Someday soon Julian Casablancas will stumble out in front of a Scottish audience and belt out the new, but old, anthem of our times: Is This It?
The Strokes are set to headline TRNSMT on Saturday.
That’s as long as they don’t fall victim to the mysterious illness that forces any band I listened to while drinking in a park aged 15 to cancel their Glasgow shows.
So what makes Is This It – the title track and opening song of The Strokes’ best album (there, I said it) – the piece of music which so perfectly captures the mood of the times?
Well it’s the question with as many meanings as answers when it comes to the continuing shambles that is Boris Johnson’s collapsing government.
As American man-turned-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and serial cabinet quitter Sajid Javid both quit cabinet on Tuesday, many pundits confidently predicted that would be it for Boris.
But Is This It? Is it ever it for Johnson?
This is a man so shrouded in scandal of his own making that it would be Hard To Explain why he should quit over someone else’s sexual misconduct.
Even if that person is aptly named Chris Pincher.
Still, why would this Prime Minister – a man who when left Alone, Together in the office with his mistress allegedly went full Bill Clinton and then tried to promote her to a £100k-a-year job – care about the misconduct of others?
Is This It for Boris Johnson? What do you think?
After Rishi and Sajid jumped off the perma-sunk-but-still-somehow-afloat ship, a procession of other Tories scrambled onto the lifeboats of resignation.
Commentators went to sleep asking Is This It in regards to the mass exodus. Then they awoke to find out the answer to that question was No.
Not yet anyway.
Today, after more than 40 resignations were submitted to the government, after 100 Tory MPs publicly called on Boris Johnson to quit and after his replacement Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi issued a letter telling him to go now, the Big Dog has finally accepted defeat.
Except, incredibly, he plans to stay on in as PM until October.
Which brings us to the biggest Is This It of them all – and the one that should matter most to those still aboard the Boris boat.
Is is this the last scandal?
For a Prime Minister widely regarded as the worst of The Modern Age and whose whole premiership seems to float marginally above Barely Legal – you would have to guess probably not.
So when Julian Casablancas stumbles to the stage, with the government’s cabinet Room On Fire and mumbles into the microphone “Is This It?”, the answer is sadly likely to be No.
For this Prime Minister The End Has No End.
And I’m just way too tired.
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