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One blunder away from oblivion. Ian Vogler - WPA Pool/Getty
When the Red Wall elected Boris Johnson, they thought they were getting an outsider who would take on the dreary consensus which has dominated Britain for 40 years. Instead, they got an establishment politician who spent much of the last year speaking to the values of metro cosmopolitans who represent neither a majority of the Conservative electorate nor the country.
The sheer scale of the disillusionment with Johnson’s premiership struck me last week as I gave various talks in Westminster and listened to MPs voicing their frustration with the direction of travel. On the surface, their demands are clear and specific. Those among the new intake — the 2019ers and Red Wallers — want Johnson’s advisors gone and No. 10 shaken up. They want the volume on Net Zero turned down and the volume on illegal migration turned up. They want Levelling-Up transformed from a narrow, hollow slogan into a serious, unifying and coherent project. And they want it done yesterday.
They also want Boris Johnson to govern as he campaigned; to spend more time outside of London, speaking on behalf of working people, taking on The Blob and offering policies that will resonate among the new Conservative voters, who not only gave him the Red Wall but lie at the heart of the realignment sweeping through the country. They complain about a Prime Minister whose talents as a campaigner and communicator are being squandered by advisors who neither understand this new conservatism nor the realignment on which it stands. This is compounded, they continue, by a Prime Minister who is simply too worried about being liked by the chattering classes and too reluctant to embrace the messaging and policies which would reinforce and retain his new electorate.
This disillusionment is reinforced by what many see as a deep generational and ideological rift inside the Conservative parliamentary party, a rift symbolised this week by one minister deriding Red Wallers as “a load of fucking nobodies”. One obvious question after the 2019 general election was how traditional True Blue free-traders would sit alongside a more blue-collar, one-nation conservatism. Fast forward to today and this rift is now on full display, reflected in the more than a few 2019ers who simply do not believe their southern, affluent and typically Oxbridge-educated colleagues are seriously invested in levelling-up the Red Wall, who they say resent the new focus on the north, who look at their party’s new blue-collar voters with a combination of bemusement and snobbery and who, they say, remain much too wedded to the old conservatism of the Eighties, failing to grasp that the rules of engagement amid the new, post-2016 politics are very different.
There are certainly Thatcherites among the Red Wallers, who look back rather than forward. But there are just as many who complain that the new, post-2016 conservatism cannot answer the questions thrown up by the realignment by turning the clock back 40 years. Thatcherism, one MP points out, represented a genuine, radical and counter-cultural pushback to the dominant zeitgeist at the time. Anchored in a specific philosophy, it offered one answer to a set of questions thrown up by the chaos, gridlock and failure of the Seventies. Today, both the questions and the answers are very different and require a different approach. We have transitioned into a politics where providing people with cultural freedom has become just as important as providing them with economic freedom — only the Conservative Party has failed to keep up.
This also finds its expression in an instinctive suspicion of whether Johnson’s leadership rivals really could maintain and continue the realignment. You do not have to travel far in Conservative circles to find people who will tell you that anybody can lead a realignment. Just put a Sunak or a Truss on top and throw the working-class northerners a bit of Red Meat. But this is a fundamental misread.
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SubscribeThose of us who look back to Thatcher are not looking for Thatcherism, we are desperate for leadership: a leader committed to the good of the whole country and unafraid to defy the slings and arrows of the self-serving elites.
I agree, although I believe the focus should be on reducing the size of the state. A large state requires large amounts of staff who’s primary goal is to create rules and spend huge amounts of money. That was my reason for leaving the EU and I see Johnson is not the person to lead us going forward.
Yes I remember Cameron’s “Bonfire of the Quangos” but ended up with even more.
Looking for leaders to emerge is futile. The way to do this is to not take anyone who emerges as wanting to govern us too seriously, but treat them as tools. A better way, is for us, the majority populace, to pick the best of what’s there, poor as it may be, use their vanity and their venality to annexe them, and drive them in the direction we want, by hanging the sword of Damocles over them – exactly as we did in the 2019 Euro elections, when The Brexit Party (who we were not in truth serious about, because TBP couldn’t have run a country, the level of talent was too low) got 31% and the Tories were kicked in the nuts with a mere 9% and Labor got I think 14%. The price of a few fancy curtains is completely inconsequential if we can coerce them into addressing the *real* challenges (as opposed to the fashion challenges) of the 21st century. As with May, if the parties and leaders won’t bend, they can be ditched. We are living through an inflection point which magnifies the power of ordinary people, and we should use it to the max while that lasts.
Where is this majority you refer to? When you take into account the people who do not vote then I think the Tory Party had about 31% of the total population supporting them. This is a minority government of the majority and they do not even care about the views of the minority that voted for them. We need less government so that we can be responsible for our lives.
