Politics is an unsparing business at the best of times and the higher you climb, the fewer hiding places there are. High office reveals character and sometimes it does so pitilessly. And so it is with Boris Johnson, a man found out by his own ambitions. What a week it has been for him. If the arrival of another child — his seventh, perhaps — is a matter of personal joy for the prime minister that only throws the contrast with his professional woes into still sharper relief.
For this is the beginning of the end. The precise timing and arrangements for that final demise have not yet been put in place but, this weekend, it feels like it is only a matter of when, not if, Johnson shambles out of Downing Street. The mood among Tory MPs is volcanic and the prime minister is assailed on all sides.
Deservedly so too, one must note. If there were never convincing reasons for thinking Johnson might prove an effective prime minister, even those who always doubted him might have hoped for something better than this. Not for Johnson’s sake, but for the country’s.
In the United States whomever leaked the video of poor Allegra Stratton joking with Downing Street staffers about the Christmas party that, according to the official line, never took place, would be considered a kind of patriot. Here we may settle for something less grandiose than that: this was an act of public service, stripping bare the facade of Johnson’s premiership to reveal the rot within.
It is not just the Christmas party of course. Nor is it the introduction of fresh Covid restrictions that much of the Conservative parliamentary party strongly dislikes. Nor is it the lack of a coherent, far less a compelling, governing agenda. It is all of these things wrapped together and then plenty more besides. There is a stench about this government now, a sense that its own aversion to straight-dealing and truth-telling is at last catching up with it. You cannot pretend everything is peachy and ask the electorate to ignore the evidence of their own senses forever. At some point there is an awakening and, after that, a reckoning.
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On Friday the polls shifted. One suggested Labour enjoyed an eight point lead this weekend. Another poll, conducted by YouGov, reported that Labour’s lead was only four points, yet the significance is not the degree of Labour’s lead but its existence. In the UK as a whole, according to YouGov, Johnson’s approval rating is suddenly -42. In Scotland it is even worse — as it always is — and just as his reputation will never recover in Scotland, so it is likely to be forever tarnished elsewhere. Across the country the penny has at last dropped: he is not up to the job.
From which certain realities follow. The Tory party made Johnson and it may unmake him. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and even David Cameron had devoted acolytes. The striking aspect of Johnson’s ministry is that there are no Johnsonites. He is a lonely prime minister and, like an embattled Roman emperor, he is discovering that a change in the wind is chasing away those he thought he could count on.
So be it. In a time of emergency, voters crave competence and reliability. They want a prime minister with bottom and some reserves of dependability. This is not the time for a clown.
Still, Johnson’s opponents might reflect on the dangers of getting what you want. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first grant their desires. I wonder if that occurred to Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford this week when each demanded Johnson’s resignation?
On one level, of course, the nationalists call for Johnson to resign. Little meaning need be attached to this for it would be more surprising if the SNP did not demand it. If it is Sunday, Blackford will let you know he is unhappy and this makes the Sabbath no different to any other day of the week.
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Nevertheless, Scottish Tories — and Scottish unionists more generally — have more to gain from Johnson’s disgrace than Scottish nationalists. The SNP has largely given up making the much-ballyhooed “positive case” for independence. Instead it points a finger south of the border and simply says: “However difficult independence might be, surely we can do better than THAT.” If this is a low bar for comparative success it plainly follows that a more persuasive, plausible, decent and effective government in London raises that bar.
Now a Tory government led by Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt or even, perhaps, Liz Truss might not expect to be popular in Scotland but it could scarcely fail to be an improvement upon Johnson’s administration. Unionism must make a case for its own relevance but its first task is to avoid booting the ball so frequently into its own goal. As every football manager taking over a failing team knows, fixing the defence is the first item of business. Johnson might as well wear a t-shirt sporting the slogan “See Me? Vote SNP” each time he appears in public; his successor can only be an upgrade.
Sturgeon asks Scots if they would rather live in “Boris Johnson’s Britain” or her Scotland but the horrors of the former are evidently diminished, if only a little, if it is no longer in fact Boris Johnson’s Britain. The prime minister is Sturgeon’s useful buffoon, which is why it suits her — in political terms at any rate — to keep him around for as long as possible. Sometimes in politics the only thing worse than not getting what you want is receiving what you say you really desire.
The nationalists predicate the case for independence on Britain’s failure. Independence is then defined as a kind of refuge. But a Britain led by a vaguely competent and modestly respectable prime minister is a Britain better placed to make a case for its own relevance and usefulness. That requires Johnson’s defenestration as a necessary first step.
Thus, however ghastly this week may have been, it has offered Scottish unionists some hope that something better — or at least something not nearly so bad — may yet be around the corner.
