not give a Government a blank cheque to do what they like at home.
But the fight against Putin is too historic to be undermined by petty party politics.
And when that General Election comes, and we stand alone in the polling booth holding that pencil on a string, perhaps we will conclude that one term of Boris Johnson was more than enough.
I can imagine being in that polling booth and having my doubts about giving Boris a second term.
Even more easily, I can imagine staying home at the next General Election.
You add it all up — historically high taxes, a cost-of-living crisis and all that Tory sleaze, from Dominic Cummings testing his eyesight at the wheel of his car, to Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s wandering, lockdown-busting hands — and the sum total could cost Boris his day job.
Polish his green halo
But if the PM eventually goes, it will not be because he had some cake on his birthday two months after he nearly died, or because it is what some rotund bloke in the SNP wants.
If I stay home at the next General Election, it will be because of all the wantonly broken Brexit promises — like the one that Michael Gove and Johnson made in this newspaper about slashing VAT on energy bills when we were out of the EU, a promise that was broken so Boris could polish his green halo.
If I stay home on polling day, it will be because these Tories are taxing us to the back teeth in a way that no government has since the Second World War.
And if I skip voting next time, it will be because the Tories are persisting with fanatical green policies that will soon mean only the rich can drive a car, heat their home and never worry about energy bills.
I would never vote Labour, because I could never trust a Labour Government with my wallet.
But I can envisage thinking that Boris and his entitled Tory toffs are totally out of touch with the everyday concerns of the British people, who by the next General Election will have gone through some hard, hard times.
Boris and this Government have established a narrative that is both offensively entitled — the rules are there for the little people — and totally tone-deaf.
So, yes, I can imagine kicking Boris out of office. But right now we have a war to win.
Right now, the free world is fighting for its life.
So I wouldn’t call Partygate a resigning issue.
An uneaten cake? A pack of warm beer? Nine minutes and then off for an early night?
Frankly, I would not even call it a party.
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