The fall of boris johnson: how long can he dodge the bullets? | thearticle

Boris Johnson’s inevitable exit from Number 10 is starting to become one of the longest goodbyes in British political history… well, since Theresa May’s. It’s not going to matter how much

red meat is thrown, the big dog is soon to be put down. What’s different about Johnson’s fall is how quickly he has moved from unbridled triumph to unmitigated disaster. In May 2020,

according to YouGov, 66 per cent of the population thought Johnson was doing a good job, with only 26 per cent thinking he was doing badly. To put this into context, he had just locked the

nation up for two months and put the economy into deep freeze. Now, 73 per cent of the nation think the PM is doing a bad job, with only 22 per cent saying he is doing well. This sort of

nosedive in fortunes was last seen with the death of Icarus. It would be easy to blame this on the series of short-term scandals involving trestle tables, birthday cake and suitcases.

However, the collapse of Johnson’s premiership is far more down to long-term issues relating to the character and convictions of the Prime Minister himself. Johnson never quite managed to

unite the Conservative Party. Tory grass roots would walk across hot coals for him because of his charisma and English nationalist elements liked him for delivering Brexit. This meant he was

able to dominate the party by force of personality and electoral success. However, in removing the whip from 21 MPs who rebelled during the Brexit crisis of September 2019, he cast a long

shadow over his reign. It was forgotten when he was riding high in the polls, but worked against him when the going got tough. The Tory wet, centrist rump will never align themselves with

his destructive urges — impulses so effectively egged on when in partnership with Cummings. The Tories’ secret weapon was once loyalty, but this was never something Johnson could muster from

the parliamentary party. He was so spectacularly disloyal to Cameron and May when they needed support that he never had the right to call upon it himself. When the Right of the party

started to fall away from Johnson, there was no accusation of disloyalty. By the time David Davis cried “In the name of God go”, everyone almost shrugged, said he had a point… and then got

caught up in the next scandal. Johnson has been completely caught out by Northern Ireland and by Unionism in general. This will be, perhaps, his greatest political scar. Johnson never

bothered to understand the Irish problem and blithely signed up to internal borders within the United Kingdom. The EU outmanoeuvred Johnson and the English nationalists, with Northern

Ireland being detached from the rest of the UK as the price of Brexit. Nationalists in Ireland and Scotland are licking their lips as a result. The issue for them is not whether they should

strike, but when. The Irish problem has created a Scottish issue which everyone thought had been put to bed in 2014. This all seems to have happened without anyone in Number 10 really

noticing. It was all summed up by Jacob Rees Mogg blithely calling the Scottish Tory leader a “lightweight”. Unionism was a principle that Theresa May could never reconcile with Brexit and,

ultimately, the reason why she was kicked out of power. Johnson has barely noticed it as an issue, because he was given the keys to Number 10 by English nationalists while never really

understanding the destructive optics of the movement. This meant he has been tied up in knots by the likes of Cummings, while never really shooting the Farage fox. The resignation of Lord

Frost — remember him? — just over a month ago has largely been forgotten. However, I think this said much about Johnson’s lack of conviction as a politician. That was when the house of cards

started caving in. Frost went because he saw no evidence of the lightly regulated, low-tax, entrepreneurial economy which was promised as an outcome of Brexit. This is a vision of Britain

quite at odds with the little Englander utopia of Farage and his disciples. The friction between the two competing visions was in evidence when Johnson addressed the CBI on the 22nd November

last year. The Brexit agenda Frost thought he had signed up to should have had Johnson waxing lyrical about London becoming a Singapore Upon Thames, places like Hull as bastions of free

trade, a bonfire of regulation, hammering out free trade treaties which made EU deals look like charters for economic regression. Instead, a room full of the country’s top business

executives were treated to the Prime Minister banging on about Peppa Pig’s dysfunctional relationship with the BBC and apologising for getting lost in his “script”’. It was a proof of

Johnson’s lack of conviction and vision. Worse, it demonstrated that the liberal internationalist vision of Brexit was never achievable — that he was letting the opportunities created by

Brexit, if indeed they ever existed, slip though his fingers. Johnson lack of conviction and vision could be offset by a good dose of pragmatism. But his inability to run the Number 10

office put paid to this idea. Partygate isn’t a collection of one-off misdemeanours, but the result of a politician without conviction, pragmatism or moral authority. There’s no grand

project or ideological hinterland to aim for. This means people are motivated by personal ambition and hedonistic good times, led by a court jester. Great for the campaign trail but

devastating when governing. The final act of the Johnson saga could be imminent. But Boris never reads off the script and he’s quite likely to adlib into the council elections in May. When

the end comes it will probably see Johnson barricading himself into Number 10, refusing to see other ministers. What is clear is that the bullets which will end Johnson’s premiership have

already been fired. The only question left is: how much longer can Boris can dodge them? A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We

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