Boris Johnson: dead man walking

Gwynne Dyer

Opinion

‘Cad.’ ‘Scoundrel.’ ‘Rotter.’ The words that members of the British public used to describe Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the aftermath of last weekend’s failed attempt by parliamentary members of his own Conservative Party to remove him from office had a weirdly antique ring. Nobody in England really talks like that any more.

But then, Johnson is a weirdly antique figure. He could be a scoundrel in one of Charles Dickens’ novels, or a comically inept cad in a P.G. Wodehouse story, or at best the fictional schoolboy Billy Bunter in the boys’ weekly paper The Magnet (1908-1940). But behind the facade of a well-intentioned but baffled toff is just a con man.

Johnson’s last-but-one predecessor as PM, David Cameron, once called him a “greased piglet” who “manages to slip through other people’s hands where mere mortals fail”.

He is always getting into trouble, but somehow he always gets away with it. Until now.

He lies reflexively and everybody in the country knows it. He is transparently self-interested and his only notable accomplishment in almost three years in office has been to “get Brexit done’” Except that it isn’t “done”; it’s falling apart again.

His relationship with his own party has always been transactional. Most of his parliamentary colleagues dislike and distrust him, but they believed he could win elections for them because so many voters fell for his shambling charm. They knowingly lapped up his lies, and gave him a majority of 80 seats in the last election.

But the public has turned against Johnson: the Labour Party has been leading the Conservatives in the opinion polls by around 10 percent since the end of 2021, and so he is no longer fulfilling his end of the deal that made him prime minister.

If there was an election today, the Conservatives would lose by a landslide. They are famous for their ruthlessness in ditching leaders who cannot deliver, and true to form there was an attempt to dump Johnson last weekend. More than 15 percent of the party’s MPs demanded a secret ballot on his leadership, which automatically triggered Monday’s vote.

The final tally was 211 votes to keep Johnson; 148 votes to drop him. That is not “an extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result”, as Johnson claimed.

It is a defeat from which there is no coming back.

One reason is that a clear majority of the backbenchers voted to change leaders.

Now they know their own numbers, they will be more confident and persistent, knowing they just have to wait for some of the rats (or rather, ministers, junior ministers and parliamentary private secretaries) to desert the sinking ship.

The other reason is that the British public (including Conservative voters) has finally made up its mind about Johnson.

The decisive factor was ‘Partygate’: the endless succession of boozy parties that took place in Johnson’s house and offices at the height of the Covid lockdowns in Britain.

There was a months-long drip-feed of leaks and fines, giving everyone ample time to contemplate the gulf in behaviour between ordinary people who obeyed the rules even to the extent of not visiting family members dying in hospitals, and privileged political operators who thought they were above the rules.

It will prove fatal for Johnson’s prime ministership.

From now on, he will face the same sort of guerrilla war that he used to bring down his predecessor — Theresa May.

The rebels within his own party will combine with the opposition parties to thwart any deliberately provocative legislation that he tries to pass.

The Labour Party is praying that Johnson stays in office until the next scheduled election in 2024, or chooses to call an early election as a last-ditch gamble: that would virtually guarantee a Labour victory.

However, the Conservatives are still not so befuddled as to let that happen. Johnson will be gone within the year.