As a lifelong wordsmith, Boris Johnson chooses his references with acute care. Which is why he quoted The Lion King (“change is good”) during an emergency pep talk to his remaining No 10 staff last Friday.
Which of history’s many lions is he really, I wondered when I heard that. Simba, the Disney film’s hero who emerges from the desert to slay his enemies? Or is he Marjan, Afghanistan’s last lion, and the saddest sight I ever saw.
Marjan’s home, Kabul Zoo, was for much of the Nineties the frontline between feuding warlords. His face was pockmarked with scars from shrapnel and he was blind in one eye from a hand grenade a cruel soldier once tossed into his cage.
By late 2001, Marjan could barely walk any more. Visiting journalists like me climbed right into his cage to stroke him. Yet still he lived on, as nobody quite had the heart to put him out of his misery.
Which brings us to the Prime Minister, his mini reshuffle yesterday, and why it was so Brexity. Johnson’s Praetorian Guard in the parliamentary Tory party has always been its arch-Eurosceptics. They’ve had different names over the years. David Cameron dubbed them “the Bills and the Bernards” (after two of their high priests Bill Cash and Bernard Jenkin). Then they became the feared European Research Group that eventually toppled Theresa May.
But the greatest success of the sect, whose cadre remains around 50, was to be the bedrock of Johnson’s 2019 Tory leadership bid. Fewer of their number than they’d hoped were then rewarded with high ministerial office. Yet their loyalty to Johnson remained. As men and women of devout principle, it was the type of ultra-clean Brexit Boris offered that attracted them. Now though, they are unhappy. Very, in fact, and becoming increasingly more so. “Only Boris can save Brexit? Bollocks,” one of their number tells me. “Only Boris can f*** Brexit up now.”
Their chief complaint is that, with Brexit two years old and counting, Johnson and his government have done precious little to take advantage of the new freedoms, as they see it, that their blood and toil won for the nation. There have been embarrassingly few new trade deals, no divergence from the EU’s rule book, and little of the deregulation that they insist Brexit had all been about. Even their champion within government, Lord Frost, has resigned.
So far, no arch Eurosceptic has gone public to demand that Johnson goes, though one of their number, Steve Baker, has come close, suggesting it looks like “checkmate for Boris”.
Remembering (or having been reminded) where his bread was initially buttered, much of yesterday’s mini-reshuffle was about Johnson trying to address this rising fury and reconstruct his Commons base.
A new job was created for Jacob Rees-Mogg as minister for Brexit opportunities. Another popular former ERG chair, Chris Heaton-Harris, was made Chief Whip. So far though, the changes are smoke signals and not actual deeds.
A real test of Johnson’s rediscovered Brexitism comes in the next few weeks, as the Government presses hard for a deal with the EU over the fetid sore that is the Northern Ireland Protocol. It will also be the moment of truth for Brexit and the United Kingdom.
Inevitably with Brussels, and to preserve Northern Irish stability ahead of May’s elections, a deal means compromise. But what will compromise look like? How many of our four nations will be able to diverge from the EU rule book by the end of it? Or how much will the other three nations no longer retain that full freedom, in the hope of maintaining the illusion we’re still one country?
Soon we will all know. The Bills and the Bernards are not a sentimental bunch. So if, I’m told, the moment then comes when they decide someone else will safeguard their “proper Brexit” better than Boris, they will move very quickly against him.
Simple arithmetic tells us they have not just got the numbers to push the letters to Sir Graham Brady over the magic number of 54, but the ballast to ensure Johnson’s defeat in the ensuing confidence vote. Brexit paved Johnson’s path to No 10. What an irony it would be if it was also the final lever to oust him from the building.
So — what did happen to Marjan, the miserable lion of Kabul? Despite the top-class veterinary treatment he got once the Afghan capital was liberated, he died a few months later in January 2002. Finally, inevitably perhaps, succumbing to his far too many wounds.
In other news...
More trouble: Major goes for Johnson
Two policy chiefs, two Chief Whips, three Chiefs of Staff, and four communication directors. All in less than 1,000 days. Boris Johnson’s staff burn rate rivals Donald Trump’s.
To any of them, I wonder if he was ever kind enough to use the immortal dumper’s line to the dumped: “It’s not you, it’s me.”
The PM’s troubles will continue despite the overhaul. Tomorrow, Sir John Major, delivers a speech to the Institute for Government, entitled “Trust and standards in a democracy”. It doesn’t take a very advanced radar system to spot the Exocet coming Boris’s way.
Sir John, I hear, won’t directly call for Boris to go, but he will leave few in any doubt. He will talk about how crucial it is that a government’s word can be trusted. He will warn about autocracy and populism. And he will spell out what he thinks is happening to Britain’s reputation overseas.
Friends say he will end the speech with an appeal for others to search their souls. Sir John may be an avowed Remainer, but he is still listened to by most Tories.
Beware Elena, soft-spoken Spad bruiser
Elena Narozanski was the fifth senior member of the No 10 team to resign last week, following her boss Munira Mirza out of the policy unit.
Only fools observe her kind disposition and soft-spokenness and underestimate her. Like me.
Having mastered her sport of choice (she boxed for Team England), Elena decided to take up cricket a year or so ago. I can also report, with a little bitterness, that she is already a mean spin bowler.
We played on opposing teams last September during a match between Special Advisers and lobby journalists.
She surgically extracted my middle stump.
Tom Newton Dunn is a presenter on Times Radio
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