To me, the 2019 General Election indicated a clear majority for the direction the UK should take. Nothing can be done about people who don’t vote, but we can legitimately make the working assumption that their votes will split in the same proportions as those who did vote (I am totally not a fan of the Aussie model where people are *forced* to vote even if it’s a null vote, on the threat of penalties – but the Aussies have gone from being a nation of rugged outdoors types, to complete wussies, in two decades flat). I also appreciate that this may make for example Scotland very unhappy because the internal majority in Scotland is different from the overall UK majority – but that is one of the compromises you accept with majoritarian rule.
Foircing people to vote is counter productive. It would be a wasted vote without some kind of faith and belief behind it. Totally irresponsible.
“but the Aussies have gone from being a nation of rugged outdoors types, to complete wussies,”
I would like to give two up votes for such an excellent turn of phrase. Wussies indeed. The Canadians, NZ, need to be added as well.
Couldn’t Lord Frost be persuaded to give up his title and find a safe seat?
Yeah. He is wasted in the House of Lords most of whom are a shambles.
I am so glad that May was ditched for the sake of our children. I hate my children having to study gay marriage and transgender, but I don’t see that the policy has changed much. Why can’t we be normal again?
Are you saying we need another insurgent party to the right to force the Tories in that direction ?
That may become necessary, to keep the Tories honest. I appreciate the words ‘Tories’ and ‘honest’ in the same sentence may jar a little – but that’s just Tories being Tories, we resignedly have to accept that’s the nature of the beast. It may be possible to shove the Westminster Tory establishment in the direction we want, by simply holding out the threat that we will withdraw support. However, if they judge we don’t have anywhere else to run, because we could never bring ourselves to vote LibDem or Labour, they could yet treat us with impunity. The worst mistake voters on the right can make is fragment their support, like the left spreads it’s vote across multiple little left parties. In 2019 The Brexit Party wheeze worked so well because the entire center right voting block switched en-mass to TBP, sending an unmistakable signal, like a flock of geese all simultaneously changing direction in exactly the same way as though impelled by some hidden telepathy.
Quite. More broadly Conservatism has two aims: holding the line and pushing back if the line is breached. Mrs Thatcher was not, therefore, a revolutionary but a counter revolutionary – and a very effective one, restoring freedom and the market where they had been badly corroded by the closed shop, nationalisation and wild cat strikes. In the same way, today’s Conservatives should be restoring freedom of conscience and speech, reducing the power of establishment opinion, and defeating the union barons of identity politics. Johnson is up for none of this, hoping to coast along as a fifties fop like Eden or Macmillan when the situation calls for someone convinced, proactive and principled. Quite simply he does not measure up. The article is also spot on when it points out how desperate the man is to regain the approval of the elites whom he has alienated through Brexit. That is why he is watering Brexit down. It also explains his ludicrous emphasis on “green” extremes. He is a needy, hollow careerist whose backbone is his latest wife and whose dearest wish is to garner the plaudits of his upper crust contemporaries. Mrs Thatcher was a steely, ideological warrior whose backbone was her own property. She was a dose of new medicine, a corrective; he is a dollop of old poison, a further indulgence: the very last thing we need.
I agree with much of what you say. But one thing Prime Minister Thatcher realised was that each time the left gain power they shift the lines to the left. Then when the right gain power they move the dial back to the right, but they never shift it back all the way. And thus over time the move is a drip drip leftwards. She was incredibly strong and through sheer determination and force of will, qualities that have not been shared by many politicians in modern times, did push the dial sufficiently rightward to allow our country regain its feet.
If Boris survives the next 7 days he should reflect , take critical stock of the advice around him, remember he has a huge majority, stop trying to appease the woke and get out there,away from the London swamp, and re-engage and listen those who swept him to power… its getting late but Labour has such a suicidal bent, that it is not too late.
Wishful thinking. I don’t think he possesses the necessary capabilities and I wonder if you really believe he does?
Wishful thinking. There is no coherent philosophy or conviction to make it work.
I will never again vote for Johnson, not while he is woke-appeasing his wife. His net zero virtue-signalling is absurd and ill-thought-out, and his rush to ban without proper debate or consultation anyone who wants to help a child who thinks he or she is trans, so that he, Johnson, can show off at the coming LGBTQ+++ conference, is obscene..
Any evidence for your claim that Johnson supports the trans activist lobby?
There’s some truth in this – but you don’t really understand conservatism if you believe their purpose is to ‘turn the dial back all the way’. If that were the case, they would still be supporting Crown and Church and opposing mass democracy.
Also, the Right’s weakness over decades is not to really understand social change, or generally support, and miss that the British people do not want as a whole for the clock to be turned back to, say, the 1950s.
