Boris Johnson's government has collapsed at last. For months Britain's prime minister wriggled out of one scandal after another. Now, he has accepted that his premiership is over. Mr Johnson has asked to stay until the autumn, but he should go immediately.
The party will hope that its agony is now drawing to a close. But that depends on it taking the right lessons from Mr Johnson's failure. One is about character in politics. Mr Johnson lacked the moral fibre to take hard decisions for the national good if that threatened his own popularity. And he revelled in trampling rules and conventions.
Conservatives have been quick to blame everything on Mr Johnson's character. But his going will be cathartic only if they also acknowledge a second, less comfortable truth. He was an answer to the contradictions in his party. Many of today's Tory MPs belong to the low-tax, more libertarian and free-market tradition, but others, many from northern constituencies, cleave to a new big-spending, interventionist and protectionist wing.
Mr Johnson was able to lash these factions together because he never felt the need to resolve their contradictions. Instead he was for both protectionism and free-trade agreements; he planned huge government spending but promised sweeping tax cuts.
Britain is in a dangerous state. The country is poorer than it imagines.Its current-account deficit has ballooned, sterling has tumbled and debt-interest costs are rising. If the next government insists on raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, it could stumble into a crisis. With Mr Johnson's departure, politics must once more become anchored to reality.
沪公安联网 31011502019103