We British: The Poetry of a People

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Read more: ‘It wasn't done well, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try again’: Ex-Tory chairman hints Trussonomics could return I think he is someone who all his life has expected optimistically - and perhaps in a narcissistic way, that something useful will turn up and mostly, so far, it has done. But not this time," he said. Labelling the current Tory part a government "governed by Whatsapp", Marr added that "like the country at the time of the Brexit referendum, he didn't know what was coming next. Much of it now resides not above Athens’s most famous war memorial and civic bank but in an echoing, grey chamber in the British Museum. That’s because the Parthenon, after being converted into a mosque under Turkish rule, had been used as a munitions dump and partly blown up in 1687. In 1800, Thomas Bruce, the Earl of Elgin, employed a team of artists to sketch the ruins, and claimed the following year he had instructions from the Turkish authorities to remove them for safekeeping. Eventually Bruce took them to London. It’s not true that this was considered acceptable at the time: among others, Lord Byron protested vociferously at the vandalism and theft. Any normal politician in Johnson’s position would go now, trying to retain a sense of dignity. Whether or not Johnson is forced out by a vote of Tory MPs, he is likely to be confronted by the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, telling him the jig is up.

The standard-model memoir has three purposes: to settle scores, to nudge the dial of the historical verdict, and above all to win a publisher’s advance that is unlikely to be earned out. The resulting book is reviewed everywhere and read nowhere. The British public, who voted the author in, barely features, except as comic extras writing cranky letters and making ignorant observations at by-elections.u201c'I'm so bored of Boris Johnson I could scream.\u2019 \n\n@AndrewMarr9 delivers an epic takedown of the 'selfish, narcissistic' ex-PM in the form of poetry...\u201d — LBC (@LBC) His tone is light, even flippant, but his commentary is both incisive and profound. There were no more than two or three occasions, as far as I can recall now, where his style of writing jarred. One was where he was at pains to point out that he does not believe in God; it didn’t add anything to what he was saying, and by comparison with his usually carefully phrased commentaries it stood out. I was going to say, “like a sore thumb” but then remembered that I actually got a sore thumb while reading this book, as it’s pretty fat and heavy last thing at night as one is drifting off . . .. but that didn’t add anything either to what I am supposed to be writing about, so I shall stop being hard on Andrew Marr for the odd personal intervention in a book that engrosses, elucidates and elevates.

Tory MP Jake Berry Gets Rinsed For Claiming 'The Blob' Brought Down Boris JohnsonThe former party chairman is the latest Johnson ally to rush to the defence of the disgraced ex-PM. It is a great mistake to believe that we are an island. If we are on the edge of war, we should never forget that wars tend to upend everything we think we know about politics. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed. Rather like that unexpected gesture, this is a pleasant surprise: a genuinely unusual, bold and important book. You can’t say that of many political memoirs.Rishi Sunak, who seemed such a favourite as a future prime minister before the disaster of the Spring Statement and the controversy over the tax status of his wife, has the resilience of the seriously wealthy. There are not many people in the higher echelons of Westminster whom you could imagine walking away, perfectly happily, into an entirely different life. But he is one of them. The Johnson seizure of Conservative England does, in the end, feel like a story out of Ancient Rome, something fundamentally un-British. Now it is very close to its end. Millions will be thoroughly delighted. But what is coming next? Something is. And it could be, simply, mayhem. Perhaps a cabal of senior Tories is even now able to concoct an alternative post-Johnson government able to stagger on through the tough year ahead. But don’t bet on it. We deserve a general election. But don’t expect that either.