I jinxed it. It was me. Someone asked me in the middle of the week what was going on. “Nothing”, I said, “pretty quiet.”
By Friday morning, former President Donald Trump was facing 100 years in jail. Seismic enough.
Then, on Friday night, our own blonde-haired disgraced premier threw the towel in. Incredible.
No one expected him to go quietly. But safe money was on him getting beaten at the next election, maybe making a speech on the way out and causing trouble.
But this is something different. They called Liz Truss “the human hand grenade” but Boris Johnson is a different type of ordnance.
In the coming days we’ll learn more about where he will wash up. There are lots of weird little splinter groups knocking around that would snap him up.
For now, it is just the fallout. The immediate effect on the Tory Party won’t be good. Various fault lines will open up. The Brexiteers have lost their hero and God only knows where they go next.
Even the most sympathetic people I spoke to were angered by the manner of his exit and the damage it will do.
But that’s what people voted for, isn’t it? Entertainment, drama, some supposed personality. He was never serious. Everyone serious will tell you he was never serious.
The timing of his exit was completely unexpected. The manner of it, not so much. Childish, damaging, completely undignified. Utterly predictable – just look across the Atlantic.
The ex-President faces countless counts of mishandling classified files. There is bombshell evidence and a looming court case.
Things have caught up with him but still he won’t have it. He says: “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States.” But it can. And the same for our guy.
A bizarre leaving statement finished with characteristic petulance: “It is very sad to be leaving Parliament – at least for now – but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias.”
Mr Trump and Mr Johnson operate from the same populist playbook – both turn on the mechanisms that get rid of them, both attack institutions that reject them.
Two chancers driven by rampant ego and a desire for power at whatever the cost.
People like Mr Johnson have a knack of falling on their feet, no matter the disgrace. Maybe politics again. For now, the obligatory speaking tours of course. Books maybe. An editorship, or a column.
TV, of course. He likes that, and a long time ago he was good at it.
I’m not sure now. I feel, at least for now, the country has had enough of him and will turn over.
