On Calling for Johnson's Resignation
Given his record in office Johnson ought to be grateful he's only facing calls for his resignation and not arrest and prosecution, but resign he most assuredly should. But why? If Johnson goes, the Tories are still in power. His possible successors, whether the current frontrunners or some other horror are going to carry on with the same policies. They will oversee tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and even more incidences of long-term illness, and like Johnson are going to try their damnedest to ensure our people pay the cost of their failures. Is calling for the Prime Minister's resignation a waste of time?
No. The class character of the Tories must be kept in mind, as well as the limitations of calling for a change of personnel. But pressing the resignation button is politically useful if the timing is right. First, when the majority of the public - according to recent polling - think Johnson should stand down, it offers a door through which wider political arguments can step through. For instance, because Johnson's lying about his Christmas parties matters because he's thumbing his nose at sacrifices everyone else had to make, other aspects of the government's handling of the crisis - the deaths, the corruption, which remain largely abstract for most - are open to being looked at afresh. As well as who is making this call.
The second is the importance of the unwritten moral codes and their effects on ministerial behaviour. This is a bit like asking "what do you think of parliamentary standards?" and the reply coming back "They sound like a good idea." Easy to scoff at, but Johnson has played fast and loose with the Ministerial Code since coming to office and has repeatedly protected his lackeys from accountability, in outside of parliament. It's only when the media heat on one of Johnson's subordinates has got too much that they've been let go, as was the case with Matt Hancock. Forcing Johnson's resignation establishes the importance of probity in public life after its erosion over decades.
This doesn't mean governments of the past were honourable and gentlemanly affairs, but the strength of the unwritten rules then ensured there were costs attached to decisions, blunders, and getting caught with one's hand in the till. In other words, standards of decency and constraints make it more difficult for ministers to bulldoze through without regard to the law, conflicts of interest, and their oft-noted hypocrisies. With a Tory government for whom corruption is second nature, an affirmation of standards through a Johnson resignation opens up scrutiny of their recent record, raise expectations about the conduct of senior politicians, and might stay the hand of Johnson's successor when it comes to future murky deeds.
This doesn't mean abandoning class politics or class analysis for the constitutional fetishisms characteristics of "good Tories" and their liberal retinues, but making it more difficult for bourgeois politicians to act in their naked class interest without suffering political pain for it. This is why calling for and getting Johnson's resignation is important - it moves politics in our direction by just a little bit.
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