Is boris johnson finished? Not if he can weather this storm | thearticle

“It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness.” Boris Johnson may be seeking to convert us all to the

virtues of wind power, but right now most people would probably prefer their skies to be a little less unsettled. He is brave to invoke British naval heroes, posthumously embattled as they

are in the age of wokeness. But not everyone will appreciate another analogy in today’s speech to rally the Tories: “As Saudi Arabia is to oil, the UK is to wind.” Few will be blown away by

such windy rhetoric. Some may conclude that the Prime Minister is nothing but a blowhard. Hitting a few wrong notes on the wind-chimes is hardly his only unforced error. This week it has

emerged that the data for Covid-19 cases had been lost and the track and trace system had failed to contact some 16,000 potentially infectious people. Boris Johnson’s response was to tell

“everybody” that they should self-isolate. Really, Prime Minister? _Everybody_? The political weather is, if anything, even worse for the Tory leader. A poll by Lord Ashcroft puts him seven

points behind Sir Keir Starmer, who is seen as more “sensible” and “competent” by the public. By contrast, Johnson is seen as “incompetent” and “out of his depth”. The Conservatives, once

reliably ahead on competence, are now trailing Labour. At a time when even the most geriatric have been Zooming away at home for months, the Tories managed to bungle the technology for their

own virtual conference. Not surprisingly, some Tories are blaming their leader for dragging down the party. The _Times _columnist Claire Foges, once a speechwriter for David Cameron, thinks

Johnson should already be planning his own exit. She sees his reputation for competence as damaged beyond repair, rather as Sir John Major’s was after the economic fiasco of Black

Wednesday. Here on _TheArticle_, a number of regular writers have been inveighing against him ever since he entered Downing Street. As Alastair Campbell never tires of reminding us, it took

nearly three whole terms of office for the shine to come off his old boss Tony Blair; Boris Johnson has lost it after less than a year. So: is Boris Johnson a spent force? Is he not merely

out of breath, but permanently scarred by his near-death experience six months ago? At the weekend he told Andrew Marr that he is “fitter than several butcher’s dogs”, but his appearance and

demeanour belie that well-worn metaphor. Even if he is physically fit, post-traumatic stress following his ordeal may have taken the edge off his normally robust mental health. The

publication of a damaging biography by Tom Bower this week won’t have lifted his mood, either, even if its most damaging revelation concerns his father rather than himself. It was known that

his mother, Charlotte, suffered a serious psychiatric breakdown in 1974 and spent nine months at the Maudesley Hospital. It is news, however, that her then husband Stanley allegedly broke

her nose during this period. Boris Johnson has been accused of many things, but never of domestic violence; however, growing up in such circumstances leaves its mark. Being reminded of

unhappy times, especially now, must be disturbing for Alexander (as his family know him). Though his own discretion is impeccable, the nation now knows rather more about the Prime Minister

and his background than perhaps it would like. Not for the first time, Tom Bower’s investigative persistence has let daylight in on magic — even if diehard Remainers see it in this case as

black magic. After his sacking as a shadow minister by Michael Howard in 2004, after pulling out of the Tory leadership race in 2016, and again after resigning as Foreign Secretary two years

later, Johnson’s political career appeared to be over. His undeniable success as a journalist and his impressive record as Mayor of London mean that, unlike many politicians, he has

tempting and lucrative alternatives to politics. Like his former editor Charles Moore, he would be an adornment to the House of Lords. Yet the Johnsonian motto is, or ought to be: “Don’t let

the bastards get you down.” His irrepressible optimism, nervous energy and formidable ambition mean that, just as his opponents have written him off, Bojo invariably regains his mojo.

Within weeks of winning a landslide election and humiliating Labour, which had its worst result since 1935, he saw his plans derailed by a black swan event: the coronavirus pandemic. This

is, of course, a bigger setback than any he has surmounted before, but if there is one thing we know about Boris Johnson, it is that he thrives on adversity. One example of this was the

problem of London crime, which had increased under his predecessor as Mayor, Ken Livingstone. Having insisted on replacing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, he set about reducing crime

levels. The riots of 2011 presented a new and unprecedented challenge, but he was undeterred. Crime levels, by most measures, fell steadily during his mayoralty. They have risen in every

year since his successor Sadiq Khan took office. Many Londoners look back on the Boris years with nostalgia. It is easy to blame the Prime Minister of the day for every mistake that

governments make. That includes those that have been made in handling this pandemic, though not all of them were his fault. The public is fed up with our predicament and the buck stops at No

10. Nobody has any time for bumbling buffoonery now. But there is a silver lining in the Ashcroft poll. People still believe that the Tories are best at taking tough decisions; three

quarters don’t think Labour would have dealt with Covid-19 better. This suggests that disillusionment with the Government may be a transitional problem: more like Brexit than Black

Wednesday. The same might also apply to the Prime Minister, particularly one whose style is presidential rather than managerial: he sees his role as a chairman, not a chief executive. If the

country can get through the winter without grave loss of life; if Britain’s genuinely world-beating medical scientists (one of whom, Michael Houghton, shared the Nobel prize this week) can

continue to improve treatments for those in intensive care (death rates have fallen from 43 to 34 per cent since March); above all, if they can deliver a vaccine by next spring, then the

political salience of coronavirus will rapidly wane. By the middle of next year, after a reshuffle and a relaunch, Boris Johnson could be back to something like his old levels of popularity.

The Ashcroft poll shows that more than two thirds of the voters who put their faith in him and switched to the Conservatives at the last election are not tempted to go back to Labour — yet.

If he can get back to the “levelling up” platform on which he was elected, then the Prime Minister can survive the windchill factor and weather this storm.