UK PM Boris Johnson doomed by drumbeat of incompetence
Every prime minister runs out of steam at some point – and for beleaguered Boris Johnson that moment is nearly here.
“In my beginning is my end . . .” Ten months on from its victory the government already has the fag-end feel of one that has been going for ten years. The people have stopped listening to its pronouncements, the prime minister looks exhausted, the backbenchers are rebellious, the civil servants leaky, the ideas either flat ("levelling up") or far out (building a floating wall in the Channel). It can seem we have reached something approaching the nadir of John Major’s government when, as Norman Lamont put it, they appeared to be “in office but not in power”.
Major’s government was so patently past it that Tony Blair’s attacks on his opponent seemed as wantonly savage as a lion tearing apart a wounded gazelle: “This prime minister, so weak, so utterly incapable of stamping his authority on the government he nominally leads, that he has given birth to the first ‘ism’ in politics to denote not the existence of a political philosophy but the absence of one: ‘Majorism’ . . .” Such savagery is not Sir Keir Starmer’s style, but his cool dissection of the government’s failures at prime minister’s questions is equally wince-worthy; despite the prime minister’s bravado, we see the wounds and scent the blood.
While Major’s government was doomed by the drumbeat of sleaze, Boris Johnson’s is doomed by something worse: the drumbeat of incompetence. Tories are expected to be bastards – this is priced in – but they are also expected to be capable. I needn’t rehearse the full catalogue of Covid failures here; you know the drill, from the “world-beating” test and trace system that wasn’t, to the A-level fiasco that was. It leaves us with a government whose every announcement is met not with respectful silence but rolls of the eyes. In 2017 the novelist Robert Harris said of Theresa May’s administration that, though only months old, it “already has a whiff of decay about it”. We might say the same today.
With four years to go before the next election the government needs to find a way of shedding this dull skin. With a difficult winter ahead, now is not the time to contemplate change – but the Conservative Party must seek renewal in the spring or summer of next year. That will only be possible if three things happen.
First, a break in the business of politics. There must be a period in which there are no frenetic policy announcements, no attempts to lead the news or win column inches, no speeches about “revolutions” in education or the NHS. When the worst of the second Covid wave is over politicians must realise that we the nation are fatigued with politics and retreat for a while accordingly.
Second, there must be a cull to rid the cabinet and wider government of those picked mainly for their Brexit loyalty. It taxes the patience of the public to see people in roles that are evidently too weighty for them. Though it is true that this parliament is thin on talent, there are still some outstanding contenders in the ranks, mainly overlooked on account of being (horror!) Remainers or (shudder!) older white men. Let ancient hostilities cease and meritocracy be restored; if merit were the only criteria, former ministers such as Victoria Atkins, Mel Stride and Sir John Hayes would soon rise.
Third – and most importantly – Johnson must recognise that 2021 is the time to leave the stage. It is hugely tempting for prime ministers to carry on and on in the hope that “something will turn up” to rescue their waning popularity; Gordon Brown and Theresa May clung on in the belief that they would somehow prove the British people wrong, like gamblers who won’t be dragged from the roulette table because at the next spin of the wheel all will come good.
It never comes good. Once political authority wanes it never waxes. The fatal point comes when prime ministers go from object of ridicule to object of pity. A few snapshots spring to mind: Major derided as “weak, weak, weak” in the Commons; Brown’s pained smiles in his man-of-the-people video messages; May valiantly dancing on stage at the party conference. When the room is watching you through its fingers you have lost the room.
We are not there yet with Johnson but the trajectory does not look good – and we know how ruthless the Conservative Party is with leaders deemed past it. As Churchill once said: “The loyalties which centre upon number one are enormous. If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, he must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be poleaxed.” The warning rings especially true for Johnson, who did not spend years in the Commons tearoom making friends and cultivating deep reserves of loyalty. Parliamentary loyalty to him is anchored in nothing other than his ability to win. If it appears he has lost that ability the loyalty will evaporate and the knives will come out.
Though it might seem mad to voluntarily surrender the crown you have coveted for decades, Johnson might in quieter moments reflect that he really is not enjoying this. His driving desire as a person and politician is to make people feel good. He is pathologically opposed to gloominess, pessimism, even realism. His famous policy on cake, “pro having it and pro eating it”, is his policy on life. For a man like this the dream was not only to win the premiership, but for that premiership to be characterised as a feel-good era, Macmillan’s “You’ve never had it so good” mark II. There was to be public money splashed around, landmark building projects to induce pride, trade deals garlanded with Johnsonian metaphors about national virility. Then coronavirus hit, creating the least feel-good time in living memory. Far from fun, frolics and jollity, his premiership is a time of death, distance and antiseptic – and it is only going to get worse: mass unemployment, bankruptcies and resultant despair. The government will be loathed by the left for the spiralling unemployment rolls and loathed by the right for the spiralling national debt. To bear it, any prime minister would need a skin thick as rhino hide and Johnson’s is thin. This is not an insult; I am a fan of sensitive souls, but we are entering years requiring a leader with an ox-strong political constitution, not a people-pleaser.
If he wants to rescue his reputation Johnson should not be planning for a full term but plotting his exit. Major has shown how a once-derided prime minister can be resurrected as a figure many listen to and respect. Lazarus acts are possible, but timing is vital. For a man who cares as much about popularity as Johnson does, he would be wise to realise that he would go down far better as one who led Britain through a brief but critically important space in its history, than as a prime minister who continued to occupy office long after the jig was up.
The Times
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