I don’t know about you, but it’s getting rather tiresome for me now. The Boris Johnson saga, that is.
Did he knowingly mislead parliament about rule-breaking lockdown parties in Downing Street? Very probably. Though perhaps not certainly, if one places any credence in his argument that nobody in authority definitively told him boozy post-work gatherings in Downing Street offices were prohibited. So on that front everything depends on what standard of proof of deliberate deceit the privileges committee decides to work to.
It was a case of cometh the hour, cometh the man. And the hour is now passed
If it throws the book at him, will he survive any recall petition or by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, or indeed hold the seat at the general election? I’m guessing yes. As someone with extended family living out that way, I’m always struck by the residual sense of affection felt for him by many voters there.
He may be a rogue, but he is their rogue and they will not take kindly to hatchet-faced Harman and her humourless heavies seeking to drum him out of politics. But could he rise again to the very pinnacle of Tory politics, either as prime minister or at least as leader of the opposition after the next election? Well, steady on.
As the person who first raised the prospect of the ‘Bobby Ewing scenario’ that nearly played out in the autumn after Liz Truss self-immolated, I am fully aware that Conservative politics has developed a fondness for rash moves.
But Johnson’s devoted band of parliamentary brothers and sisters, as well as his cult followers in the party’s activist base, are now looking faintly ridiculous. The prospect that Rishi Sunak will be brought down before the general election, possibly as a result of horrible local election results in May, has receded.
Even some devoted Borisites will admit privately that Sunak has had a decent few weeks that have seen him play a big role in the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon, secure new terms of trade for Northern Ireland that are an improvement on what went before and set about tackling the Channel boats phenomenon with a degree of grit they did not anticipate. It turns out that there may be method in his sanity.
The idea that Tory MPs will go back to the answer they first thought of by restoring Boris to lead the party into the next election after having lurched through Truss and Sunak is off the table. So what about his chances after that election, if Sunak has lost to Starmer and stands down?
On that score, the betting markets now already make Kemi Badenoch slight favourite ahead of Johnson and that chimes with the views of Tory grassroots members I talk to. They will be wanting a fresh start under someone who can make Conservatism mean something again. ‘The trouble with Boris,’ says one erstwhile fan, ‘is that everything always ends up being about him.’
Badenoch by contrast is seen as representing a coherent core of genuinely Conservative ideas and as having the willpower and charisma to sell them to the masses.
So whichever way the privileges committee report goes, and whichever way the general election goes, Johnson is a long shot ever to get back to Downing Street. His fate, more likely, is to be remembered as one of a quick flurry of three-year premiers: Brown 2007-10, May 2016-19, Johnson 2019-22.
Unlike the other two though, at least he won a parliamentary majority at a general election. And while Brown can argue that he played a central role in limiting the damage during the emergency phase of the global financial crisis, May achieved almost nothing. She had the proverbial ‘one job’ and didn’t manage to get it done.
Johnson in his prime achieved more than either of them, rescuing British democracy by straining every sinew and braving every establishment blow to ensure the people’s verdict from 2016 was finally implemented. His overall Covid record is not too shabby either, when the booze-ups are set aside and it is looked at in the round. And he saw the Russian threat to Ukraine with a brilliant clarity that eluded other European leaders for months.
But it was a case of cometh the hour, cometh the man. And the hour is now passed. The premiership is off the table, so if his ambition is still unquenched he will need to turn his attention to securing a better job than that.
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