Jay Kuten: Political wrecks of Brexit

MEN WHO WOULD BE KING: Brexit campaigners Boris Johnson (left) and Michael Gove. PHOTO/AP

Who knew that the modern British public had a taste for blood sports beyond rugby and footie? I thought the rise of Leicester to the top of the table was about as much excitement as we were likely to have this year. Then along came the Brexit referendum and the follow-up to the unlikely victory of the Leave crowd. Like Lazarus, risen, British politics is suddenly taking on the excitement of the stuff Shakespeare wrote about.

As an American, let me confess to a bit of schadenfreude elicited by the lo-jinks of the current British political imbroglio. I've had to endure the past year's political struggles, which, after an agony of prolonged labour on the part of both US political parties, brought forth for each party the equivalent of a mouse: two erstwhile nominees each disliked by a majority of the electorate. And I'm steeling myself for a campaign predicted to be ugly.

In that context the malodorous doings in the UK have at least the benefit of a change of air, even if it's not exactly good air.

PM David Cameron may be credited with starting the ball rolling with intention of using the threat of a referendum as a means of exerting pressure on the EU to secure better terms for the UK, a negotiation which fizzled. With the referendum imminent, cabinet ministers were given freedom to campaign on either side of the argument in a rare exception to Cabinet Collective Responsibility. Out came Minister Boris Johnson and sidekick Minister Michael Gove, heralds of the Leave EU campaign. The Brexit loss meant Cameron had to resign or else preside over the divorce he campaigned against. If the respective campaigns on the issue hadn't been outrageous enough, then is when things got really "interesting" - in the Chinese sense.

Johnson, widely touted as the next likely Prime Minister, was about to do a victory lap when his supposed buddy, Michael Gove, suddenly found himself, as a "matter of principle" declaring Boris unfit for the prime minister-ship. And put himself forward instead. Boris, not exactly burdened with support, had to step down.

While Johnson, realising he had been betrayed, did not cry out "Et tu Michael!" His surrogates called Gove "a Machiavellian psychopath" and claimed he had set up his fellow Leave campaigner for the fall. Called a "political serial killer", Gove was also compared with the conniving Frank Underwood in the TV series House of Cards. No need to look offshore. The British progenitor, with Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart, is chilling enough.

Neither Johnson nor Gove have exactly unblemished records. Both men started their careers as journalists. Boris Johnson, in particular, has been known for not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

It's not entirely clear just how much Boris Johnson wanted to be Prime Minister. He spent much of his journalistic and political career as Falstaff, a comic figure with a taste for the high life but the appetites of the low. Marriages, mistresses, and extra-marital progeny followed in his wake as he pushed his way upward politically. It's just unlikely as drama that Johnson could change enough to become Prince Hal. Like his American counterpart, even his louche hair purposefully mussed, would be an easy target of ridicule.

As London's mayor for two terms, he was better known for his language - Nick Clegg, former deputy prime minister, called Johnson "Donald Trump with a thesaurus" - than for his management skills. Like many another populist, he is skilled at the squirmy charm it takes to win a campaign, less interested in the control of detail required to govern.

In Johnson's departure from the struggle for PM, the UK missed a bullet. Gove's evident duplicity won't win him the job either. Enter stage right, Theresa May, Home Secretary, whom many see as Thatcher Redux. She is described as more conservative, more anti-immigrant, more isolationist than either Johnson or Gove. Think Game of Thrones.

It never rains but it pours.