Johnson, the supreme and brazen survivor, finally succumbs

The whole thing is unbelievable. As I write these words, he is still holed up in Downing Street. He is like some illegal settler in the Sinai desert, lashing himself to the radiator, or like David Brent haunting The Office in that excruciating episode when he refuses to acknowledge that he has been sacked. Isn’t there someone – the Queen’s Private Secretary, the nice policeman on the door of No 10 – whose job it is to tell him that the game is up?

Boris Johnson announces his resignation outside No 10 Downing St on Thursday.Credit: Getty

Don’t worry dear reader, I have not lost my marbles. Those are not my words but those of Boris Johnson, written for The Daily Telegraph on May 10, 2010, when he was the shambolic yet still likeable mayor of London and a Labour PM, Gordon Brown, was clinging to power.

The column, unearthed and shared widely in the 18 excruciating hours between Johnson’s bullish and delusional appearance before Westminster’s Liaison Committee and his subdued “them’s the breaks” resignation speech outside No 10 exemplifies the fever dream nature of British politics this week.

Could it really be that only 30 months have passed since Boris Johnson led the Conservative Party to a landslide majority of 80 seats and 43.6 per cent of the popular vote – the highest for any party since 1979?

Former UK prime minister David Cameron, left, with then London Mayor Boris Johnson in 2005.Credit: Getty

By any reckoning, the first term of a Johnson government should have been a honeymoon defined by constructive policy reform led by a PM blessed with a thumping electoral mandate, a grateful and financially generous Conservative party, and an even more indebted and appreciative parliamentary backbench. (It should also have been a dream period for him personally as he emerged from a second marriage breakup, soon to become a father again with Carrie Symonds, a savvy, young former Tory spin doctor.)

The Tories had been in the doldrums since 2017 after failing to win a majority meant a prolonged period of parliamentary deadlock over leaving the European Union and reliance on the support of the mercurial Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). It was another bruising period for the Tories in which David Cameron chose to fall on his sword after failing to win the Remain referendum and prime minister Theresa May was forced to resign to make way for Johnson who promptly called a snap election and campaigned triumphantly on the now infamous mantra of “getting Brexit done”.

Instead, Johnson proved himself only as a supreme and brazen survivor, recovering first from a near fatal brush with COVID, then weathering scandal after scandal by denying, obfuscating, lying, apologising, and lying again.

Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, with the woman he replaced as prime minister Theresa May in 2017.Credit: Thierry Charlier

The rot began with Partygate, coined to cover the 11 boozy “work events” which broke lockdown rules and led to Met Police fines and ended on Tuesday when Simon McDonald, a former Foreign Office mandarin told the BBC’s flagship Today program that contrary to Number 10’s public denials, Johnson had been briefed “in person” about allegations of drunken, sexual groping against the aptly named Chris Pincher – the MP Johnson had planned to appoint as his new chief whip.

Johnson has also had to extricate himself from the Owen Paterson affair. The former environment minister was suspended for “egregious case of paid advocacy” – parliamentary-speak for lobbying on behalf of companies that had paid him.

Incredibly, Johnson shook all these off – and more – until this week when ministers forced to hit the airwaves to defend his handling of the Pincher allegations realised that they had been caught as well, repeating his lies in public.

As eminent historian Anthony Seldon – biographer of six British prime ministers including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair – observed candidly on Thursday “nobody has ever gone down in flames like this, damaging and humiliating not just the office of the prime minister but the reputation of the country publicly. Nobody. Not in 300 years of 55 prime ministers. Thank goodness the agony is now over.”

But is it?

Johnson has now been dragged, kicking, and screaming, to do what his colleagues describe as “making the right decision for his party and the country” but serious questions remain over his plan to stay on as caretaker PM until the leadership contest is completed at the Tory Party conference in October. Yes, there are precedents: Theresa May remained in the post while Johnson was elected, and David Cameron stayed in place while May was chosen. However, neither was faced with governing a nation battered by the aftershocks of withdrawal from the EU and exacerbated by the economic pall of two years in pandemic lockdown – let alone with a Cabinet boasting more vacancies than ministers.

Pundits also point out that it is difficult to have a swift leadership succession when there is no clear successor and a field of candidates which a Guardian columnist described as “basically everyone who has ever been in a Tory government”.

Ultimately, there are two possible scenarios: one is that the Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, take the reins until a new leader is elected by the entire party membership as required under current rules or; that the regulations are changed to return to an earlier system which allowed MPs alone to elect their leader. For John Major, another former Conservative PM, allowing Johnson to stay on to make another three months’ worth of decisions in the UK is not just unwise but unsustainable: “Some will argue that his new cabinet will restrain him. I merely note that his previous cabinet did not – or could not – do so,” Major said.

As the Independent newspaper noted wryly, Boris Johnson has turned out to be the third Tory prime minister in six years to have been brought down – by Boris Johnson.

Paola Totaro is a former Europe correspondent for the Herald and The Age and now lives in London.