In the end it took a politician as ruthless and ambitious as Boris himself to deliver the coup de grace. In appointing Nadhim Zahawi as Chancellor, the Prime Minister hired his own executioner.
The former mayor will, when he recovers his wits, probably not mind too much, recognising more kinship with a Tory who shares some of his genetic disposition to win than he did with the Javids and Sunaks who delayed their resignations out of gratitude or timidity. He will also understand the brutal political necessity for Zahawi to commit regicide after just a day in his post or be forever pigeonholed as one of what Sir Keir Starmer branded the “nodding dogs” of the Cabinet.
After covering four gory Westminster coups to oust sitting Tory leaders over the past four decades, I have come to see a pattern to these spectacles. They start with a leader, sometimes one who like Thatcher, Major and Johnson achieved unexpected triumphs and Commons majorities, falling out of favour. The first attacks come from outliers, mavericks who could be ignored except that they voice aloud what heavyweights are thinking privately. As poll ratings slide, the panic spreads. That turns big Commons majorities like Boris’s own 80-seat victory into liabilities as newly elected MPs study their fragile chances of clinging on and yearn for fresh leadership. Then ministers and PPSs start resigning. The first can be dismissed as embittered, but each departure draws blood.
What sets Johnson apart from the other leaders — and which will draw comparisons with Donald Trump — is his refusal to accept that his time was up. Even Baroness Thatcher, who won three election victories, tearfully acquiesced when Cabinet heavyweights like Ken Clarke read the runes to her. May gave up in the face of Commons defeats and pressure from the 1922 executive. But Johnson claimed his “14 million mandate” gave him, like the divine right of kings, the authority to stay until he lost a confidence vote.
The comparison with Trump, who encouraged a mob in his attempts to overturn a democratic election defeat, is partly unfair because Boris stayed within the party rule book, but it is just in another sense, in that both men ripped up the conventions. At the heart of democracy is not in fact the ballot box, but the willingness of defeated leaders to let go of power peacefully. Trump broke that bond, while Boris merely took it to the limit.
The next pattern in a coup is the sense of giddy release when a cornered leader finally throws in the towel. Thatcher was dazzling in her Commons performance after she resigned. The weight of decision-making and compromise was lifted from her shoulders. I recall discovering one of the young PPSs who had defected to the Heseltine campaign weeping in the cloisters late that night. “What have we done?” he asked, while simultaneously knowing the necessity of removing her. I suspect Johnson, if he gets his wish of a caretaker role this summer, will try to restore the sunny disposition of his heyday. He may not be allowed the opportunity, however.
The final stage of the coup pattern is recrimination. It took a full generation after Thatcher for the civil warfare between dry and wet Tories to resolve itself. For much of that period the Tories were enfeebled and condemned to opposition. Only the rise of modernisers led by Cameron and Osborne pushed the old divide aside, and even that proved to be a temporary truce.
Today’s dividing lines in the Tory Party are even more complicated. As well as the broad divides of Left versus Right, fiscal conservatism versus borrowing-led growth, authoritarian versus liberal, there is the utter chasm between Brexiteers and the business community. To add to this melting pot of hatreds, the party has taken a series of strategic steps that a new leader must decide whether to keep or ditch. One is the decision to prioritise the Red Wall, which puts ambitious new Tory MPs at odds with the survival of Tories in London and the south west.
But spare your tiny violins for the Conservatives. The party drank deep of the opium of a leader who offered easy victories rather than hard debate, who won by dividing-line politics rather than the hard pounding of evidence-led policymaking, and compromise.
The Tories face years of internal warfare as a result, whatever surface unity they conjure. And they only have themselves to blame.