The British people are understood it seems not very well by either main party, Labour for the reasons set out by many commentators on here, but many Conservatives also in their obsession about the size of the State or the NHS. You could add the overwhelming London focus of much government investment, especially in transport which even my (Tory) friends in the north routinely complain about. Of course scratch that itch only a little, and southern Tories start talking about taxes being raised disproportionately in London and the South East, which may be true but rather missed the point, and even almost implying that half our nation are scrounging ingrates!
Yah I agree, he is horrible, except for all the other options which are even worse.
This is no argument at all. It is saloon-bar cynicism in support of complacency. Could we have a worse PM than Johnson – tax hikes, net zero, nothing done about migration, little done to resist the onrush of left wing indoctrination? I put it to you that there is plenty of room for significant improvement on his abysmal performance. Of course, the anxiety which lurks behind this “faute de mieux” support of a busted flush concerns Brexit – but even here the mascot is selling his supporters out. The right’s problem has always been that it can scarcely be bothered to move – so contents itself with swamp dwellers like Johnson instead of manoeuvring towards something or someone better. It was said of the 1917 shenanigans in Russia that “the paralytics of the government are fighting the epileptics of the revolution”. In a nutshell. It is only on those rare occasions when the right actually stirs itself to go for something better than “Boris” that it wins. Incidentally, “Boris” was the name of one of the last premiers of authentic Russia, before the Marxist goons closed in.
It is an argument. People support Boris for a reason. Sometimes the best response is not to make a response. I think that is the case with covid for instance. And I think that was his inclination, but was it politically possible to do that when you are supporting NHS? I dont think so. Also, there is the argument, not Boris, so than what? I think the likely alternatives are the problem with not Boris.
Say what you ike about our political elites, there is no doubting that some of them are very clever indeed. If you had told me after the 2019 election win by Boris that within a year he’d be trussed up like a turkey, terrified of offending the chatterati and the Westminster village, I’d have laughed at you. Yet here we are: they’ve successfully spiked all the guns that a leader ought to have in Boris’s position.
John, I’m not sure how much comes from the influence of his advisors or whether his wife is a Trojan horse and sabotaging him where he’s weakest. I do hope he hasn’t duped us all by not really supporting our national desire for fiscal and sovereign independence.
I don’t think he duped anyone deliberately. I do believe it when commentators frequently describe Boris’s natural libertarian instincts. What I doubt is his commitment to his own principles when push comes to shove. This was not a problem Margaret Thatcher had, true, but it is pointless to keep mentioning Thatcher in this context because it’s 40 years later and the world is a different place.
What I do believe about Boris is that it is possible to keep him honest by making the consequences of betrayal constantly clear to him. Brexit got done because Nigel Farage threatened to destroy the Tories election prospects unless a proper deal was done with Brussels. The next election Richard Tice will be doing the same thing over Net Zero, probably.
yup, and terrified of offending his wife
Thatcher “defied the slings and arrows of the self-serving elites”? Not really. She kicked Freddie Laker, and cheap airfares for the masses, into the long grass when she wanted to sell British Airways.
Eric, I think the challenges are different now: more pressure can be applied through internet media and leaking is much easier. We have an enquiry to read but some of the attacks remind me of those instigated against Trump: entangling obfuscation to create trouble which in the end is shown to be confected. A leader has to use a 78 majority to force matters, but that means appealing to the whole party. Maybe a clear-out of advisors would help.
Good governance isnt so simple. You have to set the table, then show that you are stepping back and allow the forest of freedom grow the fruit of abundance.
Whereas totalitarians can show all that they have done for the people.
Its a hard thing to do.
Does anyone really buy any of this? A totally synthetic crisis, fuelled by a tsunami of bogus moral outrage, fanned by hysterical MSN hacks of every persuasion.
What ‘we’ want is Boris to start acting like a Tory Prime Minister with a 79 seat majority.
Firstly he must give his beloved, Princess Nut Nut “a smack in the mouth, and permanently shackle her to the ironing board”*. All this ridiculous Net Zero nonsense should then be jettisoned.
Then he should disband such pernicious organisations as the Parliamentary Women & Equalities Select Committee, the Commission for Racial Equality**, and repeal all those divisive ‘Hate Laws’ introduced by the late Blair- Brown creatures.
Finally he should recognise that as far as England is concerned the Union is over and start by getting rid of that perpetual embarrassment, otherwise known as Northern Ireland. Clement Attlee managed to ‘quit’ India in less that five months, surely Boris can do better?
(*Metaphorically speaking, for those of a nervous disposition.)
(** Or whatever it is called these days.)
“and permanently shackle her to the ironing board”
Hmm. I googled that – Ironing boards are an unexplored niche.
Not literally but she should keep her nose out of British politics. Nobody voted for her.
Don’t spoil my joke Tony.
And ditch the BBC license model. That would be talismanic.
Auntie is still trying to tell you how to think. I think the licence should be ditched sooner. They are nothing like the earlier days but have become part of the woke narrative.
