Clock ticking on Johnson’s departure?

Like Godot, will the Sue Gray report ever arrive? As of time of writing, PM Johnson is to receive a copy of her findings over the weekend, redacted to meet the requirements of the Metropolitan Police. To the cynic or realist, it has all the hallmarks of a stitch-up. The Downing Street Dodger can avoid any accusations of serious breaches of the Covid lockdown laws, while it’s unlikely that the Met will charge his administration with anything more than the equivalent of a parking fine. Yet, Johnson’s credibility, what there was of it, has become a reduced commodity with each revelation of a new secret party. To extend an analogy used throughout the whole sorry affair, you don’t need to wait for a report to see that he attended illegal gatherings, or that he tolerated and promoted a drinking culture that ended up blurring the lines between work and leisure.

Yet such has been his ability to avoid reckonings or bounce-back in the past, it would be a brave pundit to pick a month he’ll be gone by. Johnson has the ability to lie and lie again without shame, the mark of a man willing to say anything to keep his grip on power. He seems to crave that power to be popular though. Sure, he enjoys the money, the fame, and the women, but at heart, there’d seem to be an overwhelming insecurity about him. There’s the Eton swagger, but look below the surface, and what’s left? There’s a sense of profound arrested development to him, someone who’s never quite left the Bullingdon Club, a public school boy never at ease with the world outside, one who’s blasé about afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. His is a Wooster-ish existence, where empathy is in poor supply. He is, in short, the boy who’s never grown up.

The backbenchers beginning rebelling against the current mess aren’t the usual members of the awkward squad. David Davis’ Leo Amery moment was unexpected but not a huge surprise, considering his maverick position in the Tory party. But the speed at which some of the 2019 intake have lodged letters of no-confidence or briefed against the PM will have come as a shock to Johnson loyalists. Those MPs owe their positions as parliamentarians to Johnson, Cummings, and Brexit. For them to seek to overthrow the leader now is a sign of them being terrified of losing their seats. The recent defection of Christian Wakeford recalled the heady days of the 90s and beyond when Tory MPs switched to the safer pastures of New Labour. However, Wakeford’s departure did not see others following in his wake, and may even have temporarily bolstered Johnson’s defence. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune’; question is, is the tide in Johnson’s favour or not?

As for the Operation Save Big Dog, there are allegations of criminal blackmail now, and if the Met inquiry is worth the paper its’ written on, these will have to be taken very seriously indeed. Politics is unique in that you can legitimate threaten withholding promotion for disloyalty. In the corporate and public sector, there are defences against this, principally whistleblowing. Not in Westminster. Worse than this is the threat to reveal embarrassing or shameful episodes about an individual’s private life. Such conduct undoubtedly enters the criminal sphere and anyone making such a threat in any other walk of life would be at the very least dismissed, and possibly arrested and charged. Anyone behaving like this thinking they’re defending the interests of a sitting Prime Minister is behaving very stupidly.

Johnsonian democracy may well end as it started. A political party motivate by their own interests over those of the country deposes an unpopular leader for the flavor du jour only to rinse and repeat once the new leader becomes the leftovers. While this may be true of politics as a whole, it is never truer than in the case of the modern Conservative party. It’s a dismal practice that looks set to continue. Boris Johnson’s superpower used to be his shamelessness, now it will be his downfall. His ability to fake sincerity will do for him in the end.

Unfortunately, there’s slim hope that his successor will restore the probity that should be expected of public life. One Nation Toryism is moribund, and its representatives aren’t in the front rank for the succession stakes. While there’s First-Past-the-Post, someone like the current Prime Minister will thrive. But there are grounds for optimism that Starmer’s Labour party may offer a real fight at the next election. There is another way. Johnson’s time may be running out but, as commentators used to say about Liverpool FC in the 1980s, you write him off at your peril. Liverpool, if you need reminding, would wait 30 years for a title from 1990. All things must pass.