We get the government we vote for.
Consistently over the last 30 years, since Blair, we have voted for the shiney slick election campaign and demanded low taxes and unrealistic crap.
We wanted the short termism.
The thing that broke it for me with Blair was PPI and Iraq. But perhaps not for the obvious reasons. PPI was a fools game if you have any idea of maths. In order to avoud hefty national debt, it merely shifted it and passed control to outside the nhs/government. In the long term it was always going to cost more. I had a job in which i saw all the documentation and costs for a hospital in the NW and it was insane to see. It was known it would pass it on a generation so it would look good for Blair but fuck others after him. Iraq was always going to be a disaster and i said at the time, 'so what do we do, once we've defeated Sadam?'. Its the old adage about power vaccums being very bad. And it quickly became apparent that there was no plan for exit.
With Johnson, again its this desire to have a 'celebrity' personality in power that came first. Johnson is the least experienced MP to serve as PM in years. He barely served in Cabinet. Yes he had been London mayor but Boris Bikes and zipwires aren't exactly dealing with Vladimir Putin. He didn't impress a lot of people whilst in office and he had a reputation for delegation. Which might go ok, if he had looked beyond the likes of fawning Nadine, and the dire scrappings of the barrel of Brexit supporters. If Dominic Raab is the very cream of tory party talent, then you know theres an issue. Johnson promised the earth, when there was no plan. No plan campaigns aren't a bright idea, they leave vaccums. He both created and inherited the Leave campaign's pipe dream which was based on individual voter fantasies of what Brexit could be, which had no foundation in reality. It was known it would create supply chain issues and chronic costs and barriers for decades. Johnson got lucky because covid has really concealed a lot of this. There arent constant empty shelves around the rest of Europe that we have become used to.
It was always going to unravel at some point. I think covid probably bought him time - he was a useful idiot for the hard right of the party who now have their best opportunity in years to take over.
Its the combo of kicking the can and doing something which needs a comprehensive plan, without one thats the dire repeated mistake.
What you want to hope is you either get a centrist sensible (wont happen) as next leader or a pretty much unknown northern redwaller as leader. Otherwise the hard right will be off the lead.