If the opposition manages to sustain a good attack line, this will be the end for Johnson. It is significantly more important than the fact that the Prime Minister probably shouldn’t have attended a party. It’s the fact that there were countless mistakes – if you can call them mistakes – caused by a culture of lying, arrogance, and refusal to follow the law. Any decent Prime Minister would have said “I should not have done this and I will step down” for the sake of the country. Any bad Prime Minister would have done the same but for their party, similar to Matt Hancock. Johnson is neither of those, and that’s what makes him so embarrassing.
There are three options for the Conservatives in the next election, likely to be in 2023 or 2024. Boris Johnson could stay leader and there could be too few rebellions to trigger a vote of no confidence within the Conservative Party, which isn’t unlikely given that Labour’s constant infighting over the last couple of years has made them look incredibly weak and divided, and the Conservatives don’t want the same fate. Boris Johnson expelled all MPs that did not agree with him on the issue of Brexit, as unity was so important to the party – so don’t be surprised if the Tories don’t rebel. If Johnson does stay leader, the opposition parties and hopefully the media will have a fantastic opportunity for some good old fashioned character assassination. Is the person who couldn’t follow his own rules and couldn’t be honest about it the person you want leading you through the next crisis, and can you trust them to make good decisions on behalf of the country when they consider themselves exempt?
The second option is that Boris Johnson is replaced as Prime Minister. I consider this the most likely. Potential candidates for his replacement will vote for replacing him but only if they believe it is likely to pass, given their careerist goals but also that they will want to stand on a platform, both internally and nationally, that they’re not like Johnson, whilst seeking to balance this with being supportive of a government which they want to look successful. Their electoral chances will be ruined if the front bench votes against Johnson who survives the vote. If Johnson is replaced as Prime Minsiter, Labour also have a fantastic opportunity for campaigning against the new leader: “In 2015, the country voted Cameron and got May. In 2017, the country voted May and got Johnson. In 2019, the country voted Johnson and got Sunak/Truss/Patel. They can’t trust that a Conservative Prime Minister is up for the job.” They’ll also get the chance to point out that many current Tory MPs will have supported Johnson as a vote of no confidence will force them to pick a side or abstain, and that there’s nothing stopping a party with such a corrupt culture from replacing the new PM two years down the line with someone more corrupt as happened with Johnson replacing May. It’ll be an attack on the party which supported Johnson so much and the risks re-electing that party brings with it, rather than an attack on the new leader.
I believe this will happen before the second half of 2022 due to the process involved. A Parliamentary vote of no confidence (which triggers a general election if no new government is formed within 14 days) won’t pass against Johnson if it didn’t pass against May, and the Tories would struggle to find a coherent leader in time for the 14 day general election leaving Boris Johnson as their candidate. This means it would have to be done through a Conservative Party vote of no confidence, where enough Conservative MPs (15%, currently 55 MPs) must write to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee to ask for such a vote. MPs are only going to write at such a time when they believe the party to be at risk because of the leader, and trailing in polls is not enough to cause this. If Johnson survives the local elections in 2022, it means the scandals have passed without enough outrage from Tory MPs to remove him and they won’t remove him with no new significant scandal. In other words – this set of scandals will end him quickly with the help of the North Shropshire by-election this Thursday and potentially the 2022 local elections, or it won’t end him at all.
The third option probably looks a bit more appealing to a lot of senior Tories – keep the government looking strong as long as possible without ousting Johnson as Prime Minister, but standing a new leadership candidate in the 2023/24 election. On the face of it, this looks good: suppress the scandals as much as possible, say you’re delivering on the people’s priorities instead of playing politics, and dump the liability without making a big deal out of it in the middle of a term. However, this raises problems for the next leader. Any attacks on Johnson can then be carried out on the party as a whole. The leader will be forced into criticising Johnson after standing by him for years, or will appear soft on Johnson’s corruption when it will likely be one of the main talking points of the next election. And this won’t just be a problem that the leader faces – the entire party will be accused of standing by a corrupt leader until it’s elecorally convenient for them, and it will be hard for them to wiggle out of this one.
Whichever of the three options happens, it could spell significant danger for the Conservatives at the next election as Starmer’s blandness turns into his biggest asset. It just relies on Labour running a good campaign against the Tories and knowing that it’s an election which will be won on attack, rather than left wing policy. Once Labour have a term proving themselves as competent governors once again, they can use the following election to stand on popular left-wing platforms such as renationalisation.
Lewis Compton 