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Boris Johnson in Office: an Interim Assessment

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Boris Johnson in Office: an Interim Assessment Boris Johnson in Office: an Interim Assessment ‘What has made the difference has been government. It is an obvious lesson to be gleaned from previous pandemics that where the state was weak or disorganised, many people died.’ Eminent historian, Richard J Evans, New Statesman, 27th Jan. [My usual health warning: As a lifelong Labour Party member – perhaps of the older Dennis Healey ‘social democratic’ flavour - I have to confess to being temperamentally opposed to Johnson, but I really do always - and in this briefing in particular- try to be fair!] On 3rd January 2021 Boris Johnson told BBC’s Andrew Marr there was: ‘no doubt in my mind that schools are safe’; primary schools were told to open the next day. On 4th January, Johnson shut all schools for seven weeks and cancelled exams in the summer. This tendency to prevaricate before deciding and then, shortly afterwards to reverse his decisions has not passed by unnoticed by his critics, on which more later. A Little About Alexander, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson This controversial, both hated and loved, and, to be fair, quite remarkable politician was born in New York, 1964, into a privileged upper middle class family. His father, Stanley, had a varied career working for the World Bank, and then as a senior Eurocrat living in Brussels. His five children were very studious and competitive with ‘Alex’ - he was known by his first name within his family - once expressing the wish to be ‘world king’. It seems that even then there were no limits to his ambition to achieve publicly acclaimed first rankings in everything he did. From Eton he moved on to Balliol College Oxford where he read classics and became President of the Union. He was sacked from his first job at The Times for making up a false quotation and then became the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Brussels where he often wrote articles about invented EU excesses which were eagerly lapped up back home by his euro-sceptic readers: this was a wave of dissent he would ride all the way into No 10. He became MP for Henley in 2001 while editing the Spectator 1999-2005. Have I Got News For You made Johnson something of a celebrity as the millennium passed and his recruitment of the celebrity culture to his cause has been a major factor in both the damage his scrapes have caused as well as his success. His long standing affair with a female columnist - one of the many he had while married with four children - led to his sacking from his shadow opposition role. He defied expectations in 2008 by winning the London mayoralty - quite a coup to win in a Labour city - and then a second term in 2012. This briefing goes on to analyse his role in the Brexit saga and his stewardship of the country during the corona-virus pandemic. Boris Johnson, Brexit and how his Embrace of it Opened for him the Door of 10 Downing St A story yet to be authoritatively confirmed, yet widely believed, is that in early 2016 Johnson had prepared two articles on the upcoming EU vote: one arguing for Remain and the other for Leave;1 he was merely waiting to see which way the wind was going to blow. Meanwhile, David Cameron, struggling to win major concessions from EU capitals before the 23rd June vote, fully expected his fellow old Etonian to support his stance which, despite a series of his own Euro-sceptical comments and 1 Arj Singh ‘Boris Johnson’s secret pro-EU article revealed expressing doubts over Brexit’, Independent, 15th October, 2016. 1 measures, was going to be firmly Remain. When Johnson finally came out for Leave along with probably the cleverest - though far from best liked Cabinet member - Michael Gove, Cameron was deeply disappointed: his highly competitive schoolmate had won an important point over him.2 Critics suggest Johnson was calculating he could surf into power on a wave of anti- European sentiment. His childhood ambition to be ‘world king’ had been replaced by the somewhat lesser but more realistic objective of being prime minister of the UK. When questioned on this he was vague but never denied this was what he wanted.3 That he eventually took a gamble which came good, should not blind us to the fact that Remain, at that time, seemed by far the most bankable cause in advance of the vote. It commanded the serried ranks of: a majority of MPs (mostly Tory of course but also a group of Labour ones, which included the hard left Jeremy Corbyn); UK business leaders; and the major part of the Establishment. Supporting Leave were: minorities within both main Parliamentary parties; a group of City financiers some of whom believed they could benefit from Brexit - for example Crispin Odey, close working partner of Leave supporter Jacob, Rees Mogg