sign in sign up
<<
Home , Claire Fox, Evgeny Lebedev, Max Hastings, The Spectator

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, , 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 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 for making up a false quotation and then became ’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 1999-2005. 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 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 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 - , 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 ); UK business leaders; and the major part of . 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- , 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 Independence Party, led by the irrepressibly buoyant , 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 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 , 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. But made it, he had. As the new year of 2020 approached, with his enemies slain, a huge victory against the odds under his belt, as he stood on those Downing Street steps he was the master of all her surveyed.

But very soon all that was to change. Leaving the EU as January slipped away was another notch on the honours board of his political CV but even as he accustomed the political world to his new partner Carrie Symonds, already pregnant with his soon to be born son Wilfred, a possible nemesis arrived in the microscopic form of the corona virus, an unwanted gift from the Chinese city of Wuhan destined to terrorize the world and in less than a year, bring about the end of Johnson’s admirer (some even said mentor), Donald Trump. How would Johnson deal with it? This was an invisible enemy, immune to political speeches and manoeuvring, requiring patient, detailed resistance and the marshalling of the nation’s will and resources on a par with his hero Churchill’s challenge in the second world war.

Johnson and the Corona-virus

It was Johnson’s misfortune to arrive at the premiership at the same time as the CV pandemic. Gifted at campaigning - his extroverted nature can cut through to voters - his qualities as an executive have often been questioned. During a pandemic, as much as in wartime, meticulous attention to detail is a key requirement plus the ability to understand the scientific options available and to choose the right ones to lead his country back to normality. It has been by no means certain that his 3 Cabinet- the ‘worst for 36 years’ in the opinion of Churchill’s grand son- was up to the job.4 Especially targeted for criticism were (perhaps a little unfairly): the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock; (quite legitimately) the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson; the Home Secretary, and the Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick (who has been accused of corruption). Labour’s new leader was able to expose the government’s uneasy progress through his forensic deconstructions of Johnson at PMQs. The audience for these confrontations - even without a pandemic - are not large but they include Tory MPs who could not have missed his waffling attempts to respond to these uncomfortable inquisitions.

One of Starmer’s most telling criticisms has been that Johnson has over promised and under-delivered. He boasted that with our ‘wonderful NHS’ the UK was perfectly prepared for the virus but almost immediately problems arose : supplies of protective equipment proved dangerously lacking; Hospital patients were transferred to care homes without being checked for Covid thus allowing the virus to spread rapidly in that sector; and a much needed track and trace system was abandoned before it became effective and allowed to remain in that state for far too long.

Key dates in the Pandemic Crisis

19 March: Told the country the next 10 weeks could ‘turn the tide on this disease and send the virus packing’; 15 May: Told his MPs that ‘normality’ would return by the end of July; 17 July: Announced an easing of restrictions for ‘a significant return to normality’ by Christmas; 25 May: Cummings claims he drove to Barnard castle to ‘test his eyesight’. This incident, an apparently flagrant violation of pandemic regulations, caused a torrent of calls for Johnson’s chief aide to be sacked. When this was refused it was thought a reflection of how much the PM relied on this famously able adviser, to support his flailing government. The view that ‘there is one rule for them and another for us’ becomes implanted in public’s mind. 9 September: Announced that a ‘moonshot’ testing programme will enable everyone to test themselves and would ‘transform our lives’ plus ‘normality by Christmas’. 31 October: Called for a coming ‘together’ to fight this second wave’. Things will be very different ‘by spring’. Starmer’s call for immediate lockdown ignored. 2 November: ‘It will be all over by the spring’ says Johnson. New strain soon after overruns the capital. 8 December: Hancock tells Commons he has ‘high confidence that the summer of 2021 will be a bright one’. 30 December: Hancock says UK ‘is going to be out of this by the spring’ after approval of Astra-Zeneca vaccine. 5

Times’ Verdict: On 27th January, the Tory supporting Times, flayed the government’s failings, horrified by the 100,000 deaths caused by Covid 19, and judging that, despite the ‘recent achievement in delivering 6.5m vaccine jabs so far, the record spells failure.’ ‘The original sin of Britain’s crisis management was delay and it has persisted.’ Even after the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) raised the level of concern to ‘severe’… ‘It took another 11