He wont do any of that though will he? So he’s got to go and Conservative party members/voters have got to lobby hard for a replacement who will attempt to do some of this (and tackle illegal immigration head-on).
Yes, Boris isn’t capable of doing anything that isn’t all about Boris.
What if we get someone worse like another Cameron or May?
Ha ha. I’m stranded in deep water three miles from the coast, do I hold on to the piece of wood I’ve happened on to hoping for rescue, or swim for it? If the wood is ‘Boris’ it’s not even a choice.
I agree apart from Northern Ireland. We need them for the moral certainty they bring. Besides it would be very very wrong to do what you say. We need to honour all of Britain and especially NI because of the way we forced gay marriage onto them and mass abortion which they didn’t want.
Well said.
I certainly agree about the abortion & gay rights tosh, but having ‘worked’ in NI in the early 1970’s I now feel it is time to ‘bin’ the place.
The annual cost of our subsidy to NI is about £9Bn, almost as much as we paid in ‘tribute’ to the wretched EU.
Even now their fully subsided education system is still run on blatantly sectarian lines, paid for by us!
The current Lord Chief Justice of NI, one Siobhan Roisin Keegan QC*, incidentally the first woman ever to hold such a post, comes from an impeccable Fenian- Nationalist ( eg Catholic) background, but is that progress or political correctness gone mad?
They may have produced idiotic dreamers such as CS Lewis **but at the end of the day ‘they’ are an unnecessary & unaffordable indulgence. Enough is enough. English largesse must cease forthwith.
(* Born Newry, 1971.)
(**A classic “Proddy Dog” if the truth be known.)
A great comment and as Stephen Glover commented in the Mail that he misses the wise council of his ex wife Marina. The Wiles of his current Wife have overwhelmed him mentally and maybe physically. I recommend a daily dose of Bromide to snap him out of it.
I admire your confidence, but even Bromide in industrial quantities may not be enough sadly.
Admire the balls, or whatever body part is relevant here. The key phrase from this opinion piece was” the blob”.
We are still living in the legacy of Blair who stuffed every aspect of public life with socialists. Bought and paid for by the taxpayer. It would take a politician with ten times more drive than Margaret Thatcher to counter this and at least three terms. Even Thatcher lost her drive and bottled out of reforming local government in her final term. And the privatisation of the railways and post office was an unmitigated disaster.
So what can be done about “the blob” in all its insidious pervasive dominance?
Well, like Arya Stark, I have a list … but start with the idea that all employees must be properly performance managed in the same way that all ordinary employees are. Sack a few. Discipline many. I would introduce drug and alcohol testing in the civil service and all the Westminster Estate. That should weed out quite a few!
Boris is an exceptionally intelligent man. Now he must be brave and embrace the brutal reality of the structural changes required in all aspects of public life.
When I was a public servant I never forgot who paid my wages. Time to crack the whip. MPs will face their electorate in the near future. Public servants can fail, fail and fail again. Fall asleep at their desks, spend working hours on their Pelaton bikes, push urgent matters into the pending tray and apply for promotion. That’s where the “grip” must be exerted.
The ‘Covid Fiasco, plus a 79 seat majority should provide the catalyst for someone to clean out the ‘Augean Stables’, along the lines you suggest.
However despite Boris’s “exceptional intelligence “, I for one cannot see him in the role of the ‘Blob Slayer’, can you?
I think that he is exceptionally clever rather than ‘exceptionally intelligent.’ He seems rather lacking in intelligence.
It’s not a question of going back forty years to Mrs Thatcher’s time. Johnson’s heading all the way back to Callaghan’s (except that Callaghan, for all his faults as a PM, was a vastly more decent man than Johnson). Even Johnson’s true “Conservative” role-model is David Cameron, somebody who has barely ever set foot north of Brasenose College, except for that business with the huskies. Johnson panders to the same media influencers, within a tiny radius of Islington and, just like Cameron, seems barely aware that the rest of the country exists.
The author quotes (sadly, without a name) a minister who dismisses the North of England. Let’s face it: for Johnson’s coterie, the “North” starts about five hundred yards away and includes everything – and everyone – excluded from the golden circle.
Yes, Cameron was every bit as shallow and empty as Johnson; just oleaginous and porcine rather than scruffy and canine.
‘Floreat Etona’ indeed!
Wonderful adjectives. I’ve learned a new one! Then the canine and scruffy! I’ve never thought of the likeness to Dilyn before.
If Johnson’s role model is Cameron then lets finish it now.
Boris will not be saved by any shift in perspective, or by bringing order into the current chaos of Downing Street, or suddenly developing (and following through on) a coherent theory or policy framework. He was always just an unusual hairball who knows what to say at what time to get the people he needs on his side.
