Cost Of Johnson’s Cavalier Cast

Britain’s Prime Minister three years, Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson resigned on Thursday after an ugly, humiliating turn of events of his own making. His party, however, sits pretty much with a comfortable majority of 80 seats in the 650-member parliament. Hence the search for next candidate for the top job at London’s 10 Downing Street, even as the outgoing premier expects to retain his lame duck position until autumn with a promise not to take any major decisions of significance during the interim period. 

Since he has stepped down only as party leader, it technically means he continues to be the prime minister. He anticipates several weeks of discussions and negotiations in the Conservative closed-door camp, some of which are bound to get leaked to the press, before the party formally elects a new leader to replace the outgoing immediate predecessor. 

Johnson made a spectacle of himself in a series of scandals. His cavalier attitude toward long held and accepted practices disturbed many, some of whom suffered rank shock. The misdemeanour, now labelled Partygate (a la the Watergate of the 1970s in the United States involving President Richard Nixon) proved to be his undoing. He overstretched things too far.   

He was a habituated unorderly man. One misdeed led to another with increasing defiance before the press, the public and, finally, his own ministers and party members could take it no more. At a time when the COVID-19 caused the nation to observe strict lockdown, the prime minister’s residence was the seat of partying by a pack of ministers and associates throwing to the winds the lockdown regulations. 

Inevitable outcome

At long last, the cat out of the bag was recognised, and a quick diagnosis of the situation was made to sternly show the prime minister the way out. Had a confession of the public-mocking incident come early on, accompanied by an appropriate apology, things could very well have cooled down. But he let things get messy, public and investigated, which eventually led him and attendees to be fined for the misdemeanour. 

That Johnson survived the bluff and bluster this long speaks of the existing Conservative Party culture in particular and the general British political landscape in general. Had his misdeed been committed, say, by the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Johnson would have hit hard relentlessly without any show of restraint on the culprit pout on public trial.

At the White House, Nixon and his henchmen, too, had behaved likewise, though that happened half a century ago. The American executive president resigned on realising that the only other alternative was to suffer the certainty of being impeached. His party members were in no mood to defend the indefensible. Anti-Brexiters saw an opportunity to pull the rug from under John’s feet.

Some scribes described have compared Johnson’s chase for trouble and “Trump-like madness!” to former American President Donald Trump (Actually, Johnson was even worse for, as an example, his approval of his partner-turned-wife Carrie having ordered the No. 11 refurbishing that cost the taxpayers £200,000 for the first political couple’s fancy for new sofas, lamps and the like.) 

Not that the prime minister’s loyalists did not make desperate machinations at damage control. They succeeded in erasing a story that briefly appeared on The Times newspaper whose journalist Simon Walters’s by-lined story revealing that Johnson, as foreign secretary, had attempted to appoint Carrie Symonds (his then mistress) as the chief of staff — a job that would have paid the appointee £100,000 a year. Ben Gascoigne – a senior aide to Johnson had threatened to resign if Symonds’ appointment went ahead, as it would have committed “a flagrant abuse of ethics” outlined by the Ministerial Code.

Although The Times reporter stood “by the story 100 per cent”, his work appeared in only the first edition of the country’s most prestigious daily paper. There was no explanation for the news item that vanished thereafter.

Johnson’s prime ministerial innings headed for a humiliating end. His desperate attempts to cling to power even as scandals galore got exposed one after another. Fifty-three ministerial resignations left the country without a functioning government. The ship was leaking and sinking fast and furious. The cabal caved in thanks to the mass exodus from the cabinet. Cabinet colleagues competed with one another to quit quickly ensuring that their future did not end in a political hara-kiri. Johnson’s resignation speech echoed defiance and blaming of cabinet members who withdrew their support of him.  

Checks & balance

Johnson’s new cabinet on Thursday also “made clear the government would not seek to implement new policies or make major changes of direction, rather it would focus on delivering the agenda on which the government was elected”. Many of the junior ministers who had resigned returned to their posts that day. 

With its claim as “the mother of parliaments”, the British parliamentary system has evolved through ups and downs over the centuries. It is rare that a party with majority in parliament shows its prime minister the exit gate. Public awareness, party culture and long established precedents combine to prevent petty politicking and dubious manipulations for the continuation of a rules-defying leader to continue in office.  Were the worsening conditions to go unaddressed with a replacement of the prime minister, the ruling party would risk serious voter wrath in the very next general elections. 

A cluster of potential candidates is sounding out for attention and support to interests in the vacancy to a highly craved and powerful post. Several are sniffing around as to who might support them or how best to get aboard the new team, with a bargained for portfolio. One gets a gleaning from Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, who has said: “I am putting together a broad coalition of colleagues that will bring new energy and ideas to government and, finally, to bridge the Brexit divide that has dominated our recent history.”

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)