4 Nicolas Soames, The Daily Mail, 10th August, 2020. 5 Tim Shipman ‘Crystal Balls-Up: the high hopes that fell flat’, Sunday Times 31st December 2020. 4 days for Boris Johnson to announce a national lockdown. The delay cost lives’. When the Cheltenham horse festival was allowed to proceed, ‘the corona-virus spread unchecked… Mr Johnson has embraced restrictions late and reluctantly and sometimes not at all… Border controls have been consistently laxer than in other countries. The requirement to wear a mask indoors in public spaces has not been strictly enforced… Medical staff did not know what lengths they were expected to go if they did not have the right equipment. Some were apparently told to hold their breath if they lacked medical grade face-masks.’ It continued: The government has often promised: ‘world beating’ advances, notably in test and trace capacity. Yet delivery has often been consistently woeful…’ The leader concluded that ‘It is not carping to ask what might have been done better’ (Times 2021).

January 2021: Despite promises of the vaccines, infections soared up beyond 60K a day and deaths sometimes were over 1000 a day. NHS is reported to be struggling to cope as ICU places are overflowing. Signs that public are not responding to new lockdown as they did in March 2020. Johnson’s government was also criticised for allowing contracts to be given to companies with known links to Tory MPs and appointments - like Dido Harding put in charge of the hugely expensive but dysfunctional test and trace system - which also reflected the widespread Tory ‘chumocracy’. Finally, Johnson’s decision to reduce the Overseas Aid budget from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% was seen as a betrayal of UK’s commitment to the world’s poor and sick.

The Trade Deal agreed 24th December: This deal had been languishing for much of the year, partly through the demands of the pandemic and also because Johnson refused to extend the UK’s transition period from the EU on 31st December. For preceding weeks Johnson, Gove and others had indicated a deal was far away - largely because of EU refusal to compromise - and the UK had better prepare for a No deal exit, which would not be a bad outcome but offer ‘wonderful’ opportunities. After much anxiety a deal was agreed and a period of triumphalism ensued and not just from Tories. ‘Boris has succeeded where all others failed’ wrote academic commentator, Mathew Goodwin, adding, ‘the declinists will carp but his voters will not forget this victory’.6 ’ main leader congratulated him thus:

‘The prime minister is often chided for lacking mastery of detail, but in these talks he has shown grip and genuine leadership.’ 7

Rafael Behr’s critique of the PM reflected a widely shared perception of his lack of consistency and poor decision-making. Behr focuses on Johnson’s ‘lethal procrastination’:

“Johnson’s technique for dealing with problems is to let them run out of control, building to a point of sufficient crisis that delay is no longer viable. That way the choice becomes perversely easier because there are fewer options left. Wait long enough and there might be only one…. He lets procrastination do the heavy lifting.

6 Article published in Unherd, 25th December, 2020. 7 Sunday Times 27th December 2020. 5 He can then tell himself (and his audience) that the final outcome, while not perfect, is the best available solution. And maybe it is. But only because it is so late in the day and all the better solutions have long since expired.”8

Alistair Campbell’s Critique, February 2020:

Mark Garnett rather ridicules Alistair Campbell’s attempt to criticise Johnson, in the wake of his February reshuffle for allowing an unelected special adviser, Dominic Cummings, the authority to threaten the civil service with a ‘hard rain’ of a serious shake-up, given the substantial amount of leeway Blair had given his Communications Director to exert authority over civil servants and to influence ministers.9

Conclusions: Pros and Cons of Boris Johnson as a politician

Pros a) Johnson has a combination of a British sense of humour and a classics dominated education which succeeds in being entertaining while, for his admirers, holding the promise of hidden talents. b) His charm is evidenced in his bumblingly self deprecating speaking style which, providing he can avoid his frequent scrapes goes down so well with voters of both parties. c) The above qualities enable him, as is often said and believed by Conservatives., to ‘reach parts of the electorate other Tories cannot reach’. d) When faced with the choice of Johnson or Corbyn December 2019, he was preferred by a big slice of voters in the traditional Labour ‘Red Wall’ northern strongholds who, perhaps did not perceive him as a traditional Tory. e) Most importantly, he seems to have a knack of somehow extracting victory from the jaws of defeat as the following examples demonstrate beyond contradiction.

§ Most commentators argued there was no chance of the EU negotiators re- opening the Withdrawal Deal agreed with Theresa May and even less of managing to agree a new deal where all the stratagems had apparently been tried and exhausted. Out of this he emerged with a deal. The DUP were thrown under a bus, admittedly but he calculated, correctly, that the party had minimal support in the wider United Kingdom.10

§ Few believed he could emerge from the gridlocked trade talks in late 2020 but, again, he did, by a whisker in terms of deadlines and was able to side- step the looming threat of a ‘No Deal’ exit.