The only one who will save Boris’s bacon in the coming months will be Vladimir Putin. If the conflict in the Ukraine really does kick off, then removing Boris and having a leadership contest will be impossible (although that won’t stop his left liberal haters from going for it hammer and tongs anyway..).
Putin saves Johnson’s premiership – now how many of you had that on your 2022 bingo scorecard?
I was only thinking yesterday that Boris needs a “good” war to save his premiership. “Good” in the sense that he can appear Churchillian and provide international leadership of the sort Biden and the EU leadership seem incapable of providing. However, while it might be enough to keep him in No. 10, I doubt it would be enough to save his majority at the next General Election when the true costs of net zero are more visible and tax increases have had time to bite.
Well I doubt whether a so-called good war would save him, because in the context of Ukraine the options are all bad and all outcomes would be disastrous for the West if the West chose to interfere. We are not going to defeat the Russians in their own backyard, and further the UK, the US and NATO should stay out of conflicts they know nothing about and have no understanding of.
It’s worth noting that the Ukraine and Kiev are the birthplace of Russian civilization – recall the Ukrainians were called Rus in Viking times, and that’s the origin of the word Russia and Russian.
If NATO had never interfered and never encouraged Ukraine to apply for NATO membership, there never would have been a potential conflict.
Incidentally, it is also worth noting that many part of Ukraine are only Russian speaking – that includes places like Odessa for example. So this issue is vastly more complicated than the West would like to admit.
But remember we have Labour’s Manifesto for the next election to come… you know, tax this tax that, in fact tax everything so we can waste it on the ever growing State.
It reminds me of how Thatcher was saved by the Falklands. In the run-up to the war her popularity was at an all-time low. It seemed as if her project was falling apart.
I take your point Judy, but there is a difference: Boris won’t be winning any wars, and The Ukraine isn’t British territory.
We need to keep him for the time being simply because of Brexit. There are still a lot of Remainers in parliament who might vote for a Remainer and get us lumbered under the EU again.
And closer to home he has already raised the white flag to the Left Wing Institutions that now run this Country and continue to make a mockery of him.
I just wish Boris would do the honourable thing and leave office, but do you both honestly believe he’s spoiling for a war no one wants, that could have financial cost and pose an immediate threat to British citizens? Is the inference in this post that Thatcher concocted a war with the similarly unpopular Argentinian junta to keep their domestic detractors at bay? The next claim will be that war is a modern Western construct, like slavery.
I don’t think Boris wants a war. But, he could use a war to his short term advantage. And, as someone else has commented, calling for a vote of confidence during a crisis in Ukraine would not be a good move by his critics.
Wants a war with what. The Conservatives have now reduced our Army to 85,000. Due to the Benefits Industry overwhelming them it will continue to decline.
This is not true. Opinion polls had turned in her favour before the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. Her subsequent majority would not have been as big, but she would have won.
The oldest rule in the book, see Shakespeare 2 Henry IV (King Henry’s advice to his abut to become king son: ‘Therefore, my Harry, / Be it thy course to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels, that action hence borne out / May waste the memory of the former days.’
Not so sure on that front, If Ukraine kicks off, Boris’s enablement of two Russian Oligarchs and strong friendships with other Russians who have been generous to Tory Party coffers, could make him rather uncomfortable if the UK starts getting tough with Russians. Most of the Russians in the UK maintain cordial relations with the Russian Government for the sake of self preservation and keeping their assets in Russia.
The six things Boris needs to do to win
Stop illegal immigration in the Channel-not doing so is a clear sign of impotence.He will never win while it is happening. This requires Patel to be changed for a lawyers approach.
Throttle back the Green agenda so it stops increasing folks fuel bills
Stop his wife meddling in Government and appointments
Let Sunak do his tax cutting job.
Stop increasing the population
Appointment competence not courtiers
Nice article, but personally speaking I no longer buy into the great man or great woman narrative of history. True realignments have their sources deep in the “aggregate mind” of populations, and are not dependent on “triggers”, be they individuals or events, not Nigel Farage, not Nicola Sturgeon, not Churchill, not Hitler, not the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. An example of what I mean is the market crash of 2000 (dot com bust) which was demonstrably triggerless. Historians buy into the “triggers” view of history playing out, but to me, that is in effect retrofitting “reasons” after the fact, on some pattern that would have played out anyway. It would be as ludicrous as claiming that the 2008 crash wouldn’t have happened had not Lehman Brothers gone pop – an arse about face way of looking at events.
The point of Boris Johnson:
We need to keep Johnson until the election, since he will win it again, and replace him thereafter, purely to ensure we have 10 years outside the EU and Remainer efforts to rejoin are completely destroyed.
Everything else – energy, environmentalism, defence, even Covid, is just fluff compared to ensuring our escape from the EU is permanent.
The fear is that anyone who replaces him will water down Brexit.
Everything else is secondary.
