Bookending Boris

As one layer of political dust falls out of the air and begins to settle, another cloud is kicked up by the shuffle of political feet, stinging the eyes and clogging the back of the throat. Boris is no more. Not quite true of course. Like so much else about him, what is said, and what has actually transpired do not quite tally. They might, in time; hopefully they will. But with Boris, one just never knows. I am referring of course to our current and (probably) soon to be former Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He became PM on the 24^th July, 2019, and stepped through the Number 10 door to announce his intention to resign at 12.30pm, July 7^th, 2022. When the Conservative party has elected a new leader, Boris will tender his resignation to her Majesty, who will then invite his replacement as Conservative party leader to form a new administration.

To digress and to be clear, the people of the UK to not elect Prime Ministers. We each of us have a vote for a constituency MP. In theory, the PM is anyone who can command a majority in the House of Commons (usually, but not always, determined by a general election), and he or she then chairs a cabinet of equals to implement a manifesto and govern the country. In practice, for much of the last 200 years this has been done on a party basis, and the leader of the largest party (which usually holds an absolute majority in the Commons) is the PM. Parties and manifestos have become less important as first mass and then social media have turned politics into a personality-driven affair focusing on one person. But our system does not work well this way. The kind of checks and balances in the US presidential system (of the kind Trump tried to subvert with partial success) do not actually exist here. In a way, because our PM holds lots of executive and legislative power, the position of PM is the more powerful (and therefore dangerous) position. This is something Boris has amply demonstrated.

He has been displaced without an election, even although it took an election to (only just) dispense with Trump – at least for now. There is no great policy divide in his party. Everyone is now a brexiteer, and believes in a small state and reduced taxation. It was Boris personally, rather than politically, who had become unacceptable and had to be replaced. It was his colleagues in government who provided the mechanism, not the people at large. This is not in the least anti-democratic, provided that Boris’ Conservative successor is committed to implementing the manifest on which all Conservatives were elected back in December 2019. There’s no point huffing and puffing that the next PM is being imposed on the rest of us by a selectorate of mainly southern bluerinsers. We don’t elect the PM, and we never have. Anyway, back to Boris.

Although he has not yet departed, it is worth identifying what has done for him, because it is both troubling and heartening. His lack of attention to the requirements of governing (as opposed to campaigning), observing important rules and conventions, paying attention to detail, caused problems which afflicted his administration right from the start. But it was his complete inability to act honestly and transparently that really hurt him. Latterly, there was even an attempt to institutionalise what looked like his contempt for honesty by making none-too-subtle tweaks to the “ministerial code” – a venerable but toothless set of guidance authored by each PM, and provided to serving ministers. Boris’ problems with honestly and consistency, as evidenced by his inability to apply the code to himself and one of his friends, cost him two ethics advisors who were both serious and non-political public servants with copious experience in public life. This all began catching up with Boris when his Health Secretary and then his Chancellor resigned, to be followed by a gathering avalanche of other resignations. So the central issue was not policy; it was entirely to do with Boris’ unsuitability for the role because of his lack of personal integrity. What’s troubling is not only that all of this was predictable, but that it was predicted.

This is usefully illustrated by two columns written by Max Hastings, the first in June 2019 and the second last Thursday, (7^th July). Two bookends for Boris’ time as PM. Hastings is a distinguished (indeed Knighted) journalist and historian, and one of Boris’ previous bosses. He has observed him from afar and up close, and while never a chum, was not a natural enemy. While I suspect Hastings is a natural, small “c” conservative, he has actually voted both Conservative and Labour in the past. In 2019 he was excoriating; he is now relieved, while sounding somewhat apprehensive about the future. He is clearly a remainer, although in his more recent article he makes it clear that for the time being re-joining the EU is off the agenda (the current political consensus), even while arguing that he expects the issue to be revisited in the future. But while thinking that Brexit is folly, this is not at the centre of his critique.

