Farewell, Zac Goldsmith – another rat leaves the sinking Tory party ship

You have to wonder why it has taken quite this long for Boris Johnson crony Lord (Zac) Goldsmith to notice that the Sunak administration is “uninterested” in the climate crisis. The timing is interesting.

Could it, you might further wonder, be anything to do with the recent parliamentary reports on the lies of Partygate, during which our former prime minister and Goldsmith himself were sharply criticised? Apparently, Rishi Sunak asked (or told) Goldsmith to apologise for his remarks, but obviously this was too much for Goldsmith’s over-inflated ego.

Might this sudden move also be the latest in Johnson’s informal shadow campaign to destabilise Rishi?

The seemingly staged resignation – there’s no policy announcement that has prompted it – fits well with the activities of the likes of Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg and that less celebrated Johnsonite, Nigel Adams, who has quit his Selby seat and forced a by-election, just as Johnson himself did in Uxbridge and Dorries is threatening to do in Bedfordshire. They are a dwindling band, these Boris fans, but they can be disruptive.

Loyal as he appears to be to Johnson, Goldsmith’s resignation is a bit of a cheek as far as his party and its beleaguered leader is concerned. Resigning on a point of principle – and tacking the climate crisis is a righteous cause – to do so just as the prime minister delivers a keynote speech on the NHS seems cynical and vindictive.

Goldsmith, after all, has just been slammed for contempt of parliament in the latest Privileges Committee report, for his part in a coordinated campaign of vilification and intimidation.

The report noted that Goldsmith had retweeted a tweet calling the inquiry a “witch hunt” and “kangaroo court”, and stated: “Exactly this. There was only ever going to be one outcome and the evidence was totally irrelevant to it.” It’s disgraceful, treacherous behaviour, and the government, despite his attempt to inflict maximum damage, is probably better off without him.

Were Goldsmith – a man of unimaginable wealth who seems to treat the environment as a rich man’s hobby – still MP for Richmond in south west London, then he’d probably have resigned from the Commons as well as the government by now, simply out of spite.

Except that he lost the seat to the Liberal Democrats some years ago, and he doesn’t seem inclined to renounce his peerage. Indeed, thanks to his contacts, Goldsmith was swiftly put in the Lords after he messed up his political career.

As for taking principled stance – and sincerely green as he may be, he hardly needs the salary – he can slough it off with the same sense of gilded entitlement that he displayed when he took up the role.

In my opinion, he should be ejected from the Lords for the role he played in Johnson’s Trumpian plot to undermine parliament, but you virtually have to murder someone to be stripped of that particular role.

Nonetheless, Goldsmith has been named and shamed in the Commons report, a special mark of shame, and placed in the same miserable bracket as Rees-Mogg and Dorries, Boris Johnson’s other attack dogs.

For whatever reason, Goldsmith too seems to be part of the Branch Johnsonian sect, and is remarkably ungrateful to anyone else. Perhaps, like others, he dreams of a return to power and influence when Johnson himself is restored. If so he may as well wait for the return of the real Messiah.

And so the last Johnson sidekick has departed the government. He jumped maybe before he was going to be pushed in some future reshuffle; and to distract from his condemnation by MPs on the Privileges Committee for his behaviour.

Like Johnson himself, however, there will be no “glad confident morning again” for Goldsmith, and as the famous poem by Browning goes: “Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more”.