22 Saturday June 11 2022 | the times
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lying in tatters, with few obvious ways
to put it all back together. And for
what? A few parties in Downing
Street that broke the lockdown rules
that he himself introduced, albeit so
reluctantly that his delay cost the
lives of more Britons than it ever
should, but for which he never paid a
political price. The entire episode is so
pathetic. The entire episode is so
fitting.T
he irony is that we now
seem to be watching the
tragic chronicle of Johnson’s
political death foretold —
not just by his fiercest
critics, who long ago warned it
would end this way, but by
the prime minister himself.
Alone among the
politicians I have covered,
Johnson has seemed
openly to flash his
own flaws at the
public, almost
daring them to
join him on his
journey of self-
destruction. In his
novel, Seventy
Two Virgins,
Johnson’s main
character — essentially
a caricature of himself—
even speculates about
politicians wanting toA populist who isn’t popular,
Johnson is in a deadly bind
B
oris Johnson lives to fight
another day. Britain,
meanwhile, lives to endure
another day in his shadow, a
bit part in the soap opera of
his life, watching on as the drama is
set on an endless doom loop from
comic farce to tragedy.
After months of turmoil overJohnson’s behaviour in office, in
which he became the first sitting
British prime minister to be fined for
breaking the law, enough of his fellow
Conservative members of parliament
finally plucked up the courage to
trigger a formal vote of confidence in
his leadership of the party. Had he
lost, even by a single vote, the processto replace him as party leader — and
prime minister — would have begun
immediately, culminating in a new
appointment within weeks, the sixth
British leader in the space of just
15 years, an astonishing period of
political instability and failure.
Yet, once again, this master of
evasion somehow managed to escape,
winning 211 votes to 148 to stay in
post.
This “victory”, however, marks just
the beginning of Johnson’s fight for
survival. Each of his Tory
predecessors who were challenged to
a vote of confidence lost power soon
after — many spectacularly. Even
though Margaret Thatcher, John
Major and Theresa May prevailed,
the very fact of being challenged
marked the beginning of the end.
The fundamental problem for
Johnson is that he is now a populist
who is no longer popular. This is no
repeat of the Donald Trump
impeachment drama, where the US
president might have been unpopular
nationally but was protected by a wall
of support from his base. In Britain,
Johnson is opposed both in the
country at large and among what
should be the Tory grassroots.
Appalled by revelations of drunken
parties in 10 Downing Street during
the Covid lockdowns, the country
seems to have concluded that it will
not vote for him again. And so long as
the country feels this way, he is toast
— or, if he isn’t, then the
Conservative Party most certainly is.
For any prime minister, this is a
deadly bind. It is especially so for
Johnson, who was elevated to power
not because Conservative
parliamentarians ever particularly
liked or respected him, let alone
backed his political philosophy — if
such a thing exists — but because
they concluded that he was their only
hope of saving the party from
electoral oblivion.
Johnson was the instrument
necessary to “get Brexit done,” a
phrase he repeated ad nauseam
during the 2019 election campaign.
Then, his character faults were less
important than his political potential.
Britain had voted to leave the
European Union, but its political class
had proved unable to fulfil this
instruction, and so Johnson was given
the power to enact the revolution the
public demanded, overhauling the
Conservative Party and the country
in the process, and winning the
biggest Tory majority in 30 years.
At a stroke, Johnson became the
most radical and consequential prime
minister since Thatcher and, it
seemed, was destined to remain in
office for as long.
In No 10 soon
after his
election
victory was
confirmed,
one of his aides
told me that
Johnson’s was a ten-
year project—at least.
That was less than three
years ago, but regardless of
his survival after the vote,
he seems perilously close
to having thrown it all
away. He now faces a
monumental challenge
to turn things around,
his authority, popularity
and political purposeThe PM’s travails spell
trouble for his party
and the country too,
writes Tom McTague
Boris and Carrie Johnson at the jubilee