That is the big danger. We still have a lot of Remainers in parliament. I know my MP is a Remainer but has to go along with Brexit. Perhaps Boris is the lesser evil for the time being?
Boris is up against it. The ‘it’ being the Blob, The Blob being the pervasive intellectual/lobbying/funding background; started in academia, lobbied for by (often) state funded charities. And for which there is no Conservative balance. Remember David Cameron and his bonfire of the QUANGOs?
Yes, the BBC and Guardian are part of the Blob, as are universities and most of the other media. It is not a coordinated leftwards push, but a lot of people and organisations travelling in the same direction.
Boris is going to need a bigger majority with many new MPs to push through changes – why do you think there is so much confected outrage about? It is to prevent Strong Boris happening.
Boris started with an 80 seat majority, now somewhat reduced. That’s enormous by the standards of post-war politics.
Why does he need a ‘bigger majority to push through changes’?
To overcome the resistance of the long established Conservative MPs who will resist change – they are already under the sway of the Blob and will dilute reform efforts.
I don’t think so. We are already at peak Tory majority. Where would the Johnsonian reinforcements come from? What policy is he unable to force over the line without them?
For example, he can’t block cross-channel migration because Macron, who despises him, will not oblige. How would even a hundred more blue seats change that?
With an 80 seat majority there is almost nothing Boris couldn’t push through the house right now. The fact that he hasn’t pushed through anything of value to his voters is indicative of the fact that he has chosen not to.
Since election he has no reason to pretend to be a Conservative anymore, and with Dom gone it is now most comfortable for him to please his wife and his peers by pursuing a lefty agenda with a strong green angle. Boris is a man who seeks personal comfort and aggrandisement above all.
By their fruits you shall know them. What have we seen? Brexit a very good fruit but what else? The continuation of LGBT flags over our embassies. The continuation of the Global Warming Deception etc. I cannot think of anything else he has done yet apart from continuing to confuse and depress our children in the schools with LGBT stuff which they certainly do not need? Personally I cannot think of anything positive he has done.
Yes and remind me how Dom was pushed. He wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea but he had a vision of bringing the Civil service into the 21st Century. As it is they are putting two fingers up to Johnson’s demands they return to work. He simply commands no respect as the Blob overwhelms him from all directions.
I couldn’t work out what the Blob referred to. I think it is those who are pushing a false narrative onto us.
The Blob defined: https://herbalis.substack.com/p/the-blob
Maybe he doesn’t want to push through changes. Maybe he wants to please most of the people all of the time.
For someone who was not long ago a climate sceptic and now a fully fledged tree hugger cum climate zealot courtesy of his Rasputin(e) wife, what does an 80 seat majority actually mean?
I don’t buy any of this, Boris’s problems arise from lack of discipline, dishonesty and laziness. He has no plan or vision for the future of the UK, just moves from one self inflicted crisis to another.
Of course he is not alone, only two post war PMs, in my view had a plan and with a vision of the UK’s future, Thatcher and Attlee, some could argue Ted Heath too but getting closer to Europe is not particularly fashionable nowadays. Boris had the people around him to win the election, but governing requires an entirely different set of skills which he has not and never will have. The article and the message board have a few comments that suggest the situation can be salvaged. I really ask can it be salvaged? Here we are 2 years and 2 months after the election and there is very little evidence of any real policy shift toward evening up the Red Wall seats. Just sleaze and shirking responsibilty. If Thatcher or for that matter Attlee promised that to woo voters giving them an 80 seat majority, work would have started in earnest, the day after the election. Yes Covid has caused havoc but a lot more could have been done. The massive winter of 1947 did not stop Attlee and the Miners Strike of 1984 did not stop Thatcher. Time to dig deep for someone who will kick backsides operate the Government with discipline via the Cabinet and be brutally honest about how we do it.
Can a strong Boris happen?
Boris has totally lost his way, and yet the solution is clear:
Make the most out of Brexit, robustly defend British history and heritage, deal effectively with illegal immigration, take on the radical progressive Left, deliver a serious strategy for levelling-up, and make the Conservative Party synonymous with low-tax government.
But who will do this?
The Conservatives are the only party that (in theory) stand for anything remotely like that …but they’ve been in power for 11 years and yet the direction of travel has remained the same, as though it had been Labour in charge all that time.
Currently Boris has an 80 SEAT majority, that is historic. The Cons could pass anything they wanted through the house. So we can only surmise that this administration (like the ones before it) don’t actually want to. The talk about small state, low tax, levelling up, making the most of Brexit — that’s all just for election time. Once they get into power they will rule according the principles of the ‘uniparty’, and we will get (no matter which clown car full of underachievers we elect) the same rubbish: more woke, more green extremism, more state, more tax, more intrusion into your life and family etc.
Currently it’s a 76 seat majority, because the Tories lost N. Staffs and also suffered a defection to the labour benches.
