The story that Boris Johnson’s resignation statement told was as follows. He has been “forced out of Parliament” and “there is a witch hunt underway” – “to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result”. His removal is “the necessary first step” of “a concerted attempt” to this end.
Who is responsible? Apparently, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Sue Gray, “some Tory MPs” and above all the “kangaroo court” itself – the Commons’ Privileges Committee. What about Rishi Sunak? Is he among those Conservative MPs plotting to return Britain to the EU?
Johnson doesn’t say – but the Tory majority in the Commons is “now clearly at risk” and there should be “a properly Conservative government”. He cites cutting taxes, and asks why the Government has junked “measures to help people into housing or to scrap EU directives or to promote animal welfare”.
Is this account of events convincing? In order to get to the truth, it’s important to revisit some dates. The first is July 7 2022, a month under a year ago – the day on which Johnson quit as Prime Minister.
That’s six weeks or so after the Commons voted to refer him to the Privileges Committee: the vote was held on April 21. He could have whipped his party against the motion. He could have voted against it himself. It passed without a division.
Similarly, the Covid Inquiry, of which we have heard so much during the past few weeks, was set up not on Sunak’s watch, but on his – on May 12 last year. It was Johnson’s Government that set the terms and appointed Heather Hallett to chair it.
What about animal welfare? Reports of delays to the Animal Welfare Bill can be found in January 2022. Or housing? Remember the withdrawal of the algorithm on which housing growth was predicated. It was abandoned in December 2020.
As for the delay in scrapping EU directives, the EU Retained Law Bill gained its second reading in October last year. Why didn’t Johnson get a move on with it when he was in charge himself? Ditto the free trade deal with America whose absence he mourns.
As for the tax burden, Sunak was Chancellor when it rose. His other title was Second Lord of the Treasury. Who was the First? None other, of course, than the Prime Minister at the time, whose enthusiasm for spending now and paying later surely provides at least part of the explanation.
But perhaps it’s beside the point (at least for him) to parse Johnson’s story as I have. I wouldn’t call Johnson a liar, but the truth undoubtedly bores him: dates, stats, facts – all are best left to “girly swots”, a phrase he once applied to David Cameron.
Johnson is with Goethe: “all theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of life springs ever green”. So if the account he gave of his resignation isn’t the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, why has he decided to quit?
You know the reason as well as I do. He has jumped from the Commons before being pushed (or so he clearly believes, or else he wouldn’t have resigned). He has the Standards Committee’s report. It recommends a suspension of ten days or more.
It would be followed – so he thinks – by a recall petition. And a by-election. Which he clearly believes he would lose. So it is a bit wide of the mark for him to claim that he has been “forced out”, though he is right about the political nature of the committee’s inquiry and the Commons’ vote.
Untruths can be more potent when mixed with truths, and that’s what’s happening here. Yes, a majority of MPs want Johnson out of the Commons. No, it’s nothing much to do with leaving the EU, as he knows well. (The claim will be news to Bernard Jenkin, the most senior Tory on the Standards Committee, a convinced Brexiteer.)
Rather, the committee’s inquiry is a classic example of the revenge that establishments takes on non-conformists. To Johnson’s supporters, he’s a card; to his enemies, a wrong ‘un – but, either way, he has always done it his way (whatever it is that he’s doing at the time).
Which is what brought him down: not a witch hunt, nor a court – kangaroo or otherwise – but the chaos which he creates around him and within which he feels at home. The truth is that Johnson is a stupendous campaigner, the very best around, but a fitful executive.
Some will dispute this view. Others say that he is now the past, and praise him for Brexit and vaccines (as they should) or blame him for tax and immigration (as they should, too). Others insist that he is still the future, proclaiming that he will be back.
But although Johnson is undoubtedly a big figure, isn’t the Conservative Party bigger than he is? And isn’t its future more important than his? You might not believe that he thinks so, given the contents of his honours list. In what world could it possibly be right to recommend honours for people who broke Covid rules?
The potential damage to the party’s prospects reaches wider. Two of his allies have also quit the Commons, thus opening up the prospect of by-election losses. Will more follow? Or will the only resignations be linked to peerages, or rather the lack of them?
Either way, Tory activists could be forgiven for wondering if Johnson would now rather have Keir Starmer in Downing Street than Rishi Sunak. But whether they do or don’t, they can read the signs of the times. Johnson will continue to adorn the right-wing entertainment industry.
He has his following among party members. About a quarter are determined Johnson backers, at least if our panel of party members is right. Nonetheless, his standing with the same panel was erratic: Three of 2022’s six months of the Johnson premiership found him in negative territory.
And if most Conservative members aren’t fully signed up to the Johnson bandwagon, how would one describe the take of the general public – among whom the former Prime Minister, according to James Johnson, is less popular than Xi Jinping and Philip Schofield (as well as Sunak)?
As Henry Hill has pointed out, one can’t mount a coup in the Commons by resigning from it. The curse of Johnson would be very much alive from the green benches. Barred from them, his cause looks less like a curse than a cult.
By the end of 2024, Sunak will either have won a fifth Conservative term or, more likely, Keir Starmer will be Prime Minister. In either case, the Party will want to look to the future and a new generation of leaders. It’s time for the Tories to move on from Johnson.