I am not in the prediction game – and it’s worth noting that Boris Johnson’s career has come back from the dead more times than Christopher Lee’s Dracula – but when a Conservative prime minister is being roundly booed by crowds of patriotic flag-waving royalists (as was the case outside St Paul’s last Friday) and then scrapes through a vote of confidence on Monday, it’s not an unreasonable assumption to draw that while his days in office may still be numbered in triple figures, they are, perhaps, at last, numbered.
The question of what Boris Johnson might do after he leaves office is an unexpectedly thorny one. His usual trajectory is, after all, no longer available to him. Johnson is perhaps the all-time greatest exponent of one of the British ruling classes’ favourite sports: failing up. On every previous occasion in which he’s made a spectacular dog’s breakfast of whichever peachy job has been handed to him on a plate that time, he has sailed effortlessly and without obvious impediment into a better – or at least more high-profile – position (the same is true of his marriages, incidentally, but that’s not the point under discussion).
However, having finally scaled the slippery social and professional pole to its very apex – No 10 Downing Street – there is no “up” for Boris to fail towards. From here, as Yazz & The Plastic Population very much did not put it in 1988, the only way is down.
So, what to do? I very much doubt that the prime minister ever peruses these pages, but in any event here are some jobs Boris Johnson could do after leaving No 10…
LATE-NIGHT US TV TALK SHOW HOST
I’m not even entirely sure that this one’s a joke … James Corden has announced that he is soon to be leaving his late-night talk show on CBS, and given that he himself took over that job from the wily Scotsman Craig Ferguson, evidently the Americans like them some Brits on late-night TV. I’d be genuinely surprised if Boris’s “people” hadn’t been approached about this gig already.
And Boris would be in his element; he could give full rein to his affected eccentricity (Americans just think all Brits are like him) and all his jokes would be written by people far funnier than him and presented to him via autocue. What could possibly go wrong?
Well pretty much everything, of course, but I bet he’s tempted.
INTERNATIONAL ASSASSIN
We will leave aside, for a moment, the not entirely unfounded theory that Boris Johnson may indeed already be an intelligence asset ( just not for BRITISH intelligence) and ponder instead whether he could turn his talents to Her Majesty’s Secret Service as fulsomely as he has to the more public variety.
There is, of course, currently an unfilled vacancy in the movie spy world for the next 007, but I’m talking about the real thing here. Think about it; his whole “nobody could possibly be that chaotic and complacent” persona which has enabled him to bypass the good sense of the British electorate could serve him equally well as a spy.
And if it all goes wrong and he get “taken out” by the opposition, then at least he’ll go out doing what he does best: chasing ladies and lying through his teeth.
TOWN DRUNK
Having evidently presided over a bacchanalian culture during his tenure at Downing Street, perhaps the simplest and most logical next step for Mr Johnson would be an enthusiastic and wholehearted descent into booze.
He’s already nailed the “look” of the shambling small-town wino … I think he could do a lot worse than to while away his remaining years slumped on a bench next to a village square cenotaph, throwing empty special brew cans at buses, kicking stray dogs and telling anyone within earshot that “I used to be PM, you know”.
DRAUGHT EXCLUDER
More and more stories are emerging about the prime minister’s tendency to take naps during the working day, necessitating frantic excuse-making by his various civil servant underlings. What better, then, than a job he could perform lying down?
Just plonk Boris Johnson in front of any troublesomely draughty doorway or window and he will keep that cold air out for you, so that you may even have a cat in hell’s chance of paying your wallet-shredding energy bills.
POEM OF THE WEEK
For years we’ve marvelled at Stonehenge
And all its mysteries
We’ve pondered what its function was
Throughout the centuries
We questioned what its purpose is
And what it might have been
But now we know, it’s for presenting
Pictures of the Queen.
What better way to celebrate
A lifetime on the throne
Than to project Her Maj’s face
On Neolithic stone?
So drape the ring with bunting
Decked out for all to see
For nothing is too tacky
For the Platinum Jubilee
