As the Boris Johnson locomotive chugs back into the station, let us recall the timeless words of US tennis player John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious.”
Whatever features can be attributed to the modern Conservative party – greed, spite, an ample sprinkling of naked bigotry – seriousness is not one of them. And so its long, ignominious reign in government is now offering up one sordid final chapter. The same newspapers that brought you Liz Truss and cheered on her “true Tory budget” are now preparing the ground for Johnson’s return – a mere 106 days since he was practically dragged out of No 10 by his fingernails.
Perhaps this is all froth, driven by Johnson’s crude ambition and egged on by his vengeful media outriders. Itwas widely believed that the deposed prime minister would struggle to bag the support of the 100 MPs needed to make the ballot of Tory members. But with the seeming support of the likes of Ben Wallace – a politician who is sometimes touted as a “decent Tory”, a category that urgently needs retiring – he may well make it. If he does, and those largely moneyed and very rightwing southern pensioners have their say, Johnson will be swiftly reunited with his precious wallpaper.
There is nobody sentient and honest alive who believes Johnson is driven by any noble aim or sense of service; even his admirers know he is entirely powered by self-aggrandisement. As the nation descended into a chaos that – let’s not forget – has his fingerprints all over it, he was sunning himself in the Caribbean, because the very idea of being a diligent backbencher who represents his constituents is completely beneath him. When, earlier this year, voters were asked to sum Johnson up in a word, “liar” topped the charts, but there were other pithy descriptions: “untrustworthy”, “buffoon”, incompetent” and simply “idiot”. The chief reason for this, of course, was that government officials had repeatedly broken lockdown rules that they had designed – partying until they spilled wine down the walls and vomited – and then Johnson lied about it all to the nation.
But his fall really began with his attempt to scrap the standards rules to protect Owen Paterson after the disgraced former minister engaged in rule-breaking lobbying practices. The final coup de grace came when he appointed Chris Pincher to the whips’ office, then refused to promptly act when his ally allegedly groped two young men at the Carlton Club. Johnson may well have presumed the deputy whip could ride it out – after all, when Johnson was accused of groping women, the British media soon forgot about it. Yet both the opening and final scenes of Johnson’s downfall revealed the same character trait: an instinct to defend the flagrantly indefensible.
But none of this should be regarded as Johnson’s greatest sin. This is a man who is said to have declared “Let the bodies pile high” during the pandemic – and pile high they did, because of the prime minister’s unforgivable errors. His repeated refusal to swiftly impose restrictions, combined with premature relaxations of the rules, led infections to spiral, meaning longer and more severe lockdowns and more avoidable deaths.
Our official death toll stands at around 180,000 – nine times higher than the figure our chief scientific officer said would be a “good outcome” at the start of the pandemic – in large part because of Johnson’s self-defeating strategy. From his pursuit of herd immunity at the start to bungled communication – remember him boasting of shaking hands with Covid patients, before he was himself hospitalised with the virus? – to dispatching patients to care homes where the virus ran riot; from the lack of personal protective equipment to the awarding of contracts to well-connected firms: here was a story of bungling and incompetence with a terrible human cost.
Johnson had promised to be a different kind of Tory, committing to levelling up the nation to deal with its yawning regional inequalities. And yet, as research this year found, public spending on the north remained lower and had, in fact, shrunk since 2019 compared to the rest of the country. At least when Rishi Sunak admitted to taking money from deprived urban areas to hand to more affluent communities, he was being honest about what the Tories do.
And Johnson’s elevation of his ambition above all else – not least the country itself – was most powerfully underlined by his support for Liz Truss, which proved pivotal to her triumph. Here are the words of his estranged former aide, Dominic Cummings, from July: he “knows Truss is mad as a box of snakes and is thinking ‘there’s a chance she blows, there’s another contest and I can return’.” And so it comes to pass, with a devastating bill attached to it: higher mortgage payments for millions during a cost of living crisis, and yet more devastating cuts to public spending after years of ideologically driven austerity.
Stagnating and falling living standards; crumbling public services and infrastructure; relentless political turmoil – it can’t all be blamed on Johnson. No, this was a true team effort by the Tories, and nobody can say they didn’t put the hours in. But this charlatan embodies modern Toryism in its most unrefined form: the seeking of power for its own sake, the contempt for wider society, the ruthless promotion of the self. If Johnson marches back into No 10, then how else to describe the “world’s most successful political party” other than a giant middle finger jabbing itself at the electorate?
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
