British Tories can recover if they quash Boris Johnson’s myths

There is plenty of time for a fresh start under a successor but the party must make a clean break with Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson has quit as Conservative party leader, after three tumultuous years in charge marked by Brexit, Covid and mounting scandals. Picture: Justin Tallis / AFP

Boris Johnson is preparing the betrayal narrative. In his resignation speech he lamented the “eccentric” decision of Tory MPs to change leader when only a few points behind in mid-term polls.

This will be his theme as he stays in No. 10, an undefeated leader brought down by panicking parliamentary pygmies who couldn’t cope with media “sledging”. There was no recognition of the mistakes he had made, of his own role in his downfall. This is his myth and he intends to stoke it.

There will be those Johnson supporters in the parliamentary party and the country who buy into it. The mythmaking won’t stop when he leaves office. There’ll be columns, speeches and an autobiography, all designed to portray him as the great tribune of the people brought down by MPs who owed their seats to him. This is the history he intends to write and it will be kind to him.

There will be much talk of his direct mandate. Even though this is not how a parliamentary democracy works, it also ignores something crucial. The Tory victory in 2019 was a mandate to break the Brexit logjam and keep out Jeremy Corbyn. Both of those things were achieved by the result itself: Johnson’s mandate has already been discharged.

This will not get in the way of the myth, though. There will be Johnson diehards who will not accept the legitimacy of any successor and will pine for their lost leader.

Former UK chief trade negotiator David Frost looks on as Boris Johnson signs the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the EU, the Brexit trade deal, on December 30, 2020. Picture: Leon Neal / POOL / AFP

The danger is that they agitate against his successor and the Tories go from having forced out three prime ministers in six years to four in eight. This is why some party grandees think it would have been cathartic for the party to go through a no-confidence ballot to reveal just how little support Johnson had left.

A no-confidence ballot might also, oddly, have been good for the Tory party’s standing in the country. It would have shown that it would not tolerate abominable behaviour. Now, if he stays, it will look as if his behaviour is deemed within the bounds of acceptable conduct. The longer he stays, the greater the danger that the entire Tory party is contaminated.

Even if the Tories can avoid descending into a Westminster version of a Sicilian blood feud, dangers lie ahead. The next few years will be tough for incumbents everywhere. Inflation makes politics scratchy and unpredictable: in the 1970s Britain had four general elections and four prime ministers. Trying to win elections against the backdrop of everybody becoming poorer in real terms is hard.

John Major was Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor and foreign secretary, yet when he stepped into No. 10 it felt like a new beginning. Picture: Adam Butler/PA/AFP

This problem is compounded for the Tories because they have been in power for more than a decade. Even in normal circumstances this would leave the government vulnerable to the rallying cry “it’s time for a change”. Especially after the self-indulgent chaos of the past two years voters may well feel the Tories need a spell in opposition to remind themselves that politics is about service.

There is a case for Tory optimism, though. Johnson so dominates politics that any government led by somebody else will feel fresh. It is worth remembering that John Major was Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor and foreign secretary, yet when he stepped into No. 10 it felt like a new beginning. This will be the case now even if Johnson’s successor is someone who served in his government.

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has not made a connection with the electorate. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Second, Sir Keir Starmer is more Neil Kinnock than Tony Blair. Like Kinnock, Starmer has reduced the left’s power in the Labour Party, dropped the more absurd policies and professionalised its operation. Unlike Blair, Starmer has not made a connection with the electorate. Just look at how slim his advantage over Johnson is, despite everything, on who would make the best prime minister.

Thanks to a combination of Starmer’s weakness and the damage Corbyn did to the party, Labour is not out of sight in the polls. The result of the next election is not a foregone conclusion. One pollster calculates that if you replace Johnson with a generic Tory the Tories would be on course to be the largest party in a hung parliament.

This wouldn’t mean they could continue in office: they have no potential coalition partners. But it would make any anti-Tory government inherently unstable. It also indicates that a new leader has a fighting chance of turning things around and winning a majority. With Johnson gone, the tactical voting that so threatens the Tories would be greatly reduced.

Finally, the Tories (still) have time on their side. The next election doesn’t have to be until late 2024. A new leader has more than two years to try to show the country how they are improving things.

The big question is what will the Tories do with these two years? Johnson’s cakeist approach has left them intellectually rudderless. They need to know what their agenda is for the rest of the parliament. This is the most important question for the coming leadership campaign to settle. The Tories cannot afford a box-set contest, with one dramatic twist after another. They need a proper policy debate.

Boris Johnson participates in a workshop with children from the Richard Avenue Primary School. Picture: Paul Ellis/WPA Pool/Getty Images

One of the biggest lacunae of the Johnson years has been public service reform. He has pumped money into schools and education with little idea how they should deliver more as a result. The Tories need a proper plan for how to get more from that money. What is the way to deal with the NHS backlog? How to stop waiting lists jumping from six million to nine million? If the Tories go into the next election with ten million patients waiting for treatment, Labour leaflets will write themselves.

Globally, they need to reduce dependence on China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is one of the forces pushing up inflation, but the economic impact of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, something that appears increasingly likely, would be on a different scale of magnitude. How should the UK prepare for this? What would create domestic resilience?

Then there is the whole question of how to turn around the UK’s dismal productivity. Failure on this will condemn the country to no economic progress and ever more unappealing choices.

The Tories squandered the first half of this parliament, but a new leader offers a fresh start. The question now is will the party take it or descend into one of their periodic bouts of fratricidal violence?

Boris Johnson once spoke of the “cycle of reprisals” that lasted years after Thatcher was deposed. Much depends on whether this cycle can be avoided now.

James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator.

The Times