Boris The Downer

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his hair survived a "no confidence" vote held by the Conservative Party in Parliament yesterday, getting 31 votes more than the 180 Conservative votes he needed to stay in office. 

Johnson may have avoided being forced out of office, but with so many Conservative Members of Parliament having voted against him, experts expect Johnson's remaining days at No. 10 Downing Street to be numbered.  Possibly a smaller number than there are days left in the year.

Johnson's exit can't come soon enough for Labour and Liberal Democrat activists who accuse the prime minister of what Trump tried to do in the United States - undermine democracy.  Johnson's attempts to subvert the democratic process in Britain have been numerous. He suspended Parliament to push through a Brexit day that would escape closer scrutiny back in 2019, but had to back down after the United Kingdom's highest court ruled it unlawful. He's also attempted to pack parliamentary committees - including the Liaison Committee, the only committee in Parliament that can summon and question the prime minister - with cronies who will do his bidding.  

In three short years, Johnson, already in trouble with the British public for flouting of his own COVID restrictions by having office parties, has exhausted the patience of many Britons in many ways, from introducing a bill to strip Britons of dual nationalities (mostly British-born children of immigrants) of their British citizenship to pushing for - yes - voter identification legislation.  "What ties all these moves together," Benjamin Ward wrote in Human Rights Watch in 2020, "is a desire by the government to be free to act no matter the cost to the rights of ordinary people."

Now you know why the Brits have kept the monarchy.

It's nice to think that British democracy will recover once Johnson is gone, but, just as Trump left his own ideology to prosper on its own, Johnson may have set up a way for a future Tory leader to make the United Kingdom - the most stable country in the world - a democracy in name only.