Midterm blues
Something has broken in Boris Johnson’s government
This week’s rebellion in Parliament is just the start of his difficulties
HE WON the vote but lost his party. On December 14th a package of health-protection measures, part of Boris Johnson’s “Plan B” to cope with the Omicron variant, was carried by 369 votes to 126. However, 98 Conservatives sided against their own prime minister, including 13 former cabinet ministers and almost half of Tory backbenchers. The rebellion was far worse than Downing Street had feared and leaves the government in the unsustainable position of depending upon the opposition Labour Party for one of its central policies.
As if that were not bad enough for Mr Johnson, on December 16th Tory voters will have their say in a by-election in North Shropshire, the truest of blue seats. A collapse of the Conservative majority is assured. What should worry Mr Johnson is the once-unthinkable possibility of defeat.
Governments two years into their term often languish. But when Mr Johnson’s supporters fall back on that excuse for his failing grip they are guilty of self-delusion. It is becoming clear that the prime minister is facing a double crisis. One half of this is the growing sense that he is temperamentally unfit to hold the highest office in the land. The other is the fear that his government will be incapable of bringing about the reforms it has promised—some of which Britain badly needs.
Whatever happens in Thursday’s by-election, over the past two months Mr Johnson has squandered his greatest political gift. Whenever lesser politicians bluster and contradict themselves, voters sneer at their sleaze, lying and hypocrisy. By contrast, Mr Johnson has had an uncanny ability to make them feel as if they are in on the joke.
The first to cut through was sleaze. Last month Mr Johnson tried to save Owen Paterson, then MP for that North Shropshire seat, from being censured for breaking the rules over paid lobbying. (The prime minister said that to punish him would offend natural justice.) Then came lying. This month it emerged that, whereas Mr Johnson had claimed to know nothing about who paid for the renovation of his Downing Street flat costing £112,549 ($150,000), he had in fact been asking for money from the man who turned out to be the donor. (Downing Street says that appearances are deceptive.) And last week it was hypocrisy. A video showed senior aides joking about one of several parties held in Downing Street last Christmas, when the rest of the country was locked down with only the television for company. (Mr Johnson said he knew nothing of it.)
What matters more to Britain than the prime minister’s broken spell over voters is his government’s capacity for reform. Here, too, something has gone very wrong. Mr Johnson’s pitch in the general election of 2019 was that post-Brexit Britain would no longer be a divided, unequal country. Power and prosperity would flow from the metropolitan elite to left-behind places that would be “levelled up”. His was a radical new type of Conservatism, popular but not populist.
The revolution never happened, and not just because the pandemic got in the way. Brexit stumbles zombie-like in an endless struggle over the future of Northern Ireland. Policymaking has seized up or, as with reforms to planning law, been abandoned. A campaign against Scottish independence has died. Levelling up now encompasses everything, so it means nothing. There is a drive to weaken judicial oversight, limit free speech and protest, and make the police less accountable. But such illiberalism is hardly a glorious legacy of Britain’s new sovereignty.
The viciousness of Omicron could yet vindicate Mr Johnson and his Plan B. The lack of a Tory challenger—and of a strong opposition—could mean that he wins re-election in 2024. Even so recent weeks mark a new phase in his premiership. Once lost, trust with voters is hard to recover. If reform loses focus and purpose, it is hard to jump start. When a government and its party are ragged, they are hard to reunite.