How Boris Johnson became politically vulnerable

LONDON – When Boris Johnson Wins landslide election victory to his Conservative Party in 2019, he looms large as a giant on the British scene, who has redrawn the political map of the country under his oath to “get Brexit done.”

With an 80-seat majority in Parliament, the biggest feat a Conservative leader has amassed since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, Mr Johnson seems assured of five years in power. Some analysts have predicted a comfortable decade at 10 Downing Street for Mr Johnson, the most trusted voter in British politics.

Now, just two and a half years after that victory, Mr Johnson’s political invincibility has been broken. Rebels in his party were unable to oust him in a dramatic vote of no confidence on Monday. But with 148 of 359 Tory lawmakers voting against him, he has been damaged, perhaps irrevocably, as an effective, trustworthy leader. Although he is still prime minister, he may be living off borrowed time.

This is one of the most reeling fortune reversals in modern British political history.

What happened?

To some extent Mr. Johnson’s standing collapsed because of the same jam the blend of strength and strength that fueled his rise: rare political intuition was offset by spectacular personal recklessness; his sense of history does not match his corresponding sense of how he should behave as a leader; Unusual human skills fought in a trading style earn him few allies and keep him isolated at dangerous times.

That last quality has made Mr Johnson vulnerable to the setbacks he has suffered, analysts say. With no underlying ideology but Brexit and no network of political friends, the prime minister lost the support of lawmakers in his party when it became clear they could not count on him to win. win the next election.

Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said: “Johnson was a successful run-of-the-art artist, and his colleagues were so frantic and cowardly that you couldn’t rule it out. he lives to fight another day,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary College in London. “But for what exactly? “Not there,” as the saying goes. “

Mr. Johnson is, after all, the politician who decided in favor of Brexit after writing two columns – one making the case for leaving the European Union; the other argued against it – on the eve of announcing his position. He won in 2019 by promising to ‘Get Brexit done’, but after accomplishing that goal within months of the election, he often seems like a prime minister with no plans. .

Events, as another British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, once said, also played a role. Like other world leaders, Mr Johnson has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic which has pushed his government back by a protracted health crisis in which he has played a highly conspicuous but not always role. reassure him.

Mr Johnson reacted late to the potential threat of the virus, imposing a shutdown on the country a week after its European neighbours. Critics say that delay made the first wave of the pandemic in the UK worse than elsewhere. In April 2020, with the virus circulating in Downing Street, Mr Johnson himself Covid signed a contractended up in the intensive care unit and nearly died.

But Mr Johnson also pushed Britain to be at the forefront of vaccine development. When the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca produced a book, he rolled it out faster than most other major countries. He also made a fateful decision – a decision later copied by other leaders – to reopen society after a significant percentage of the population had been vaccinated. British people must learn to live with Covid, he said.

It was during the darkest days of the pandemic that sowed the seeds of Mr Johnson’s current troubles. While the rest of the country is suffering from stifling lockdowns, the prime minister and his top aides have joined social gatherings in Downing Street, breaching lockdown restrictions theirs.

The first reports of nefarious parties emerged at the end of November last year, prompting Mr Johnson to deny outright that any law had been breached. A subsequent police investigation found that was not true: Mr Johnson himself was fined for attending his own birthday party in violation of the rules.

Mr Johnson’s allies argue that “Partygate”, as the London tabloids have nicknamed it, is a trivial distraction at a time when Europe is confronting its first major land war since from World War II. The Prime Minister was quick to assert his position as Ukraine’s staunchest defender, shipping powerful weapons to his troops and frequently calling his new friend, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

At first, the war overshadowed the scandal, giving Mr Johnson an opportunity to wrap himself in the mantle of a politician. But as the fight continued, frustration flared up again at home. The Metropolitan Police fined it, and an internal investigation by a senior civil servant paints a dire portrait of government partying.

The tinge of hypocrisy has eaten away at the prime minister’s popularity with the public. On Friday, as he and his wife, Carrie Johnson, climbed the steps to St. Paul to give thanksgiving in honor of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne, he was booed by the crowd. It was an omen.

In addition, economic winds are starting to blow against Mr Johnson. Supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic – combined with food and fuel price shocks following the Russian invasion – have pushed inflation into double digits and raised the specter of “stagflation”. “. The last time Britain faced it, its Labor government suffered a crushing defeat to Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party.

The prospect of history repeating itself helps explain why lawmakers have turned against Mr Johnson. The Conservative Party’s 2019 victory was boosted by winning seats in the country’s longtime Labor districts in the Midlands and industrial north of the country, colloquially known as the “red wall”. But as Mr Johnson himself admitted after his victory, the Tories rented the seats rather than taking them in perpetuity.

Instead of luring those new Tory voters with innovative policies, Mr Johnson wandered from scandal to scandal. In addition to Partygate, the prime minister was embroiled in an uproar over an expensive refurbishment of his Downing Street apartment, financed by a Tory party donor.

He defended a Tory lawmaker who was accused of improperly lobbying while in office and then had to refuse, a humiliating defeat that led to some trouble within his own party. ta. He becomes embroiled in a vicious and damaging public feud with his former chief counsel, Dominic Cummings.

By themselves, these problems may not be enough to placate a politician known for prison breaks like Houdini. But amid an economic backdrop that the head of the Bank of England has described as “apocalyptic”, they have contributed to party members’ fears that the Conservatives face a backlash from voters.

“All we can say with any degree of certainty is that ordinary Britons will find it difficult economically for the rest of this year – and possibly well in the near term.” Professor Bale said. “And that troubles the Tories, Johnson or not Johnson.”