There are two very big differences between the situation confronting Boris Johnson and that facing the man with whom he is frequently compared, Donald Trump – namely, popularity and context.
Johnson is weaker than Trump. First, because he is less popular with Conservative voters than Trump is with his Republican supporters. About half of 2019 Conservative voters disapprove of Johnson’s performance in office. And at the time he left office, 40% or more rated him as untrustworthy, dishonest and/or incompetent.
Things haven’t improved since. In polls conducted in recent weeks, about half of current Conservative voters have said they think Johnson misled parliament over lockdown parties, while a similar share consider the 90-day suspension he received either “about right” or “not harsh enough”.
A majority of Conservative voters believe it is right that Johnson has resigned from the Commons, and less than half of them say they would like to see Johnson return as an MP.
In short, about half of both 2019 Conservative voters and the party’s smaller base of current supporters take a low view of Johnson in various respects. The contrast with Trump is stark – between 70% and 80% of Republican voters approve of Trump, and more than half say they will vote for him as their candidate in the coming Republican primary contest.
That brings me to the second big difference – Trump’s ability to disrupt politics is enhanced because America’s system is candidate centred, while Johnson’s ability to do the same is diminished because Britain’s system is party centred.
Trump won direct personal mandates from Republican voters in 2016 and 2020, and most of them seem eager to do the same again next year. If Trump prevails in the Republican primary contest, there is little other Republicans can do to prevent him running for a third time as their candidate for the White House.
The British system is very different. Johnson never received a direct personal mandate as prime minister from voters at large – there is no direct election of the executive in our system. Removing a directly elected president is very difficult. Removing a prime minister is considerably easier. If Conservative MPs had had enough of Johnson, they could – and did – remove him. The Conservative party – and Rishi Sunak, its current leader – have a lot more control over who gets to stand in Conservative colours, so it is much easier for them to keep Johnson out, particularly now he is no longer even an MP.
The two factors also interact. If Johnson had Trump-style popularity with Conservatives, it would be harder and riskier to exclude him. But he doesn’t, so it isn’t.
There’s also the question of whether local Conservative associations might be keener on Johnson than Conservative voters overall – perhaps keen enough to back him as a candidate, or to punish (or even deselect) their local Conservative MP if they vote for sanctions against the former PM.
It is possible that Johnson has a stronger following among activists, but it is also plausible that he doesn’t. After all, these are the people who will have borne the brunt of the anger at Johnson’s antics when campaigning on the doorstep, and paid the heavy electoral price for his unpopularity in recent local election rounds.
Conservative associations have also traditionally been fairly deferential to the party leadership. They have not gone in for local deselection campaigns. While trouble on this front cannot be entirely ruled out, it seems unlikely.
So some sort of Trump-style hostile takeover is unlikely. The Conservative party has higher barriers to entry than American parties, and Johnson isn’t popular enough with current or 2019 Conservative voters to fuel an uprising capable of overcoming these barriers.
Johnson will no doubt retain a lot of capacity for mischief, but this is more likely to play out on the front pages of Conservative-aligned newspapers rather than in the halls and bars of local Conservative associations.
Robert Ford is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The British General Election of 2019
