10 Leaders The Economist January 22nd 2022
I
n early september Boris Johnson setouthisvisionforbeat
ing Margaret Thatcher’s 11year record, and so to become the
longestserving British prime minister of modern times. Like a
bumptious schoolboy, he got far ahead of himself. In the coming
days or weeks, he may be kicked out of office by his own mps.
More likely, he will cling on in 10 Downing Street under the per
manent threat of eviction (see Britain section). Either way, he no
longer controls the fate of his own premiership.
The immediate cause of Mr Johnson’s diminishment is, on
the face of it, laughably puerile. Downing Street indulged in rou
tine latenight boozeups while the rest of the country was un
der strict lockdown. The prime minister’s disingenuous at
tempts to wriggle out of being blamed did him no good—indeed,
they served only to reveal his and his wife’s own carousing.
Tory mps will measure the lapse in judgment of a serial trans
gressor against an 87seat working majority that Mr Johnson
conjured out of nothing, his success in bringing about Brexit, a
worldclass vaccine programme and a gift for making the politi
cal weather. Donald Trump still dominates the Republican Party,
despite his part in the attack on Congress a year ago. Are sausage
rolls and sauvignon blanc really a sacking offence?
For Britain’s sake, they should be. One reason is that the re
lentless partying is evidence of Mr Johnson’s sense of entitle
ment, which holds that there is one rule for him
and his people and another for everyone else.
Double standards at the top tend to corrupt the
whole of public life. More important, it raises
two other of Mr Johnson’s attributes that plague
postBrexit Britain. They are traits the country
needs to overcome if it is to thrive.
The first is Mr Johnson’s childish lack of se
riousness about the business of government.
Downing Street’s fightback this week, supposedly under the title
“Operation Red Meat”, launched a fusillade of Torypleasing
pledges to abolish the bbclicence fee and stop asylumseekers
from reaching Britain across the English Channel. The govern
ment says it will get the Royal Navy to police the seas and send
applicants away, reportedly to be processed in Ghana or Rwanda.
None of that bluster survived the briefest encounter with reality.
This lack of seriousness has infected the government. This
week the Tories took credit for the fact that Britain has the fastest
annual growth rate in the g7 and that output regained its pre
pandemic level in November, ahead of forecasts. But they have
not grappled with Brexit’s probable longterm hit to productivi
ty, of about 4%. Over five years, Britain’s growth rate has been
poor. Inflation, which reached 5.4% in the 12 months to Decem
ber, a 30year high, means real average weekly pay is less than in2007. Business investment is lower than before the referendum.
Mr Johnson’s government has unveiled plenty of big econ
omyboosting ideas, including levelling up prosperity across
Britain, tearing down planning restrictions and making Britain a
science superpower. But the government is more interested in
fanfare than fulfilment. The big ideas are either still slogans or
have been quietly abandoned. At the same time, the Tories have
pressed ahead with crowdpleasing, illiberal bills that trample
civillibertiesandrestrictthe rights of new citizens. It is a mark
of Mr Johnson’s unseriousness that he tosses aside his vaunted
classical liberal beliefs as carelessly as an empty bottle.
You can trace this trivialisation of the business of governing
right back to the referendum. To get Brexit done, Mr Johnson
agreed on a customs border in the Irish Sea and then proceeded
to pretend he hadn’t. He argued that Britain would escape the
regulatory straitjacket of the European Union, but he has avoid
ed doing much deregulating—which, however swashbuckling it
sounds in a headline, tends in real life to be unpopular. To prosp
er, Britain needs decent relations with the eu, its closest neigh
bour and biggest trading partner. But Mr Johnson relishes pick
ing fights instead, because he likes to play to the gallery.
Treating voters as dopes to be bought off with bombast is a
feature of the demagoguery that Mr Johnson rode to power. It is
an example of the contempt with which populist leaders treat
the people they govern. So, alas, is the other trait that has infect
ed postBrexit Britain: lying in politics.
Mr Johnson has crumbled because he repeatedly failed to tell
the truth to Parliament and the nation about Downing Street’s
bacchanals. First he declared that his staff did not hold parties.
When that was disproved, he denied knowing about them.
When it emerged that he had been at one, he said he had not real
ised they counted as parties. And when it was
claimed that he had been warned they did, he
seemed to suggest that he misunderstood the
rules his own government had drafted. It is a
pattern that stretches back to his time as a jour
nalist, when he lied to his editors; to when he
was an editor, when he lied to his proprietor;
and to when he was a shadow minister, when he
lied to his party’s leader.
The untruths go beyond one selfabsorbed man. Where pop
ulism thrives, it subordinates the facts to tribalism. That may be
why, according to polling by Opinium released on January 17th,
almost half of Conservative Party members still believe that Mr
Johnson’s account of Number 10’s revels is true, compared with
just 13% of all voters in a poll published a few days earlier. Again,
you can trace the pattern to Brexit, when campaigners who knew
better said that Turkey was about to join the eu, that the euhad
more to lose from a breakdown in trade than Britain did and that
leaving would free up £350m ($480m) a week to spend on the
National Health Service. It is no accident that, after the vote, Re
mainers’ advice was rejected just because of who they were.
Democratic politics has always been about pleasing the
crowd, as well as plugging away at policies. Brexiteers were right
to sense that a run of technocratic British governments had lost
touch with voters. But the excesses of Partygate have shown that
the postBrexit Tory party has lost touch with reality.
It is a strength of the parliamentary system that mps can
bring about a rapid change of direction. If the Conservative Party
is to find its way, it will need a new leader. If reforms are to take
root, they will need detailed planning and sustained applica
tion. If Britain is to make the most of the opportunities present
ed by Brexit, it needs to face up to the difficult choices ahead.nAnd what it says about the country he governsThe parable of Boris Johnson
British politics