Writing in 2019, Hastings quickly honed in on the character flaw that would eventually lead to Boris’ downfall: “He would not recognize the truth…if confronted by it in an identity parade”. He was unfit for national office because “…he cares for no interest save his own frame and gratification”. He then predicted that Boris’ premiership “..will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability”. Prescient indeed. Writing after Boris’ demise, with the evidence clear to see, Hastings wrote “[Boris] is a stranger to truth who has sooner or later betrayed every man, woman and cause with which he associates”. Nothing has changed though, Boris was “the same moral bankrupt as when the Conservative party chose him”. Of course both the Conservative party and the country connived in the Boris phenomenon. Pushing issues of personal morality aside, he was voted for to achieve what was deemed of more importance than things like truth and integrity. I understand this; I struggled with it myself at onepoint.

The heartening bit is that, having flirted with disaster, we have avoided it. The unwritten British constitution has been flexible enough to both survive and remove Boris, without mass violence. This is not something to be dismissed lightly, as events in the US demonstrated. It looks like the system there has also survived but only after mass violence that cost lives. We have apparently decided that integrity matters, even if accompanied by a dash of hypocrisy and political calculation. It may not be everything, but I’ll take it as a promising sign that all is not lost.

One other heartening aspect is that according to Sajid Javid, whose resignation got the ball rolling, it was the sermon of the Rev Les Isaac, “Serving the Common Good”, at the National Prayer Breakfast early on the 5^th July that pushed him across the line. He went straight back to his office to write his letter of resignation. The cynics will claim that this is just convenient cover for ambition and disloyalty. But it sounds to me more like Providence being kind to us (again), and doing what we could not do ourselves – focus on, and value, truth over expediency.

What’s all this about more debate?

Here’s where my “remain” friends (and most of my friends voted remain) and me probably part company. I suspect most of them have been spluttering over their cornflakes and muttering darkly at TV news bulletins of late, because of the latest shenanigans at Westminster. And I understand why. They voted remain in the EU referendum (as did I) because they thought it was right and sensible. Probably, like me, they did not vote remain because the EU filled them with unalloyed joy (discussed further here). It’s a human institution with all the faults and flaws of any human institution (and a few extra ones to boot). But it made political sense to stay in, on the basis that many of the problems we face don’t respect borders and are better tackled as part of a larger political block. It made economic sense because the states of the EU form our largest and nearest market. Indeed the single market is as much a British construction as it is a European one. I could go on. But I won’t (at least not about all the reasons for voting remain). Leaving, they genuinely believed then and now, was and is madness. Leaving with “no deal” they regard as tantamount to national self-harm on an epic scale. I’m not sure I would put it that strongly. Time will, unfortunately, probably tell.

Their anger over Boris’ latest wheeze is genuine too. I have no reason to believe anything else. They see him as using illegitimate (if not strictly illegal) tactics to thwart the attempts of his Brexit opponents to scupper a “no deal” Brexit. Some, I have no doubt, think that the proroguing of Parliament is antidemocratic because it will deny the people’s representatives the opportunity to scrutinise the intentions and actions of the Executive. And with some justification they will point out that during the recent Conservative election campaign, Boris and a number of his current cabinet colleagues, sought to pacify moderate elements in the Conservative selectorate and garner votes by implying that they would not do what they have essentially just done. These various views are shared by a very large number of people. Last time I looked, well over 1.6M had signed a petition against proroguing Parliament. Polls suggest that there is currently a majority of that view by some margin. And there have been protests in many UK towns and cities.

As far as the proroguing issue goes, here’s my problem with those who have a problem. Their basic case seems to be that this is a manoeuvre to deny Parliament the opportunity to debate the issues around leaving the EU, particularly those raised by leaving without an agreement – the no deal scenario. But exactly what is there to debate that hasn’t been fully aired over the last three years? Who is there left in Parliament (or the country for that matter) that lacks the information required to form a view? The result of the referendum itself and how it should be responded to has been discussed to death. Early on the idea was floated that Parliament should simply refuse to act on what technically was an advisory vote. This was rejected. The overwhelming majority were clear that the result had to be honoured. Most MPs in 2016, and in the post 2017 House of Commons voted remain, and a minority of them have never reconciled themselves to the idea of leaving the EU. This I understand. But then, why did they vote 6-to-1 to put what was a complex and nuanced decision to the people in a binary referendum in the first place? Yes, David Cameron pushed the issue of a referendum for relatively selfish political and party management reasons. But he was aided and abetted by the political class as a whole, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens and others. They all abrogated their responsibilities are all guilty for the resulting chaos.The historians can argue about how the guilt should be precisely divided up when the dust has settled.

