Nothing became him in life like the leaving of it, says a character from Macbeth of the traitor Cawdor’s acceptance of his execution. Boris Johnson may have once been commissioned to write a study of Shakespeare, but he has never taken that particular line to heart. Perhaps that is why he returned the publisher’s advance.
Late on Friday, Johnson resigned abruptly as a member of parliament rather than fight a by-election after an investigation found that he had misled the UK parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal. In a vituperative 1,000-word statement he condemned his accusers and then launched a frontal assault on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for betraying Brexit and leading the Conservative Party to electoral disaster. He is unlikely to go gentle into that good night.
When then-British secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities Michael Gove suggested that he resign as prime minister after his authority crumbled last year, Johnson fired the man on the spot. Three-time election winners like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair might have allowed themselves to be pushed into the departure lounge of politics by colleagues, but Boris was never going to go peaceably. Nor has he quite gone.
Matthew Goodwin, a polling expert who has charted the rise of British populism sympathetically, last weekend said that Johnson has already brought down three prime ministers. First was David Cameron, over Brexit. Next came his successor, Theresa May, over the terms of the exit deal. Finally, Johnson scuppered his own leadership by breaking lockdown rules during the COVID-19 pandemic and failing to be frank about it. Now he has a fourth prime minister in his sights — Sunak.
PITY PARTY
Johnson might be sincere in some of what he wrote in his resignation statement — the self-pity is certainly authentic and has always been his Achilles heel (as I know from my days as a newspaper editor, fending off injured replies when he felt he had been traduced — or simply not loved enough).
However, it does veer toward a skewed representation of the truth — he knows that Sunak’s credentials as a Brexiteer have never been in doubt. The two just differ on what can practically be delivered to enforce the separation from the EU.
In the statement, Johnson accused the cross-party House of Commons Privileges Committee of seven lawmakers of being “determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament,” which he said sets an “unsettling” and undemocratic precedent. Its Labour chair, Harriet Harman, is indeed a sworn enemy — but her committee has a Conservative majority.
Johnson is addicted to risk-taking and the limelight. He could, of course, butt out of politics altogether and add to his mountainous cash pile acquired from public-speaking engagements — he has earned more than ￡6.5 million (US$8.2 million) in the last year alone. However, although he loves the money, he might soon get bored.
It is nice being feted abroad, especially in the US, and in Ukraine he gets a hero’s welcome for his full-throated defense of that nation. However, Johnson might miss the applause back home. Domestic journalists are obsessed with him, with the media lapping up his every word. Like Oscar Wilde, he is a self-publicist who believes there is nothing worse than being talked about, other than not being talked about.
So, the great gambler of modern British politics may be embarking upon his biggest crapshoot so far, and the stakes are high — and not only for him. For there is usually method in what his liberal and left-wing critics take to be political madness.
The clue lies in the Trumpian vocabulary of his resignation statement — “witch hunts,” “kangaroo court,” “betrayal.” Like his recent host, the former US president, Johnson has rejected the process that brought him low.
On the right of British politics, strong winds are still blowing toward populism. Although Johnson’s popularity in the UK at large has plummeted since his huge electoral win in 2019, many Conservative voters and party members still regard him as their once and future king. Sunak comes mid-level in the popularity polls of the Conservative Home Web site.
The ruling party is at a crossroads. Sunak was not the first choice of party members (Johnson chooses to regard him as a scheming back-stabber following Sunak’s resignation as his chancellor of the exchequer). The tax-cutting revolution of Liz Truss, Johnson’s anointed successor, might have crashed and burned on contact with reality last autumn, but that agenda still gets Conservative pulses racing. Panicky Conservative lawmakers have recently been clamoring for the abolition of inheritance tax. They want income tax cuts, too, or anything to bribe the voters with their own money before the next election.
‘CAKEISM’
Politics, like comedy, is about the way you tell them. Sunak’s credentials as a right-winger on immigration, Brexit and free-market economics are the real thing. However, activists see income and business taxes rising to unprecedented post-war levels. Then they look at their leader, a soft-spoken former Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker in a sharp suit and Prada loafers, and despair of him retaining the Brexit-supporting voters of “left-behind Britain” acquired at the last election.
The party faithful’s heads tell them they cannot have Trussonomics, but their hearts are with Johnson’s philosophy of “cakeism” — having it and eating it, with both high spending and low taxes.
Why should Boris volunteer for the ignominy of by-election defeat in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, with its vulnerable majority, when he can live to fight another day, his allies say? Perhaps another departing Conservative lawmaker would help gift him a safe seat, if his candidacy is not blocked by Conservative headquarters. In any case, if Sunak goes crashing down to defeat in the next 18 months, Conservative associations, by Johnson’s reckoning, would demand his return.
Sunak is already walking, in the words of his top strategist Isaac Levido, “a narrow path to victory.” The Labour opposition has a large lead in the polls and its leader, Keir Starmer, has wiped out left-wing dissent in his ranks.
Although the present prime minister no longer fears a threat from Johnson’s dwindling band of backbench supporters, the Boris circus is a distraction he can do without. It makes him look weak, and the party divided.
However, it also reminds Sunak that he needs to expedite and focus his push for re-election. Failure will almost certainly bring the noisiest of political exiles back to the fray for the Conservative crown.
Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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