Boris Johnson resigns himself to the trickle of defections from his team of faithful in the Government

In Boris Johnson's first months in Downing Street, a renowned British constitutional historian warned the correspondent: “Don't make the mistake of comparing him to Donald Trump.

He is more like Ronald Reagan.

He spreads a positive enthusiasm, and he is able to surround himself with a good team that he delegates to”, he said.

That was for a time the image of the mayor of London, from 2008 to 2016. An eccentric, libertarian politician, who traveled by bicycle around the city and whose ideological eclecticism misled admirers and rivals.

And that he managed to bring together a group of faithful in his team, among whom Munira Mirza (Oldham, United Kingdom, 43 years old) stood out.

Daughter of Pakistani immigrants, of humble origins and clear ideas.

She has a degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford, and in Sociology from the University of Kent.

He flirted in his youth in Marxist organizations, to end up in the environment of the conservative think tanks that the Tory government teams make use of

Tory

Tories

in plural) is the term used for members of the Conservative Party from the UK

to get advisers. His defiance against the "culture wars" launched by the British left; his vindication of individualism beyond the stereotype of race; your ability to generate original ideas; and, above all, his nose "to detect nonsense" - as his boss has said over the years - seduced Johnson. “As a young man, I considered myself a left-wing person. But I realized very soon, after I was 20 years old, that if the left was against something, it was freedom of expression; that there was in her an intolerance towards different ideas or opinions”, Mirza affirmed in 2018, in a debate that confronted the journalist and writer Afua Hirsch at Mansfield College, Oxford.

The announcement, late this Thursday, that the Director of Political Strategy for Downing Street – it was the position that Mirza had held for two years – was abandoning the ship has been a brutal blow for Johnson in already very low hours.

The reasons given in her resignation letter had a devastating trace of disappointment at the drift of his boss and friend.

Hours earlier, he had asked her to apologize for the slander launched against the opposition leader, Labor Keir Starmer.

Johnson had accused him in the House of Commons - knowing that it was not true - of having avoided the investigation against pedophile Jimmy Savile when he was Attorney General of the State.

The case of the BBC music program presenter, who for years sexually abused more than five hundred minors and women,

left a deep imprint of pain on British citizenship.

Johnson's use of such a low blow has outraged numerous Conservative MPs, and has even led his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, to publicly discredit him: "I wouldn't have said such a thing, and I'm glad the Prime Minister has clarified it, "said Sunak on Thursday.

That supposed clarification was far from an apology, as Mirza bitterly reproached Johnson: “You are a much better man than many of your detractors will ever understand, and that is why it is so desperately sad that you have lowered yourself to make such an insulting accusation against the leader of the opposition”, said the adviser in her farewell letter.

Johnson's use of such a low blow has outraged numerous Conservative MPs, and has even led his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, to publicly discredit him: "I wouldn't have said such a thing, and I'm glad the Prime Minister has clarified it, "said Sunak on Thursday.

That supposed clarification was far from an apology, as Mirza bitterly reproached Johnson: “You are a much better man than many of your detractors will ever understand, and that is why it is so desperately sad that you have lowered yourself to make such an insulting accusation against the leader of the opposition”, said the adviser in her farewell letter.

Johnson's use of such a low blow has outraged numerous Conservative MPs, and has even led his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, to publicly discredit him: "I wouldn't have said such a thing, and I'm glad the Prime Minister has clarified it, "said Sunak on Thursday.

That supposed clarification was far from an apology, as Mirza bitterly reproached Johnson: “You are a much better man than many of your detractors will ever understand, and that is why it is so desperately sad that you have lowered yourself to make such an insulting accusation against the leader of the opposition”, said the adviser in her farewell letter.

and I am glad that the prime minister has clarified it, ”said Sunak on Thursday.

That supposed clarification was far from an apology, as Mirza bitterly reproached Johnson: “You are a much better man than many of your detractors will ever understand, and that is why it is so desperately sad that you have lowered yourself to make such an insulting accusation against the leader of the opposition”, said the adviser in her farewell letter.

It is not necessary to place Mirza, or even the reasons for his departure, on an altar to understand that the decision is a mortal wound for Johnson. It is possible that you have already sensed the sinking of the ship, and that you seek refuge in more stable boats. She is close friends with Sunak, whom everyone sees as Johnson's rival and potential successor. Her husband, Dougie Smith – who still holds the position of adviser at Downing Street – was the one who introduced the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the world of politics, then a fund manager of Indian family origin who had grown rich in California.

Mirza's decision precipitated a string of departures from Downing Street.

Although many of them were political deaths foretold, because they were part of Johnson's clean-up plans to save face in the banned-party scandal, the fact that they were accelerated at the same time that the long-time ally of the prime minister turned the movement more into a mass desertion than a purge.

Marty Reynolds, Johnson's parliamentary private secretary who invited more than 100 people by email to “bring your own alcohol” to the garden party, outside;

Jack Doyle, the Director of Communications unable to manage the messages in response to the

out of; Dan Rosenfield, the chief of staff, outside. And with them, for now, Elena Narozanski, Downing Street adviser on Equality Policy. It does not seem that it will be the only one, because all that battalion of advisers and floating high officials tend to change course when they smell weakness.

"It is a sign without a margin of doubt that the bunker is sinking and that this prime minister's days are numbered," Dominic Cummings, the former Johnson star adviser who has turned revenge against the prime minister, wrote on his Twitter account. Minister who kicked him out of Downing Street with intemperate boxes for the reason of his life. “Very soon we will see a mad rout, and members of the government banging their heads and wondering why they didn't act sooner. Now is your chance, look for even a flicker of moral courage and push whoever is falling completely, Cummings claimed.

The trickle of conservative deputies who have publicly announced their intention to present the "letter of withdrawal of confidence" that would activate the internal censure motion against Johnson now rises to 13. The last to do so, this Friday, was the parliamentarian Aaron Bell: "The breach of trust represented by all the events in Downing Street [the banned parties] and the way this crisis has been handled have made his [Johnson's] position untenable," Bell said.

54 letters are needed to force a vote on the future of the prime minister, but it is very relevant that the trickle of announcements continues in a week in which Johnson intended to stop the bleeding.

The team that surrounds the prime minister deserts without Downing Street having been able to announce new replacements, beyond relocating the staff that still resists to the vacant posts.

Johnson has used the Rafiki monkey from the movie

as confirmed by his spokesman

to try to convey encouragement this Friday to that staff, and convince him that "there are changes that are good."

In desperate times, the prime minister has preferred to turn to the Disney factory than to the

, as he used to do.

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