Post referendum, and post Cameron, we had a general election. There were pro-EU membership/anti-Brexit options on the ballot paper in the form of the Liberal Democrats, Greens and occasional others. But these were decisively rejected. We saw the return (although perhaps temporarily) of two-party politics.  Of those two main parties, both made clear they would seek a negotiated withdrawal from the EU, so honouring the referendum result. Labour went further. They were specific in their rejection of no-deal, and said they would reject it as an option if they formed the government. The election was a close run thing, but Labour didn’t form the government because the Conservatives got more votes (although a relatively small win in terms of votes cast was then magnified by parliamentary arithmetic). But the options were there.

It is the no deal issue that has galvanised many of my remain friends, petition signers, press and politicians on all sides. It is presumably no deal, so the argument goes, that won’t be scrutinised and debated if Boris gets away with prorogation. But hang on, specifically this issue has been the subject of debate for months. It has been voted on in the Commons. Parliamentary skulduggery has even been resorted to by the opponents of no deal, with active support from the Speaker of the Commons. It’s not just Boris and his acolytes who can dive through gaps in our unwritten constitution. The debate has produced more heat than light and precious little agreement. Some insist that no deal will be an unmitigated disaster, others see it as the ideal clean break with the EU. Most are probably somewhere between these extremes. But the notion that it has not been debated, or that further debate is going to make any difference is not sustainable.

I have no idea precisely what the effect of a no deal Brexit will be. I am sure that there will be disruption. There will be costs. I don’t really see where there will be benefits. Will it be a disaster on the scale of war or famine or plague? Probably (hopefully) not. But this was always one of the possible ways of exiting the EU. It was also always one of the potential outcomes of the Article 50 process that Parliament voted, overwhelmingly, to trigger. In the referendum campaign, we were warned about the potential hit to the economy and jobs if we decided to leave. I found the warnings plausible, many did not. Some may or may not have been persuaded by the fantasy promises of the various out campaigns. But with all of that ringing in our ears a majority of my fellow citizens voted to leave the EU. We’ve now had three further years of debate. There’s no evidence of mass buyer’s remorse or that another referendum would produce a very different result, although conceivably it might produce a different outcome. But that would hardly help settle things. If it was remain 52% vs leave 48% (not entirely implausible if the polls are to be believed), why should that result be allowed to stand when the first one was reversed? Parliament ducked its obligations and handed the decision to the people. The people took the decision. The debate has been had. The democratic thing to do is implement the decision. It will be messy. But if democracy means anything is it surely that we get what we (or at least the majority) vote for.

But one final note. Recently I’ve been thinking about the life and times of a character in the Bible called Jonah. He lived in turbulent times. His own nation had been on the up, and under the current regime things seemed to be going well. It looked like the King (Jeroboam II) was doing well, militarily, politically and economically. I bet the King Jeroboam thought so. But it turned out there was a whole other level of reality that the King, and many people of the day in Israel, were missing. Their success was far more to do with providential timing and God moving the pieces on the international chess board, than Jeroboam's genius. He was working His larger purposes out. We know this because it’s helpfully recorded in 2 Kings 14:23-27, and explained further in the books of Jonah, Amos and Hosea. We live in turbulent times, nationally and internationally. This is not all and only about us, votes, debates, protest, politics and tactics. Providence may be merciful to us, and may come through these present difficulties unscathed. It might not. But the likes of Jonah, Amos and Hosea have a lot to say to us today. About the humility required of leaders if nothing else. Their own people, in their own time, did not listen to them. Perhaps we are in danger of making the same mistake.