The fixed-term parliament act needs scrapping; that kept the Government in chains for the last few months of 2019.
The activist judiciary want sorting, especially the so-called Supreme Court.
The constituency boundaries need fixing, to end the inequity of different size voter populations.
There are lots of things for a good PM to do, but who is there?
Point taken re a handful of seats. I agree with you re the FTPA and the Supreme Court (thanks Blair!), etc.
I despair that this majority is being wasted on someone who has zero interest in doing anything of value for the country. Wasting this crucial moment, especially on the heels of leaving the EU, will only entrench the disillusionment among the voters and make it harder for a principled leader to ever again obtain such a powerful majority, should such a leader appear. Depressing.
I also agree that there is nobody presently in the wings that looks like a good choice. Politics has become a nasty, shouty, cess pit. And it doesn’t even pay well. No wonder it attracts chancers, cretins and underachievers. I’d happily halve the number of seats and double the pay, but the entirety of Parliament needs recycling — only a handful of the occupants have any fixed principles or common sense. The rest are an expensive waste of space.
Precicely. If in doubt do nought. We need to understand that there are still a majority of Remainers in the government. Getting rid of Boris would surely risk Brexit.
I have made this point before — if you accept that Boris is a charismatic frontman who enjoys dress-ups, then his life and career make a lot more sense. Libertarian, cogent, ‘writer Boris’ was when he was playing dress up in the ideas of his exceptionally intelligent (long-suffering) wife, Marina Wheeler. Then he saw an opportunity to dress up as a Brexiteer, and threw on the cloak of Leave and played in that for a while. When that wound down he saw a new cloak to try on — the extremely popular (populist?) ideas and positions of one Mr Dom Cummings.
Then Carrie happened. She didn’t like this scene of the play, so he threw off that costume and slipped into one more suited to his current circumstances. This is just Boris. Either they need to get a stronger person in to beat back Carrie’s influence and enthrall Boris to dress up once again, or we are b*ggered.
Johnson is a vacuous liar who simply wants to be PM for the sake if it.
Nice article but a huckster who got there with gags and slapstick, whose character is defined by vanity, greed and fear, was never going to deliver. The UK and England does not have a unity figure in any walk of life, least of all party politics. Name one. There is no British figure who does not ignite the ire of one side or the other. Maybe the boy who has slept in a tent in his garden for two years to raise money for a hospice. Flippant, but a measure of how far you need to retreat to find common ground.
However we can thank God that we do not have a Biden.
There are far too many ‘progressives’ within Johnson’s inner cabal; his wife and her various pals pushing the green agenda, net zero etc. are a toxic influence which needs to purged and put back in its box where it belongs before it’s too late.
Johnson has to accept that he needs a strong hand advising him on Conservative Policies. To that effect the strong hand needs to put his crazy wife and her team on the dole. Personally I don’t think he has the ability to do this for obvious reasons
Great article. The country is crying out for what it thought it was voting for. Deliver!
Lord Frost is our only hope. How can he be allowed to enter the competition for PM? Member of the HOL have been PM before, haven’t they?
He has to be chucked out for some reason. He can’t just drop it like hereditary peers Wedgewood Benn and Douglas Home
The 2014 House of Lords Reform Act made it possible for life peers to resign from the House of Lords, though not (curiously) to disclaim their peerage. I’m unclear as to whether that would enable a life peer to stand for election to the Commons – is it membership of the HoL which disbars them, or the mere fact of being a peer? One for the constitutional experts, I suspect!
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing (but pulling other people down – my parentheses) – G B SHAW.
Covid laid him low. Both his illness and the deafening caterwauling which surrounded it. If he’d not locked the country down Starmer would have been all over him as a granny killer. These people in dinghies are human beings, we can’t just drown them or feed them bread and water when they land. I blame Macron and his EU mates, they could be arresting the enablers and providers of inflatables and ripping the immigrants off.
Boris seems to have few friends. I’m sticking by him if only to stand against the vipers he works with and the armchair warriors, so spiteful they need to take a look at themselves. I speak as an Englishman not for those devolved quislings in the outlying parish councils of Scotland and Wales.
As for net zero. I hate it, could give chapter and verse why it’s wrong headed but it’s in vogue, appeals to the young and don’t the Greens and Labour love sucking up to that demographic.
I don’t even understand what the re-alignment is. Re-alignment to gay marriage or transgender? The truth is usually simple and we are not seeing it. Everyone knows what honesty looks like and what is right but if people do not want that where is the hope? I agree with a Zero Carbon pipe dream at the expense of financial survival. What a cost this is and may not even be right. Surely the plants and the trees need carbon to survive. I am suspicious about the science personally and mistrust it. I think it is another form of fear mongering. I hear gas and electricity bills will virtually double shortly, and petrol is much weaker with the same price not getting you as far. I am reading the Global Warming Deception and am tending to agree with it. What kind of leadership flys an LGBT flag over all British Embassies in the world? We are becoming a laughing stock with no moral compass.
