Section:GDN 1J PaGe:3 Edition Date:190906 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 5/9/2019 18:42 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
Friday 6 September 2019 The Guardian •
3
Martin
Kettle
W
hen a football team loses its
fi rst four games of the season,
the manager’s job is on the
line. Could the same thing
happen with Boris Johnson’s
prime ministership? It seems
unlikely, so soon after the
ousting of Theresa May. And
yet politics, like football, is a results-driven game.
This week, Johnson lost four big votes in the
Commons. Last week he lost Scottish Tory leader Ruth
Davidson too. On Tuesday he threw 21 MPs out of his
party. Yesterday he even drove his own brother out as
well. The damage that Johnson is willing to infl ict on
politics appears limitless. But it may also extend to Tory
prospects in the general election he is so keen to hold.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Most Tories backed
Johnson because they thought he was a winner. This
was always a foolish triumph of hope over reality. They
wanted the Johnson style to magically allow the party to
spring the trap in which Theresa May had got caught over
Brexit. But the reality – as true under Johnson as it was
under May – is that the Conservative party is still divided,
still lacks a parliamentary majority, and is still pursuing
policies that are opposed by too many voters.
The referendum struck at the heart of the
parliamentary system in multiple ways. But it did
nothing to change Lyndon Johnson ’s iron law of politics:
that successful politicians must learn how to count. For
the fi rst few weeks the numbers did not matter. Now
parliament is back the numbers matter all the time.
Johnson has thrown the playbook aside. He acts as if
he has a majority even though he does not. He has tried
to pursue a radical Brexit agenda in a parliament that
has never supported it. He has put his fi ngers in his ears
rather than listen to a nation that is deeply divided. And
in doing so he seems absolutely content, as does Dominic
Cummings, to destroy the Conservative party as a broad-
based party of government.
Nothing illustrate s this better than the removal of the
whip from the 21 Tories who backed the eff ort to block a
no-deal Brexit. In a diff erent Tory party, these 21 could
plausibly have fi lled most cabinet seats. It is not just the
loss of talent that is destructive. It is also the contrast
with the actual cabinet of overpromoted fanatics,Boris Johnson
at his fi rst prime
minister’s
questions on
Wednesday
PHOTOGRAPH:
JESSICA TAYLOR/AFP/
GETTY IMAGESsnobs and halfwits that Johnson has assembled. The
real message of this week’s purge is that the liberal,
middling, pragmatic Tory party with which Johnson
once identifi ed is now regarded as dispensable. Such is
the pressure of the Brexit deadline and the Brexit party
that nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of the
project to remodel the Tories and win an election from
the English nationalist right.
This centrally directed radicalisation of the Tory
party lies behind everything. It is invoked to justify
the prioritisation of no deal, the refusal to negotiate
seriously about economic links with the EU, the utter
indiff erence to Scotland and Ireland, and the growing
election drumbeat. In this view of the party’s priorities,
the pushing out of Ken Clarke , Dominic Grieve and
Davidson might be a powerful, purifying message that
the fainthearts have been defeated.
All of this is predicated on the belief that about 35%
of the electorate crave this approach and that, with the
opposition divided, they will reward Johnson with a
working majority. Yet the evidence for this theory – on
which everything else Johnson is doing ultimately
rests – is very thin. The 318 Tory MPs elected under
Theresa May in 2017 are down to 289 now. Not all of
those 29 lost Tory seats will be reclaimed at the election.
Further Tory losses are likely in Scotland and to the
resurgent Liberal Democrats. The Brexit party, although
diminished, has not gone away and its votes could still
cost the Tories some marginals. And Labour cannot be
written off in a campaign, in spite of Jeremy Corbyn’s
poor current ratings.T
he issue of timing adds volatility.
Although he desperately wants to
frame the contest as a populist battle of
people versus parliament , any outcome
is likely to be politically sub optimal
for Johnson. An election before 31
October helps Nigel Farage because the
Brexit outcome remains uncertain. An
election afterwards depends on whether Johnson can
say he has delivered Brexit. But any deadline extension
like the one written into this week’s anti-no-deal bill is a
double whammy for Johnson, since he will have failed
to deliver and the future would also remain uncertain.
Logically, therefore, he has a huge motive to secure
a deal of the kind that Labour MP Ste phen Kinnock
succeeded in writing into the new bill. But logic went
out of the window long ago.
Whenever someone mentions Johnson’s absurd
self-identifi cation with Winston Churchill, recall what
Stanley Baldwin said about Churchill in the 1930s.
“One of these days I’ll make a few casual remarks
about Winston,” Baldwin told Thomas Jones. “I’ve got
it all ready. I’m going to say that when Winston was
born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle [with]
gifts – imagination, eloquence, industry, ability. And
then came a fairy who said: ‘No one person has a right
to so many gifts’ picked him up and gave him such a
shake and twist that, with all these gifts, he was denied
judgment and wisdom. And that is why while we delight
to listen to him in this house we do not take his advice.”
Judgment and wisdom are precisely the qualities
that Johnson lacks too. This week most MPs decided
they do not trust his advice either. They were absolutely
right. If and when an election fi nally comes, there is
no good reason to suppose that the voters will react as
diff erently as Johnson hopes.Johnson acts
like a winner.
Reality may
have other ideas
Opinion
Although he
desperately
wants to frame any
election as a people
versus parliament
battle, the timing
works against him
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