Saturday 11 December 2021

Is Johnson about to lose another ethics adviser?

It’s turning out quite a week for Boris Johnson. The partygate scandal is still ongoing and now his ethics adviser Lord Geidt is threatening to quit over being ‘misled’ by the prime minister. According to The Guardian, Geidt is demanding to see the evidence of Johnson’s WhatsApp messages to Lord Brownlow asking for more money to refurbish his flat. Geidt was only appointed in April after the last one, Sir Alex Allan, resigned last November.

It’s as if Geidt is waiting for the head of a pin to come along so that he can dance on it and show that in some totally implausible way the PM avoided lying to him by a whisker. That is was all unintentional and quite innocent. He is said to be not acting hastily, although I don’t know why.

Geidt will make himself a laughing stock if he hasn’t resigned by Monday.

Of course Johnson lied to him. He lies to everyone, all the time about everything. This is who he is. He is a lie made flesh. In fact the problem with British politics is that when a liar like Johnson becomes leader, the system closes around him and they all bend over backwards to avoid calling him out.

His character was always going to abuse the ‘good chaps’ ethos required by our unwritten constitution. 

However, things are beginning to change. The use of the word “lie” in parliament has suddenly become acceptable. Ian Blackford used it recently and Starmer did again at PMQs on Wednesday. He asked if “Millions of people now think the Prime Minister was taking them for fools and that they were lied to; they are right, aren’t they?”

In normal times even the hint that the British prime minister had lied would have earned a reprimand from the speaker and a demand that the remark be withdrawn. This time, nothing. They all know he’s a congenital liar. This will be Johnson’s legacy to British politics. He has revealed what we have long suspected and there is no going back.

But the public seem to have woken up to Johnson’s innate mendacity. On Friday, polls came out showing his popularity is plummeting and has now hit a record low of minus 42 according to one pollster. He was already unpopular with party members, regularly coming next to bottom in surveys of Tory activists on Conservative Home.

Then came a poll showing a massive drop in support for the party itself among voters. Focaldata had Labour with an 8 point lead:

 Johnson's popularity is at minus 40 according to Focal data:

Another from Opinium is due out at eight o'clock tonight which is also said to be a shocker for the Tory party:

All of this should be profoundly worrying for Johnson since his unique selling point is his ability to charm voters into the polling booth to support Tory candidates. Once that’s gone what has he got?  Certainly not an ability to lead or hold a team together or even have a vision for the future (I hate that phrase personally).

Gove is struggling to define what levelling up actually means, let alone develop detailed policies to bring it about. As Alex Massie wrote in The Spectator last week what is Johnson actually doing?

“What does Johnson actually want to do as Prime Minister? Your guess will have to be better than mine because I haven’t a clue. To the extent the government has an agenda at all, it is one marked by staggering incoherence.”

Massie says, “All governments have moments when the truth becomes a problem but in this ministry’s case the lies serve no great matter of state. They are merely routine, a now-standard way of doing business.” 

And I'm afraid this is true.

No, his apparent and mysterious charisma with some voters is all he's got. Once that has gone he's an emperor with no clothes and the party will dump him.

North Shropshire next week will be a watershed for the PM. It almost doesn’t matter who wins. The result is bound to be a massive cut in the 23,000 majority that the disgraced Paterson enjoyed. Labour and the LibDems May split the vote but it’s the reduction in people willing to vote Tory that will determine his future. 

Bring it on.

I also think we're at a dangerous moment for Brexiteers. If Johnson's credibility is damaged or destroyed it does not bode well for all the false promises he has made - the £600 million a week in cutting regulations for example. This will make it far easier for those opposed to Brexit to argue that by extension, Johnson lied about all the so-called 'advantages' which are proving to be non existent.

New import controls will be implemented on 1 January and are likely to hit trade even more, to increase costs and add delays to the system. The impact of Brexit will be far more visible after New Years day and it will all be downhill for Brexit after that.

Finally, if you can bear to click on it, this from The Daily Express is surely a pointer for the future. An I-told-you-so moment for remainers.  The tide is turning.
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