The beginning of the end

It all seems to be coming apart. The illegal party held in No10 and the ensuing resignation of the PM’s spokeswoman Allegra Stratton comes on top of the disastrous revelations about Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which in turn had followed the equally disgraceful attempt to bend Parliamentary rules to save the Conservative MP Owen Paterson.

But when it comes to Johnson, so many journalistic cases have already been made for the prosecution that there is almost no need to write another. I would wager that, by now, everyone has made up their mind about this PM. That includes his own MPs. The former Government Chief Whip, Mark Harper was pretty clear on Twitter last night: “From the Paterson case to the Christmas parties… the credibility of those at the very top has been seriously damaged.” Turning to the government’s new Covid restrictions, he asked, rhetorically, “Why should people listen to the Prime Minister’s instructions to follow the rules when people inside Number 10 Downing Street don’t do so?”

When Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, went to the Commons to argue in favour of those Covid restrictions, Tory MPs shouted “resign” at him. On the subject of resignation, a Sevanta ComRes poll last night found that 54 per cent of people thought Boris Johnson should step down over the No10 Christmas Party scandal.

Watching The Prime Minister on Wednesday at the Despatch Box during Prime Minister’s Questions, he looked defeated. Worn out. And as the questions piled up on top of him about illegal parties at No10, questions that he was unable to answer in any meaningful way, and as the leader of the SNP called on him to resign, and when one of his own backbenchers stood to warn Johnson not to use new Covid restrictions as a “diversionary tactic” to direct attention away from the scandal currently engulfing him, and when Keir Starmer told the Commons that “even Ant and Dec were ahead of the Prime Minister”, and the chamber laughed at Johnson, and when Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives said that if Johnson had misled the house he should resign, for the first time I began to feel sorry for him.

It was an odd moment. Perhaps it was something to do with the confused look on the Prime Minister’s face. He holds the position that he’s craved his entire adult life and now, having got it, he turns out to be no good at it. That realisation must be crushing for the Prime Minister, a man weighed down by egotism, by the conviction that he is the brightest and the best. But he has learned again the old lesson that the skills required to obtain power are not the same ones needed to exercise it.

Think back over his time in office — everything he has done has been a flat-out disaster, with the exception of the policies he’s delegated. Sunak and the Treasury came up with the furlough scheme. The vaccine roll-out was overseen by Kate Bingham and the drugs themselves were developed by the private sector. Johnson himself has achieved nothing. The wild fantasy of a bridge across the Irish Sea has been dismissed. The EU deal Johnson himself negotiated was so flawed that he now refuses to accept it. His levelling up policies have gone nowhere. His diplomatic skills have resulted in a complete collapse of relations with France, and the cold shoulder from the White House, whose priority is maintaining the stability of the Good Friday Agreement, a political settlement of epochal significance which Johnson seems more than happy to undermine for his own, short-term ends.

Boris Johnson is not very good at politics — and by “politics” I mean the governing part, rather than the scheming, power-grabbing part. The former is by far the more important skill. He does not possess it. We can see that now. He probably can too. And I say this not out of malice, but with enormous regret. Because Johnson’s failures are our country’s failures, both domestically and internationally.

Johnson wanted to be synonymous with Britain’s escape from under the European yoke, and to oversee our emergence onto the global scene as a major trading, economic and diplomatic power. But it has not worked out that way. Readers can see for themselves how successful Johnson has been. They can see what Britain’s international face has become. He came to power promising a seat at the top table. We ended up with a border down the Irish Sea and quarrels with the French about fish.

It’s all such a shame — tragic, really. A man’s ambitions have once more far exceeded his abilities. To watch it is almost unbearable, no matter what you think of him. But worse than this, Johnson, because he is Prime Minister, takes us down with him. His failures are our failures. We live with the consequences of his actions. More than this, his diplomacy re-shapes Britain’s character on the international stage. His character and his persistent failures form the basis of how others see us. When people look at Britain, it is Johnson’s face that they see.

The classicist who would be Caesar has ended up being laughed at in the Commons and mocked by the presenters of “I’m a Celebrity”. His problems now extend far beyond the Westminster bubble. The Conservative Party is very good at getting rid of unwanted leaders. There is no doubt that Tory activists and MPs will be getting itchy. The letters page in today’s Daily Telegraph bears the headline: “Lifelong Tories look on in horror”.

It will take time. These things always do. But there is no doubting it now — this is the beginning of the end for Boris Johnson.