Mark Dolan: Partygate or no partygate, the party is over for Boris

Sorry folks, I'm done. Boris has to go. Not withstanding the investigation into partygate, which is taking longer to complete than the Sistine chapel, damaging revelations reported in today's Mail on Sunday suggest that this supposedly freedom-loving prime minister was actually planning to cancel Christmas and fold to the sage scientists after all.

Apparently a three-pronged attack by former Brexit Minister David Frost, Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg forced the Prime Minister to ignore demands by his scientific advisers, for families to be banned from mixing over the festive period.

I just don't want a prime minister that folds any more. Or gets bounced into or out of things. I want a Prime Minister that will stand up and be counted. So this is a prime minister who arguably cannot take credit for lighter restrictions over Christmas, which proved to be the right decision, and which has made England the envy of the world.

If it was Rishi Sunak that was decisive here, then I think it's he that should be in charge of the country, not Boris. It’s like Cyrano De Bergerac – give me the one who’s writing the words, not the one who’s saying them out loud.

We know Sunak has been pushing back on restrictions since the start, because he's the Chancellor and knows the economic damage. He’s seen the books and they don’t make for good reading.

The financially incontinent Prime Minister couldn’t run a piggy bank, let alone the fifth biggest economy in the world. I've credited Boris Johnson with saving Christmas, freedom day on the 19th of July and the end of Plan B in England on Thursday. But I'm starting to feel miss-sold. I’m done. I just want a proper prime minister now. Someone sensible, calm, coherent, organised and dare I say, it a bit boring.

Whatever revelations emerge from the partygate investigation, I’m not sure it matters at this stage. The damage is done. The stories of booze-fuelled Zoom quizzes, surprise birthdays, garden parties and suitcases of red wine being wheeled into number 10, should be enough to tell you this guy is not fit for purpose.

10 Downing Street is a workplace. It’s massive office and the centre of government. I don't think there should be any booze in there whatsoever. My production team on this show work incredibly hard and late at night - they don't touch a drop. And there's no booze in the works fridge. I wouldn't have it. My brilliant team would not be drinking, not on my watch. Even afterwards, especially if we've got another big show tomorrow. And every show I do, is a big one. That’s my commitment to you. So those are my standards, where are Boris's?

In further revelations in the Mail security chiefs won’t let Boris take sensitive documents to his flat because it’s like a frat house, with people visiting and documents lying around.

It’s not good enough. Number 10 is the centre of government not a bloody student halls of residence or a twenty-something flatshare. The guy’s got his talents but he has proved himself to be irredeemably weak. He’s been in the pocket of Whitty and Vallance since day one, and he couldn’t even sack Dominic Cummings for Barnard Castle or Matt Hancock for his CCTV sex movie. Do you think that these chancers would have lasted five minutes in a Margaret Thatcher cabinet?

Do me a favour.

She was the iron lady. He’s just a plank. I do salute him for getting Brexit done and keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of number 10, which would've been an economic and national security disaster for the country. So his place in history is secured. And we would have had more lockdowns and ruinous measures if Sir Keir Starmer had been in charge. He called Freedom Day reckless don’t forget. And asked the PM for the evidence justifying ending Plan B.

But Boris is chaotic, erratic and his so-called diet after his brush with Covid death appears to be going about as well as many of his other ambitions, like levelling up and tackling bonkers extreme political correctness.

Then there’s the crazily expensive and scientifically debatable green agenda that no one voted for. And he locked us down too often and for far too long. What's the point in having liberal principles, if you don't lead by them? And what bothers me about Boris is his lust for self preservation, means a potential increase in spending the country can’t afford, buying off backbenchers and with a few million here and a few million there, to save his own skin.

I don’t trust Boris with money, this is a guy who can’t even afford to decorate his own flat. So I am disappointed by Boris. And I feel deceived and let down. And I think I’m not the only one. Britain feels like the other woman in Boris's life, desperately trying to believe the promises, ignoring the disappointments and hoping upon hope, that one day he will change.

After two years in power, it's now my view he never will. The best confidence tricksters are the ones who get you to trick yourself. We've waited too long for Bojo to get his Mojo. Bojo's Mojo has been a no-show. But the show must go on.

The two or three years between now and the next election are, in my view, the most important for this country since the end of the second world war. Emerging from the pandemic and the biggest recession in 300 years, a spiralling NHS waiting list, a colossal national debt, a mental health Tsunami and a generation of damaged kids, we need a steady hand at the tiller and a grown-up in the room.

And I declare that that grown-up is Rishi Sunak.

Extremely intelligent, famously hard working, and a great communicator, he would be our first prime minister from an Asian background.

Born in Southampton to British Indian parents who had emigrated from East Africa, his dad was a GP and his mum was a chemist. Great vocations, but hardly landed aristocracy. Sunak himself went on to make his fortune in the city.

That financial background, plus his impressive stewardship at the Treasury, including successful policies like furlough which saved millions of jobs and thousands of businesses, equips him well for the job.

The biggest challenge for our next prime minister is a simple one – it's the economy stupid. Tackling the national debt, keeping taxes low, stimulating growth, dealing with inflation, driving the huge economic potential of Brexit, saving the high street and tacking the cost of living crisis, which goes from bad to worse.

Party gate or no party gate, the party is over for Boris. It's time gentlemen please, the fat lady has sung and the PM’s goose is cooked. He’s stuffed himself if I’m honest. Dishy Rishi let's get busy. If this famously hard-working teetotaller gets the top job, I'll drink to that. Cup of tea obviously.