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.

Below the surface.....

There have been some scary headlines recently. Yesterday’s Daily Mail Scottish addition (we’re back in the homeland on a visit) all but declared a polio epidemic. In fact, some evidence has of the virus has been discovered in sewage samples; there have been no cases. Today, Boris’ government is apparently imploding (two bye election loses overnight, and the resignation of the party chairman) while Boris goes for a swim in Rwanda. And of course on the other side of the Atlantic, in one of the world’s younger democracies, words such as coup and insurrection are used daily in the January 6^th Congressional committee hearings (with some justification), and New Yorkers will be able to openly carry their guns thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. Headlines are of course designed to be eye-catching. But if you are a news junkie, their constant catastrophism has an effect. To conclude all is always and only disaster is probably to take the headlines too seriously. It usually entails not reading the actual story (which is often more moderate and nuanced). But to conclude that it is all just about overwrought teenage scribblers (to use Nigel Lawson’s famous put-down of financial journalists) over-egging the pudding is also probably unwise.

Let’s begin over the pond. The Congressional hearings on the January 6^th attack on the US Capitol (which it clearly was), have been revealing and are chilling. Former President Trump is both more calculating and more determined that he is often given credit for. And it appears that he set out, probably knowingly and certainly illegally (as he was often told) to subvert a basically sound election result. He is no democrat (with a small d obviously). I have expressed previously my bemusement that so many “evangelicals” voted for him. Any one of his utter detachment from the truth and anything approaching integrity, his attitude to people in general and women in particular, and his basic lack of competence, should have disqualified him. I know the arguments (the other “guy”, the Supreme Court etc) that were deployed. But for anyone with a commitment to Scripture, these arguments could not, and should not have stumbled as far as the end of the runway, never mind flown. In the US the presidential election is, in most states, a binary choice – or you can sit on your hands. Trump has not gone away and a comeback presidential run cannot be ruled out. But underlying his arrival and staying power, with all that they might imply, is something more basic and powerful. Whether he is a deliverance or a judgment on the US, Providence, that great outworking of the sovereign purposes of God, is quietly at work.

We also have our own travails here in the UK. Boris’ basic lack of interest in truth and integrity, so noted from his earlier career that some warned of why he was unsuitable for high office, has once again been demonstrated in his approach to that same high office. You can often tell when he is dissembling because he mutters; and he mutters a lot. He has now learned that his party colleagues will not only tolerate him, but will continue to support him for fear of the alternatives. Ethics, or the lack thereof (along with the absence of an appointed ethics advisor) mark his premiership, and don't seem to bother his supporters. And he is not even careful or measured about his approach. Tony Blair suffered the accusation of lying over the Iraq war. But this was an accusation; it is debatable whether he did or did not. But there is really no argument about Boris who has already been sacked twice for telling porkies, and has deserved to be sacked again (and for some time). He appears to revel in his reputation. It would apparently not matter to him if he was known as a liar as long as he was also known as a doer. This no longer shocks; but it should. Just as Billy Bush should have ended Donald, so all this muttered dissembling should have disqualified Boris. But it didn’t and we are where we are. 

These local difficulties have their global accompaniment. Just as it looked as though the global pandemic was slackening, and we thought that with the help of vaccines we had escaped the worst, Covid is making a comeback in China, potentially with global consequences (and then there’s “monkey pox” and polio of course). The war in Ukraine, as well as a tragedy for Ukraine, and in its own way for Russia, is pushing a large slices of the developing world into hunger, if not outright famine. And it is causing severe economic dislocation adding to that caused by the pandemic. Because of the media’s linear and limited thought processes, which in the West largely dictates political agendas, the pressure to respond to climate change has been largely removed from the political class. Indeed, because of economic pressure and the effects of sanctions on Russia, coal is making a comeback, and oil is again highly profitable. And populations suffering from the kind of inflation not experienced for fifty years don’t want to hear about green taxes and switching to environmentally friendly and marginally more expensive farming techniques. Relief is wanted now. And a generation of democratic politicians who live by expedient rather than principle (as did older political generations to be fair), but now without even ideology to guide them, are probably not up to the task of leading rather than following.

In all of this, it is easy to miss the deeper point. What did the individual Israelite in Judah feel as he or she saw their relatives among the northern tribes being swept away by Assyria? When the Assyrians approached Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day, to insult and threaten, Hezekiah had the benefit (as we do) of Isaiah to explain the deeper meaning of what was going on. We know that God was working His purposes out. The individual Israelite, if they had a knowledge of their own Scriptures and a sensitivity to their surroundings, might have had an awareness of larger forces at work. Tragically few had either, and their leaders largely and consistently discounted what the likes of Isaiah had to say (and then write). Faced with a bemusing cocktail of war, disease, famine and political turmoil, and the daily struggle to survive, one suspects that the immediate probably obscured the fundamental. And so to our day.

I do seek to understand the proximate causes of the current situation, local, national and global. I am a self-confessed news junkie, and so may well be afflicted with a sombre mood because of headline-itis. I know that there is a need for care when tempted to point to particular events and crying judgement or some such. And I’m aware that in almost every generation, Christians have found reasons to decry their current circumstances and cry both “How long O Lord” and “Amen. Come Lord Jesus”. But beneath the froth and the fury, Providence does proceed unimpeded. Both the trajectory and the endpoint of history have already been revealed (and it’s not the triumph of Western liberal democracy whatever that is).

So, maybe soon…..