Boris Johnson has never quite been able to decide whether he wants to be a great unifier or a great divider. Does he want to govern like he did at City Hall – the ‘generous-hearted, loving mayor of London’, as he once described himself – or is his best chance for re-election a return to the Brexit-style wars that landed him in Downing Street?
These days, there are plenty of signs that the government is in fight mode. The Prime Minister is risking a trade war with Brussels with threats to unilaterally rewrite the Northern Ireland Protocol, going to battle with civil servants over home-working and planning to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Johnson can see the pros to a public fight. In the summer of 2019, he used the prorogation of parliament to appeal to Leave voters ahead of an election. He’s already made a virtue of opposition to the Home Office’s Rwanda plan, hitting out at the ‘leftie lawyers’ trying to thwart the migration crackdown. There are some in government who go so far as to think the policy will be most popular with the public if it ends up being blocked by the courts or House of Lords.
Regardless, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff David Canzini, looking ahead to the next general election, has heralded the Rwanda plan as an ideal wedge issue. Aides have been ordered to find more policies in their departments that divide the opposition. It’s not just Keir Starmer who the Tories want to put in a tight spot. After the Liberal Democrats took twice as many council seats from the Tories as Labour in this month’s local elections, the Conservatives are looking for issues that divide Ed Davey’s base. ‘It’s about the people who could switch between us and the Lib Dems and what could make them waiver,’ says an adviser.
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