"It is hard to assess the change, and the damage, that Johnson is bringing to British politics in his first weeks in office. Among the Tories banished on Tuesday night was Ken Clarke, a seventy-nine-year-old former Chancellor and Home Secretary, who is known as the Father of the House, because he is the country’s longest-serving M.P. “Anybody who comes up to me and tells me I’m not a Conservative is plainly taking an odd political view,” he told the BBC. The following morning, Clarke took his customary position on the green benches of the House of Commons, a couple of places down from Antoinette Sandbach, another newly independent Tory. In between them sat Theresa May, smiling warmly. It was Johnson’s first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, the kind of impromptu parliamentary jousting at which he is supposed to excel. Instead, his answers were heavy and rehearsed. Johnson called the rebel legislation “the surrender bill” eight times and described Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, as “Caracas”—a play on Corbyn’s supposed sympathies for Venezuelan socialism—a joke that he has been making for two years.
He did not mention the purging of his colleagues or seek a unifying tone. When a Labour M.P., Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, who wears a turban, asked Johnson to use his first appearance at P.M.Q.s to apologize for having used racist language in the past, he refused. Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, implored Johnson to think again. “He is the Prime Minister of our country,” Swinson said. “His words carry weight, and he has to be more careful with what he says.” Johnson let it slide. When I was outside the House of Commons a couple of hours later, a Brexit supporter in a yellow hoodie was shouting “Snakes” at some pro-E.U. protesters across the road. Someone elsewas holding up a placard that read “Traitor Parliament.”
I’ve been covering Brexit for the past three years. This week has been particularly frantic and exciting—long days and the shallow, emptying feeling of adrenaline. Because it is British politics, there have been jokes, too. The informal coalition that blocked Johnson this week is nicknamed the Rebel Alliance and, on Wednesday evening, as another anti-Brexit protest got going in Parliament Square, the “Star Wars” theme was playing. But there has also been a sense of things—deep, quiet things that are part of British democracy—being broken that will not necessarily be put back together again."
www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/boris-johnsons-brexit-carnage
There's something else I can try, though.