Boris Johnson’s Cautionary Tale

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, July 07, 2022

 

After almost three years in office, United Kingdom prime minister Boris Johnson announced today that he would resign once his party chose a new leader, Reuters reports.

 

Just two days ago, our Maddy Kearns noted Johnson’s changing story about whether he knew about allegations of sexual misconduct against Chris Pincher, the deputy chief whip of Conservatives in the U.K. Parliament, and summarized the exasperation with the troubled prime minister: “Boris Johnson was caught lying to cover himself. (Again.) More resignations could be forthcoming but, as with the no-confidence vote last month, when it comes to loyalty to the prime minister, there is an unsustainable split in the Tory party. It’s now not a question of whether Johnson goes, only when.”

 

Two days later, it turns out.

 

If you were going to lead a major world power, July 2019 was a hellacious time to take the helm, quiet as that summer may appear in retrospect. The Covid-19 pandemic was just around the corner, and Johnson himself suffered a life-threatening infection early in the pandemic. Covid not only offered an unprecedented international public-health crisis, but it brought the world economy to a screeching halt and exacerbated existing social tensions. The lockdowns in the United Kingdom were generally even stricter, more sweeping, and longer-lasting than the ones in the United States. While the British welcomed the end of the lockdowns, as our Diana Glebova notes, “Johnson has been embroiled in controversy ever since it was revealed that he hosted parties at his Downing Street office while imposing restrictions meant to curb the spread of Covid-19 on the rest of the country.”

 

And then, earlier this year, Russia invaded Ukraine, sending economic and geopolitical aftershocks reverberating throughout the continent, and with particularly strong consequences in London, a favorite home away from home for Russian millionaires and billionaires. While the U.K.’s inflation rate wasn’t quite as bad as America’s for much of the past year or so, by June, it had hit 9.1 percent — a dire crisis in a country that already has a high cost of living.

 

Johnson’s departure is the result of a series of personal scandals, controversies, and long-simmering national problems that accumulated weight and momentum like a snowball rolling down a hill. He entered 10 Downing Street with a reputation for being undisciplined but brilliant. He leaves with a reputation for being undisciplined and probably not as brilliant as he thinks he is.

 

Our Michael Brendan Dougherty sees the collective weight of all the U.K.’s problems breaking the floor beneath Johnson’s feet:

 

The United Kingdom has a housing crisis more widespread and insidious than the one that plagues our major cities in the United States. It also needs terrific investment in its transportation. The closest that Johnson’s premiership ever came to addressing these was their plan to “level up” depressed and forgotten parts of England and Scotland — making them more attractive places to invest, work, and live. But this agenda has mostly been throwing cash around in a disorganized way. Johnson’s government has been in a rut. The scandals hit just as inflation did, and No. 10 got stuck in fighting to renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol — a U.K.–EU–Ireland arrangement that provokes the Unionist community — to which Johnson agreed in order to deliver Brexit.

 

For a long time, Johnson managed to overcome what seemed like glaring personal deficiencies with a certain goofy charisma and his crazy unkempt hair, what I called three years ago “an endless volley of witty, eccentric, self-deprecating charm.” That charm stopped working — but as MBD notes, that asset will not be easily replicated by anyone else currently in Conservative politics:

 

I see zero evidence that another Tory figure can replicate or come close to rebuilding that coalition. The Thatcher-nostalgists will alienate both the traditional Labour voters and the Cameronized Tory party of the southeast of England. A successful Tory party in 2022 needs to campaign on completely different ideological terrain than what it conquered decades ago. The only man in the Tory squad with the creativity, ambition, and willingness to change so as to discover this territory is Boris Johnson.

 

As Dan McLaughlin observes, after Johnson rose to power and then won a snap election “on the lingering Brexit question, I said that if he did nothing else, Brexit would ensure him a legacy. Having gotten Brexit done, he has his legacy, but he did nothing else. ”

 

Samuel Gregg, the director of research at the Acton Institute, wrote late last month that Johnson increasingly came to be perceived as standing for nothing in particular beyond himself:

 

To the extent that Brexit represented successful pushback against the supra-nationalism favored by left-liberal politicians, NGOs, and internationalist bureaucrats, it was a conservative triumph. But beyond that triumph, Johnson’s government has looked distinctly devoid of any conservative vision or policy program.

 

Indeed, the Tories under Johnson have veered away from conservatism in many areas. They have raised National Insurance rates and corporate taxes, and shown no inclination to cut public spending. Johnson’s government has even pushed for a “green industrial revolution” that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Green New Deal. The Conservatives have also done little to halt woke takeovers of institutions such as the National Trust, and they’ve shown no signs of coming to grips with the U.K.’s growing illegal-immigration problem.

 

In short, there’s no indication of any major Tory commitment to things like greater economic liberty and smaller-but-strong government.

 

Just a few days ago, our Andrew Stuttaford looked at Johnson’s environmental and energy agendas and foresaw a path to energy rationing:

 

That Britain has become a poster child for the stupidities of the current state of climate policy does not say much for its governing (if that’s the word) Conservative party. That all Britain’s other major parties would push the climate agenda in roughly the same direction does not change that fact, or the increasing possibility that the Tories, having squandered their great victory in 2019, are headed for defeat in 2024.

 

With Conservatives like this, who needs the Labor Party?

 

Last night, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described Boris Johnson as the British version of Donald Trump: “‘What you are seeing now is what it looks like when a conservative party decides they have had enough and that a leader is just too much of a menace to be tolerated,’ says Chris Hayes. ‘This pressure on Boris Johnson is a stark reminder that it can still happen.’”

 

If you squint, you can see some similarities between Trump and Johnson — on the right, larger-than-life personalities, striking appearances, a certain shamelessness and determination to just keep on going amidst great controversies. But no U.K. leader is ever a precise analogue to an American one, and I am skeptical that Trump is really the most relevant comparison right now.

 

Boris Johnson and Joe Biden are dramatically different personalities and often differ in their governing philosophies. But the mood described over in U.K. politics sounds a lot like the current one here in the U.S.: widespread, mounting frustration with the status quo; a growing resentment over the fact that the country’s political elites are economically and socially walled off from the gritty realities of the average citizen; and a sense that the current leader is just overwhelmed by the scale of the crises and incapable of rising to the task. Maybe the similarities stop there, but with the U.K. about to get a new leader and the U.S midterm elections approaching, that similarity seems resonant.