‘In the name of God, go’: Why David Davis was right to demand Boris Johnson’s resignation as ‘red wall’ MP defects – The Yorkshire Post says

It had even more resonance because the Haltemprice and Howden MP’s resignation as Brexit Secretary in 2018 prompted Mr Johnson to follow suit from the Foreign Office and fuel the implosion of Theresa May’s government.

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But it was how Mr Davis evoked Leo Amery and his past condemnation of his former acquaintance Neville Chamberlain in 1940 with Oliver Cromwell-inspired adage – namely “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go” – that was so significant.

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These words were even more damning and brutal because Mr Amery, like the current PM, was a historian and Chamberlain’s downfall led to Winston Churchill – the current premier’s hero – coming to power.

And for Mr Johnson to say, lamely and tamely, in response that “I don’t know what he is talking about” was as disingenuous as his duplicitous responses earlier at Prime Minister’s Questions about Downing Street’s booze-filled parties during the Covid lockdown.

The devastating intervention by Mr Davis came at the end of a dramatic PMQs that began with the defection of ‘red wall’ Tory MP Christian Wakeford to Labour a week to the day after tweeting: “How do you defend the indefensible? You can’t!” The Bury South MP went on: “We need openness, trust and honesty in our politics now more than ever and that starts from the top!”

Like The Yorkshire Post – and so many others – he’s now had enough of the PM’s insulting, incoherent and insensitive responses about Downing Street’s double standards, deceit and denials over ‘partygate’ while the rest of the country, including the Queen, observed lockdown laws at great personal cost.

Mr Johnson’s justification for his presence at the now infamous ‘bring your own booze’ Downing Street staff party on May 20, 2020, namely that no one told him the rules, was as feeble as it was contemptible.

And while it is for Mr Wakeford’s conscience to determine if he should submit himself to a by-election after becoming the first Tory MP to defect to Labour since Quentin Davies in 2007, the Conservative leader’s latest pantomime performance vindicates his stance.

What the country witnessed was Mr Johnson in so much denial that he desperately resorted to accusing Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of ‘politicising’ the scandal while deflecting simple questions by telling MPs to wait for senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report and obfuscating when he asked if misleading Parliament is still a resignation issue.

All this did was unite ‘red wall’ MPs from the 2019 intake who owed their elections to Mr Johnson, and who now despair of his appalling example, with grandees like Mr Davis acutely aware of the need for “leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take”. If Mr Johnson does not recognise this now, his MPs must now take the initiative in the national interest on our behalf and, to paraphrase Churchill, action this day.

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