Is Boris Johnson Doomed?
It's worth noting a few things. Unlike the situation facing his precarious predecessor, the Tory wagons aren't circling a beleaguered leadership. It's tempting to read things into the quiet disappearance of Rishi Sunak from the scene, but this is hardly unusual for him. Of course he'll want to avoid association with the corrupting stench wafting about Johnson's administration, but this isn't indicative of a plot. Nor is anyone apart from the new Tory backbenchers out to make life hard for the Prime Minister. Therefore, while Johnson isn't loved by his MPs his position in the party can't be described as weak. And what determines "weakness" is tied to poll ratings, which leads to a further question: is Johnson's position recoverable?
Time for a trip down memory lane with visits to Thatcher's, Major's, and Brown's polling. From the 1987 election, the Tories led more often than not up until summer 1989. After then the polls slowly widened until the point Neil Kinnock and friends were posting leads in excess of 20 points. The only time Thatcher's Tories enjoyed a poll lead again was after she had announced her intention to resign and John Major was poised to take over. For Thatcher, there wasn't just one thing that did her in. The Poll Tax certainly damaged her a great deal, particularly among the layer of working class voters she had won over with bargain basement council houses and cheap mortgages, but there were other things too. By this time negative equity was starting to bite, along with a slowing economy, and examples then (as now) of Tory corruption and sleaze. It was ructions over Europe that brought things to a head. Obviously, Thatcher would have seen off Geoffrey Howe and the subsequent leadership election if it weren't for these failures hanging like a millstone around her neck. Her defenestration was a process and made inevitable by decisions she didn't need to make.
Major met the same fate. With a promise to abolish the Poll Tax and a more emollient style than Thatcher's brash bullishness, the Tory polling position immediately recovered once he took over. Despite presiding over the initial stages of the recession, throughout 1991 neither party could establish lasting poll leads and it remained this way right until the election, which saw Major win a new majority as well as the highest number of votes ever cast. Legend then has it that Black Wednesday, the day the UK humiliatingly crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, destroyed the Tory reputation for economic competence and from that point they were doomed. True, the polls did begin their decisive swing away, but according to Major himself recovery was decisively set back by the announcement of Michael Heseltine's pits closure programme, which came across as overly vindictive. And the later intention to introduce VAT on pensioners' fuel bills. This triple whammy ensured a slippage became a rout, reinforced by a never-ending parade of delicious Tory scandal, humiliating by-election defeats, and infighting over Europe. Funny how someone presiding over the most egregious sleaze and corruption is, today, a pin-up for many liberals.
And then Gordon Brown. This was a curious one because it appears his fateful misstep was the election that never was in Autumn 2007. In the BBC's The New Labour Revolution, Brown adamantly denied he was never going to call an early election - his mistake was to allow speculation to get out of hand, to the point a couple of unions and the party itself was put on campaign footing. When he finally ruled an election out, the poll slippage began and only widened over time - with the exception of the response to the 2008 crash and the lead up to the election itself. Why did this prove fatal? The point is it didn't have to. The most precious commodity for a government is its authority, a point Boris Johnson understands very well, and one that led him into his current difficulties. Brown's apparent dithering wounded his government, and the Tories looked credible with a blue-blooded adman at the helm to the Tory-curious voter. But it might have been reversed, but for the abolition of the 10p income tax rate, continuity New Labour in most respects, and a general malaise of tired ineptitude. Perhaps a more decisive policy shift once Brown had taken over might have saved his premiership and reversed the polls, but like his predecessors he compounded his errors and the great politics dustbin awaited.
It has been a mystery to many how Johnson has been left largely unscathed by the Brexit balls up, the Covid catastrophe, Dominic Cummings, and the egregious stupidity, not to mention incompetence, of his government. A friendly press only goes so far, and so we must consider the Tories' adroit politics on matters pandemic, and the usual divide and rule for the rest. But a camel can only bear so much, and a government straining under such weighty baggage is vulnerable to any number of straws. And this one, the reality of Tory corruption, was avoidable had Johnson chosen not to make a stand on it. It's not just the substance of the corruption either, the arrogance that came with it inadvertently knocked a few chunks out of the only blue wall that matters: the Tory press. With Keir Starmer now considered a safe pair of hands for the bourgeois interest, it's safe to clip Johnson's wings, which they're doing with alacrity. IDS, Javid, and now Jacob Rees-Mogg have serious questions to answer. As the scandal rumbles on any immediate recovery seems unlikely.
But is this the dam failure through which the 2023/24 election hopes flood out? Nothing is inevitable in politics, but it is possible the corruption charges could change the framing of the Tory record up until now, undoing all the work of the last two years. And there's more. There are signs inflation is edging up and with it the chance of rising interest rates. If there is a cold snap, high energy prices and lack of gas storage capacity - thanks to Tory sell offs - could result in winter fuel shortages and pensioners freezing in their homes. And further down the line there's the National Insurance increase to look forward to, and a possible, unwinnable trade war with the EU as well. Johnson is a proven slippery customer, but grease does not counteract gravity and at last his misdeeds are pulling him down. It's too early to say if this is a turning point in his political fortunes, but if the past is anything to go by the doom could well be upon him.
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