MP; the noisy red top tabloid s- The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express; plus the more sober voiced News International owned Times and the Tories ‘House’ broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph. Most commentators, certainly including myself, reckoned Remain would cruise home as in the 1975 referendum. However the surging form of the United Kingdom Independence Party, led by the irrepressibly buoyant Nigel Farage, suggested that ‘The People’s Army’ as he dubbed his followers, if suitably fed, nourished and led, might well create that huge politically rewarding wave for which Johnson craved. Against the odds Leave won but only narrowly 52%-48%. In the aftermath Cameron (hardly the person to now deliver Brexit) resigned and a leadership contest ensued. Johnson was thought to be favourite but his campaign manager, Gove, sensationally withdrew his support on launch day, shamelessly substituting his own candidature. After a rather farcical non-contest Theresa May emerged as PM to answer the 2015 vote’s ‘instruction’. She shocked again by making Johnson Foreign Secretary, a role in which he did not distinguish himself - some said he was the worst ever holder of the this senior post. Within Cabinet he became a firm opponent of the ‘soft’ Brexit May came to favour and in July 2018 resigned along with David Davis in opposition to Mrs May’s Withdrawal Bill. She tried three time to persuade the Commons to pass her deal but each time it was rejected by large margins. Eventually, in June 2019, she resigned and another contest was held. This time the two best contenders in the Tory MP’s rounds of voting were Johnson and Jeremy Hunt and their names went forward for a decision by the party membership. With Brexit the chief issue, the uniformly old, rich anti-EU and white Tory membership of some 160,000 voted in Johnson by a wide margin. Boris Johnson had achieved his ambition of becoming UK prime minister - what would he make of the role? One of his first decisions was to make the maverick Dominic Cummings, leader of the Leave campaign, his chief adviser, someone determined to upturn government decision-making and engineer his own kind of revolution. He was also a zealously convinced Leaver, who was probably responsible for: Johnson’s subsequent ruthless attempt to prorogue parliament to 2 Johnson was disappointed not to be awarded a first at Oxford, something Cameron had succeeded in achieving. 3 He often used the analogy of being prepared to pick up this ball should it ‘pop out of the scrum’. 2 prevent it frustrating the government’s plans to ‘Get Brexit Done’ (a measure deemed illegal by the Supreme Court); and his sacking of 21(some very distinguished) Tory MPs from the party - thereby destroying the political careers of most of them- who had dared to vote for a measure which would prevent a no deal exit from the EU when the transition period ended on 31st December, 2020. In November 2020 he was still trying to engineer an election which he thought he could win and needed to in order to break the stifling gridlock caused by Mrs May’s disastrous 2017 loss of majority. Initially the opposition parties, maybe reading the same polls as the Tories, resisted the idea but when the SNP and Lib Dems were offered a chance which both believed would benefit them, they went for it. This was a Tory ruse of a bill, amending the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act so that an election could take place within the specified 5 year period since the last election. Tempted by this poisoned chalice both parties drunk deeply, the SNP to emerge with enhanced numbers and the Lib Dems, who had absurdly hoped to form a government, to be crushed for the second successive election with its numbers reduced from 20 to a mere 11. Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, at first reluctant, had no choice but to support an election once his fellow opposition parties had made one inevitable. Johnson’s ‘Glorious’ Early Days as Prime Minister On 13th December Johnson would have allowed himself to add to the many congratulations he received, those of his own that he had, as promised: ‘Got Brexit Done’ (the Commons had passed the necessary vote for a 31st January departure); put Farage ‘back in his box’; and defeated the feared hard left potential of a Jeremy Corbyn government. Labour opponents might quibble about the manner in which these things had been achieved but few could deny their party had been hopelessly outplayed by the man they had long ridiculed as an Old Etonian buffoon. Indeed, for those who had followed his political story, with its many scrapes, accusations of racism and misogyny, serial philandering, ministerial incompetence, flagrant disloyalty and possible corruption, his final arrival at the door of Number 10 seemed like an impossible figment of Johnson’s imagination made real.
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