§ During 2019 Nigel Farage’s UKIP had surged impressively: it won the most seats in the rearranged Euro-Elections in May which helped build up Nigel Farage as a major player in British politics and possibly even kingmaker of the next prime minister. By injecting energy into the fading Tory

8 Rafael Behr ‘Boris Johnson has a habit of delaying tough choices. In a pandemic, it’s lethal’, , 15th December 2020. 9 Garnett, op cit., p241. 10 See Mark Garnett’s insightful final chapter in his excellent 2021 book, The British Prime Minister in an Age of Upheaval’, page 223-251. See also a valuable reference book on British PMs: ,(2020) The Prime Ministers, Hodder and Stoughton. 6 government- in power since 2010 but only just after June 2017 - he convinced Tory voters who had defected to UKIP- later renamed The Brexit Party - to return home to a party which seemed totally committed to ‘Getting Brexit Done.’ Labour had hoped Farage would split the Conservative vote and provide them with a route to Number 10 but Johnson succeeded as he’d promised in ‘putting Farage back in his box’. § The above key quality was again exhibited when he extracted agreement on a Withdrawal Deal with the EU autumn 2019 only by betraying the party which had kept the Tories in power after its disastrous 2017 election result.

§ His 80 seat victory 12 December 2019 reflected his ownership of a true reading of voters minds. Lib Dems thought by promising to revoke Brexit, they would attract the majority now favouring Remain and maybe thereby win the election. Johnson and his chief adviser, Cummings, did not perceive any yearning for renewed EU membership, only a correctly observed weary desire by voters to end the unpleasant and incessant squabbling which had dominated politics since 24th June 2016.

Cons: a) His bumbling self deprecation can only take him so far and is best suited to campaigning. When mastery of detail and quick decision-making are required, as in dealing with a pandemic, his poor attention to detail - as exposed in PMQ jousts with his QC opponent- reflects a degree of serious incompetence. b) His tendency to exaggerate and tell outright lies - he was sacked twice for it – Times and - undermines faith in his ability to govern efficiently. c) His Lothario like record of infidelity to his partners and his wife gives rise to some suspicion that he can’t be trusted. who was the editor who sacked Boris once claimed he has totally unsuitable to become PM of the UK and promised to emigrate to Canada if he did: we’re still awaiting Max’s departure… d) It seems Johnson values loyalty over ability when Cabinet building - Gavin Williamson and Priti Patel, both loyal Brexiters were often cited as examples of both tendencies.` e) Despite his reputation as a witty speaker and his hero-worship of Churchill’s oratory, Johnson has not made a name as a speaker n the Commons. Garnett observes he has ‘made no attempts to build a parliamentary reputation’ and indeed, as a person he has few very close friends and is often described as a ‘loner’.11 f) His tendency to reward ‘chums’ can be seen as flagrant ‘cronyism’ as in his 16 appointments to the Lords December 2020. These included: former KGB spy Evgeny Lebedev, whose only apparent claim to his elevation was for hosting (allegedly quite wild) parties in his Italian villa which Johnson attended; Claire Fox, a former IRA defended and hard left luminary who defected to UKIP; and Ian Botham apparently (again) for merely being a loyal supporter of Brexit - it’s hard to see how any of his contributions could embellish the legislative process.12

11 Garnett, op cit, p235. 12 Ben Ellery and Patrick Maguire, ‘Boris Johnson ‘s peer appointments take Lords total to 830 despite Tory promise.’ The Times 23rd December, 2020. 7 g) His ‘skill set’ suits him, arguably, more to opposition than executive delivery. As mayor of London he delegated much of his work load to able deputies who perhaps disguised the full extent of this failing.

Final Words

This is clearly someone with many flaws and I’d imagine few would like to be in his family - his four children are said to be appalled by his behaviour. But his ruthless sole focus on his own political career, which - like Donald Trump - has shamelessly embraced the celebrity culture, has proved highly successful up until hijacked by the corona-virus. Without a doubt his conduct throughout the crisis has not been astute and his fundamental weaknesses as a politician have been cruelly exposed. But, as one columnist once wisely said: ‘Even when apparently down and out, you can never rule out Boris Johnson returning to the fray.’

Bill Jones January 2021

8