Boris Johnson’s political leadership enters death row

Like the Captain of the Titanic, Boris Johnson’s long years of success have blinded him. His tragedy is profoundly depressing.

Boris Johnson’s demise will be a net loss for Australia. Picture: AFP

Boris Johnson’s prime ministership has now the unmistakable stench of death about it. The “greased piglet”, as David Cameron so rudely described Johnson, has been caught up in the end between his brilliant political abilities, and his tragic flaws, especially a penchant for reckless personal behavior and an almost reflex proclivity for telling lies, often trivial in themselves but cumulatively devastating.

The resignation of senior ministers, in this case Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid, is generally the point of no return in a PM’s decline. It was with Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. And these resignations come only weeks after 148 Tory MPs voted against Johnson in a no confidence motion.

If Johnson’s successor can steady the ship and bring stability and coherence back to British politics, that will be all to the good. But this is an old and tired government, its chances of revival not great under any leader.

But Johnson’s demise will be a net loss for Australia in several key ways.

First, he was the most pro-Australian British PM in many decades, well eclipsing even Tony Blair on this score.

Second, partly as a result of Brexit, he was the most focused on the Indo-Pacific of any recent Biritsh PM. He talked up a British role in Asian security.

Third, he was the strongest supporter of Ukraine among European leaders and the strongest opponent of Russian expansionism under Vladimir Putin.

And fourth, he was the father of the British dimension of AUKUS. In Britain, AUKUS is mainly seen as the source of big dollars for the sale of submarine technology. But if, as logic and common sense suggest, we end up going with an American nuclear submarine, the Brits will get basically nothing out of it.

In that case, given the overwhelming demands of European security, and the equivocal nature of British Labour’s attitude to AUKUS, as well as what is obviously going to be a campaign against it on nuclear non-proliferation grounds, not to mention clandestine Chinese efforts on social media, it’s hard to see any Johnson successor being as keen on the three As — AUKUS, Asia and Australia — as Johnson has been.

Don’t get me wrong. Britain will remain an intimate and first class ally of Australia’s, no matter who is PM. But it won’t have the edge of enthusiasm which Johnson’s own inclinations, plus the personal politics of his circumstances, created.

Johnson’s tragedy is Shakespearian and in its way profoundly depressing. He is the most naturally gifted British politician of his generation. His record of election wins is prodigious – twice mayor of London, the Brexit referendum itself, and then in 2019 the biggest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher in her pomp, at a time when British politics, like most Western politics, had been fracturing.

But something like the Captain of the Titanic, his long years of success blinded Johnson to the need to change. He never came to grips with the frank unacceptability of his personal behaviour in high office. He seems to have been brought down by a series of minor lapses – attending borderline social gatherings at 10 Downing Street during Covid lockdown, promoting an MP with a record of sexual harassment. But in both cases, and in so many others, it was the lies Johnson instinctively told in ham-fisted attempts to cover up which did him so much damage. Plus the sense that he thought the rules didn’t apply to him, even rules he made himself.

His achievements remain historic. He won Brexit against the establishment, he then implemented Brexit against the establishment, he destroyed the gruesome threat of a Jeremy Corbyn prime ministership, and he established the Conservative party in England’s working class north.

Every leadership demise embodies the stages of grief. Johnson has been in denial for months. He will surely try bargaining. Soon enough depression. Maybe one day acceptance. Though there is a lot of grief to get through yet.