Johnson and Trump are yesterday’s men, raging against the dying of the spotlight
There are few more pitiful sights than powerful men wallowing in their own victimhood.
Or more punch-the-air glorious ones. I’m talking about alpha males who believed they had a God-given right to rule, who imposed their narrow worldview on millions, being forced to confront the prospect that their time is up.
And instead of accepting it with grace they petulantly fight against the dying spotlight, shedding what little is left of their dignity.
Men like Donald Trump who is so hellbent on playing the Establishment whipping boy he’s told advisers he wants to be handcuffed and frogmarched into court if he is indicted for his role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The gargantuan ball of self-love believing the martyr look would enrage his base and make him a shoo-in for re-election as president.
When in reality he will look like a tragic blast from a Jurassic past with the US orange jail jumpsuit suiting him to a tee. And talking of dinosaurs, how wonderful to see the Democratic Unionists and the self-styled European Research Group sidelined like the irrelevancies they are, as the grown-up MPs got on with sorting out Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit future?
The nerve of these plastic patriots, who decided before reading the Windsor Framework that they would oppose it because what they really want in Ireland is a hard border with the Republic, is breathtaking.
Despite 83% of voters in Northern Ireland welcoming the deal, nonentities like Mark Francois and Ian Paisley Jnr demanded their minority will be, once again, imposed on the majority.
But nobody pandered to them because their political capital had drained. Which left them looking as dated as the hackneyed vaudeville acts they are.
Which brings us to Boris Johnson losing his rag and his credibility in a three-hour Westminster grilling that exposed all of his worst qualities. Of which there are many.
But let’s start with arrogance. He took hundreds of thousands of pounds off taxpayers to get legal advice on how to convince MPs he did not mislead parliament over parties in Number 10. And the proven liar decided his best shot was saying “hand on heart, I didn’t lie” because a couple of advisers, whom he would not name, told him he wasn’t breaking his own rules.
He argues that even though he was present at gatherings where people were getting sloshed he didn’t recognise them as parties. Meaning the best education money can buy is unable to teach someone the definition of a basic word.
I’d have had more respect for Johnson if he’d said it was impossible for him to recognise a work’s knees-up as a party because, growing up, his idea of partying was trashing a restaurant, humiliating minimum-wage staff and burning £50 notes in front of the homeless.
But looking at the sulking sack of self-pitying blancmange on Wednesday I just yawned. It felt like watching Pathe News footage of a bygone era. Which, thankfully, it is.
Johnson, Trump, the DUP and the ERG, have been boring us for so long, all but the most deluded members of their cults want to see the back of them.
Never has the title of Yesterday’s Men so snugly fitted a collection of ancient relics. If only they were decent enough to do us all a favour by gracefully taking their places in the dustbin of history.
