If a week is a long time in politics, a weekend is even longer. Truss went on Thursday, the starting gun on a new leadership election was fired yesterday afternoon and by Monday we’ll probably know who the winner will be when the membership votes on Friday. In a week the new PM will be in place. I don’t want to worry you, but if Johnson is one of the two names that go to members he will win. That’s how absurd things are inside the Tory party. They seem to have a death wish.
He is clearly mad and the party is high on Johnsonism, of which it needs one last 'hit' like a crack addict come what may. Some Tories are asking us to believe the party has no one better than the fatberg of dishonesty and if that is true, it really is the end for them. I predict the Tories will eventually come to be known as the natural party of opposition.
Matthew Parris, in his Times column this morning says:
"No conspiracist in normal times, I have become convinced Johnson and his gang promoted Truss’s candidacy not because they thought she was any good but because they knew she wasn’t. Her failure was to be the launchpad for his return. I cannot disclose what has persuaded me Johnson thought she’d fail, but it confirmed all my suspicions. He knew that only against the backdrop of total mess could he look good."
This is correct I'm sure. For his own selfish ends, he has made Britain an international laughing stock, trashed the economy and plunged the country into the kind of political turmoil that even aging Westminster veterans have never witnessed in their lifetimes. Truss was just about the only candidate that was worse than Johnson himself.
I think I'm right in saying it was Fintan O'Toole who once said Johnson would burn the country down if his hands were cold and that is coming spectacularly true.
Inside the parliamentary party, there will be a lot of cajoling, threats and horse-trading going on to try and ensure he is/isn’t in those final two. You can bet Nigel Adams will be in the middle of it.
Three months ago sixty ministers resigned from his administration because he wasn’t trusted, thought to be totally incompetent and damaging the country. Now it looks as if a hundred MPs are willing to support him! Johnson is doing the same as Trump. MPs want to use Johnson as a human shield, standing behind his mysterious hold on Tory voters who can’t see through the lies and serial dishonesty.
Andrew Stevenson, Tory MP for Pendle said on Radio 4 this morning that his constituents were coming up to him in the supermarket and demanding Boris come back. Instead of explaining why such a man, who has spent his whole life staggering from scandal to crisis and back again, should never be allowed to become PM, they prefer to take advantage of it to maintain their £80k salary. Johnson corrupts everything and everyone.
Stevenson laughably told listeners that he thought Boris Johnson would provide "stable government." It's not clear where he has been for the last twenty years.
When one day someone tots up the damage Johnson has done to this country it will be in the trillions. And this will be only in ‘seen’ costs. The ‘unseen’ costs in reputational damage will be even higher. His Brexit has been calamitous, the union is well on the way to being broken, and he and his supporters engineered a Truss victory knowing she wouldn’t survive and so are indirectly responsible for the massive costs of Kwarteng’s mini-budget.
Traders expect another market crash next week if he is in the final two.
The inquiry by the Standards and Privileges Committee is expected to be damning in which case he would probably have to resign again. Paul Brand at ITV reports:
NEW: Sources close to Privileges Committee say the evidence is so damning that Boris Johnson could be 'gone by Christmas' if he returns.One Tory MP tells me any attempt to kill the inquiry could 'bring down the govt'.Yet momentum builds behind Johnson.https://t.co/YwZTqKvBHK— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) October 21, 2022
If he tries to block the inquiry from reaching a conclusion the government will collapse.
Further, if he does become PM his second spell will coincide with the public inquiry into the covid-19 pandemic preparedness and response. Every week will probably see evidence being presented of Johnson’s chaotic mismanagement.
He is so divisive that an unknown number of Tory MPs are willing to resign the whip if he becomes leader again, potentially depriving the government of a majority. Even if this doesn't happen immediately the next scandal is always just a few weeks away and the dribble of MPs and ministers will soon become another flood.
Paul Goodman, the former Tory MP writing in Conservative Home says if elected we "can look forward to a Prime Minister staffing his government with fifth raters since the bulk of the 66 Ministers who resigned in the summer will refuse to serve."
Goodman says that the Germans have a word for what is happening: "Totentanz – a dance of death. Conservative MPs, peers, donors, hacks and activists caper towards an open grave, with Death himself – sorry, Johnson – leading the procession. The dance possesses them; it has a momentum of its own; they are powerless to stop."
Charles Moore at The Telegraph and normally a supporter of Johnson urges him to "sit this one out." He admits voting for Truss because Sunak was so "keen to follow Treasury norms that he was not thinking hard enough about tax cuts and a growth strategy." He now concedes Sunak was right. Moore is almost always wrong so nothing unusual there but on Johnson, he is spot on.
William Hague, the former Tory leader, said a Johnson return was “the worst idea” he had heard in 46 years of party membership, telling Times Radio that it would put the party into a “death spiral”
The FT claims that investors fear the prospect of him coming back. The market thinks he does not have a record of cutting spending or taking any unpopular decisions and therefore the economy is at risk.
Given all of that, you can be sure of only one thing. If MPs allow Johnson to go to the membership, they will choose him against all advice and evidence, knowing that Sunak has been utterly vindicated and is almost certain to calm the markets. But since Sunak's not white and is believed to be responsible for Johnson's downfall in July, something he should get a medal for, they won't accept him.
There is no situation bad enough that the Tory party members can't make worse.
It's time for political party members to be forced to take an IQ test by law.
