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 24th July, 2019, and stepped through the Number 10 door to announce his intention to resign at 12.30pm, July 7th, 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, (7th 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 5th 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.