Thoroughly good assessment Matthew as usual. Have you ever thought of going into politics I’d certainly vote for you! I also agree with some of the comments made about BJ being distracted by ah umm Mrs Johnson and her metropolitan friends etc – he seems to have been hog tied by them! Moving HOC and the Lords to York or Leeds would sort it out as it’s not easy at the weekends to get back to the ‘Cotswolds’ from there! Perhaps it’s just not possible for the traditional Conservative party to represent Blue labour/ Blue Conservative voters after all.
Sunak, Truss, Rees-Mogg, Kwarteng must be the key management future… then bin all the intra M25 ” heome ceounties” terylene ” toylits” like Shapps and Raab, and form an alliance with The Reform Party, and make India and Israel our key allies…. and make GB a Liechtenstein model tax haven, with the restoration of banking/asset management secrecy….. and just watch cash, investment and businesses flood in, alongside Treasury revenue… job done
Rees-Mogg should be binned too. Arrogant self serving Etonian too.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. He is one of the few who stand for what is right and has no woke in him at all. He would be a great loss to our government. He may be an Etonian but is certainly not self serving.
Maybe we should vote for you Nicky?
I’m wondering could it be that Boris Johnson doesn’t like not being liked? He seems content to bumble around treading apologetically on people’s toes with no clear idea of what he’s doing or what he stands for.
There are similar rumblings here in the US about the leadership of the Republican Party. That is to say questions about Kevin McCarthy, the representative from Silicon Valley, in the House; Mitch McConnell, the puppet of globalist Free Traders, in the Senate; and Trump, the vaccine fanatic with his entirely too naïve, too ignorant and too egocentric approach to everything.
There is one short answer to the rhetorical question: the point of Boris Johnson is to keep the Tories being electable. Given that failure in this respect hands power to the rabble occupying the Left in England and nationalists in Wales and Scotland, that’s a pretty good reason for Boris Johnson to remain where he is.
He’s terrified of upsetting Benedict Cumberbatch , whereas he should be trying to get in with Morrissey
The only reason why Boris Johnson managed to win Hartlepool is because the byelection was in the wake of the successful vaccine rollout. It has been all downhill since then!
https://order-order.com/2022/01/25/heseltine-boris-leaving-would-re-open-brexit/
Professor Goodwin misses a fundamental point. The Red Wall voter likes his leader to be a straight forward honest guy. Johnson doesn’t even know when he’s being, shall we say, a stranger to the truth. You can’t trust a dishonest rogue. That is why I have abandoned him, and you can’t get more red wall than being born in Wigan and spending my working life serving in a Regiment that recruited principally from Middlesbrough
Rishi wears £1300 suits?I don’t think so – £4-5,000 just about covers it in Savile Row.
Along with other issues noted here, in order to retain, or indeed increase the Tory red wall vote, people living there need to see an improvement in both employment levels and the standard of work available. There’s a reason why I and few of my school friends live where we grew up: industry declined and left and, as a consequence, the area now only exports people. The population has declined by a third in the major town.
With three years to go until an election, I don’t see enough time for meaningful progress; people still living there and in similar places in the north and midlands will not have better prospects than the dismal ones they have had for the past 30 years.
To understand your choice of leader you need to examine your own hearts. You are concerned for your own survival and the survival of your beloved country. You are blind to the reality of ecological overshoot that is destroying our eco-systems. You are blind to the fact that the only way forward for humanity is a globally concerted effort to downsize our operation before we are overwhelmed by the chaos of existential catastrophe. Over 50 years ago we started exceeding Earth’s biocapacity, and yet we are still in denial that overconsumption and overpopulation will soon drown us all. The response to COVID was simply an exercise in rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. Until the general public realise that we ourselves are the ecological asteroid, we shall be unable to select a suitable leader.
Hmmmm. Why are they complaining? They have hitched their wagons to his clapped-out chariot. They voted for brexit and Johnson: they were warned loud and long. Why are they surprised?
You can warn people all you like, but the option of Johnson, Hancock, Raab et al., as dreadful as they may be, pales into insignificance when the alternative is Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbot running the country.
Or a fake Brexiteer who is really a Remainer.
Yes a history lesson from 2019, but January 2022 Corbyn is suspended from he Labour Party and neither McDonnell and Abbot are in the Shadow Cabinet or are ever likely to be in the future.
There are no benefits from Brexit for the Red Wall. And levelling up isn’t helped by shrinking your economy by £40 billion a year. We are now finding out that blue passports, Union Flags and the national anthem playing at 5:59 doesn’t put food on the table. Who’d thought? But it was the will of the people and all that.