It was a golden opportunity to remove the wretched Boris Johnson from office, a free hit that might have offered some hope to this sorry, failing, weirdly purposeless excuse for a government.
The Conservative Party flunked it.
In the end, 211 Tory MPs voted to keep Johnson as party leader and prime minister, with 148 voting for his removal. It was a significantly bigger rebellion than expected, with only 59% of MPs backing him, compared to the 63% who supported Theresa May in similar circumstances in 2018.
But, still: for all his arrogant rule-breaking and entitled disregard for convention, his boozy partying while people were forced to watch relatives die from distance, his out-of-control and ineffective Downing Street, his incoherent policy agenda and his deliberately divisive politicking, Johnson is, a majority of Tory MPs have told us, the absolute best their party can do.
To be clear, this is not where the country is: the electorate wants him gone. After the Sue Gray report into partygate was published in May, 59% of those polled said he should resign. Johnson was roundly booed during his appearances at the jubilee, a rare note of negativity in an otherwise happy weekend of national unity.
On Monday, a poll for the Daily Telegraph found just one in five voters have a positive opinion of Johnson, while 63% have a negative view. Britons, too long starved of dignity and competence at the top of government, are looking for change, for better. Their political masters have responded with deaf ears and sullen glares.
You’d have to be foolhardily optimistic to bet that Johnson has any chance of turning these disastrous numbers around before the next election. Hoping he will somehow stay out of trouble is like expecting a new puppy not to urinate on the floor – nature will take its inevitable course.
It is all a game of “World King” gone horribly wrong, a man whose ego has driven him higher than his capabilities should have allowed. In his desperate scrabbling for survival he has contaminated and warped everything and everyone he has touched, making us feel worse about our country and about ourselves. One must hope that, in due course, an electoral hiding is heading the Conservatives’ way – it will be richly deserved.
A permanent Tory rebellion is now baked in
Johnson won relatively narrowly last night, and he was only saved by the weakest of his MPs: those few hardliners who remain pathetically grateful for his delivery of Brexit, those trying to appease their still-loyal constituency associations, and those members of the payroll vote who know they would have little chance of a job under any predecessor.
The personal tragedy of all this need not concern us, but the national one should
He will continue, but a permanent Tory rebellion is now baked in. Words have been spoken that cannot be unsaid, enmities formed that will never be cancelled.
Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has rediscovered his moral compass and voted for Johnson to go. His fellow Scottish MP John Lamont quit as PPS to the foreign secretary so he could do the same. Johnson’s own anti-corruption czar, MP John Penrose, announced his resignation over the PM’s refusal to take responsibility for having broken the law during the Covid restrictions.
Having listened closely to people in Moray who re-elected me and people across Scotland, tonight I will support the motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/YXE0rEyvsn
— Douglas Ross MP MSP (@Douglas4Moray) June 6, 2022
Jesse Norman, the most courteous and considered of MPs, issued a stingingly angry letter explaining why he could no longer support the prime minister. Johnson’s handling of partygate had been “grotesque” and his breach of the Northern Ireland protocol was “very damaging, politically foolhardy and almost certainly illegal”. The PM was putting the Union “gravely at risk”, while the Rwanda refugee policy was “ugly and likely to be counterproductive”.
“You are simply seeking to campaign, to keep changing the subject and to create political and cultural dividing lines mainly for your advantage, at a time when the economy is struggling, inflation is soaring and growth is anaemic at best,” wrote Norman. “For you to prolong this charade by remaining in office not only insults the electorate… it makes a decisive change of government at the next election much more likely.”
Rumbled but not humbled
The personal tragedy of all this need not concern us, but the national one should. Despite its 80-seat majority, the government is a mess – staggering around blindly at a time when the country, reeling from a horrendous cost of living crisis and the ongoing consequences of Covid, needs clear direction and common purpose. It has neither, and the most needy among us will suffer as a result.
Johnson will, for now at least, swagger on. He was still at his cocky worst on Monday, telling Tory MPs while his fate hung in the balance that he would “do it again” when it came to attending staff parties during lockdown.
He will continue to have his cake and eat it, rumbled but not humbled, until he is stopped. It is, rather, us who are humbled – Britain is diminished by every single day he remains in office.
Chris Deerin is a leading journalist and commentator who heads independent, non-party think tank, Reform Scotland
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