The fall of Boris Johnson

Nothing befitted Britain's prime minister so much as the humiliating manner of his departure

For Boris Johnson, honour and integrity were always a distant country. The deeply unedifying manner of his departure was fitting. Britain’s prime minister, laid low finally by arrogant entitlement and serial lying, had to be bundled out of office in abject disgrace. In the end, the self-delusion of the narcissist invited this very public humiliation.

As the windows of Downing Street are thrown open to let out the stench, the nation can allow itself a small cheer. Britain is rid of its worst, and most dangerous, prime minister in modern times. Its democracy has been tested to the limits. There must be a reasonable hope that his successor will show a modicum of respect for the rule of law and for basic decency in the conduct of government. 

No more than a small cheer. After three short years of Johnson’s premiership, Britain’s standing in the world has sunk to desperate lows. It has flouted international law and trampled over constitutional propriety.

The economy is in the mire. Economic growth next year is forecast to be lower, and inflation higher, than that of all its leading competitors. The nation’s social fabric has been torn apart by Johnson’s populist strategy of stoking up anger and division. The future of the union with Scotland, and Northern Ireland’s place in the UK have been left under serious threat.

Contemptuous of the common decency upon which democracy rests,  Johnson degraded both his office and politics itself. Public trust in government has collapsed. The next prime minister’s most pressing task will be to begin to rebuild faith in the integrity of the nation’s politics - in the rule of law, in shared norms and values, and in the worth of the public realm.

Johnson’s transgressions - perhaps crimes is a better word - are too legion to catalogue. They include lying to the Queen and parliament, tearing up the code governing the conduct of ministers, swapping honours for personal favours, and soliciting Tory donors to finance personal expenditure. This all before his law-breaking partying in Downing Street in defiance of Covid lockdown rules.

The proximate cause of his departure was a decision to choose as his deputy chief whip a habitual drunk and sexual predator - and then to lie when Chris Pincher was duly caught in the act. All the “sex pests” were on his side, Johnson had once joked. In truth, Pincher’s appointment, and the subsequent lie, spoke to the habitual disregard of ethical standards. It is to its abiding shame that the Tory party rose up in revolt against Johnson only when it realised that voters were deciding they did not want to be led by a charlatan and liar.

His premiership saw a sustained assault on the values, institutions and traditions underpinning British society. The civil service, the judiciary and the BBC have all come under fire in Johnson’s campaign to dismantle the checks and balances embedded in the constitution and replace them with rule-by-the-mob populism.

His party - or a large part of it - conspired in all this. Some - think Jacob Rees Mogg, Nadine Dorries or Dominic Raab - because it was their only route to high office. Most because after their victory in the 2019 election Johnson was judged a “vote-winner”. Only when his ratings slumped deep into negative territory and the government started losing by-elections did ministers and Tory MPs finally decide the game was up.

And all this to what purpose? As striking as Johnson’s disdain for the rules and traditions of public life has been the absence of any guiding purpose. Shallow, self-obsessed and idle, Johnson had no plan for the nation, no vision for a different Britain. Even Brexit was merely a vehicle for personal advancement. And all the while he has stood in front of the mirror in Downing Street practising Churchillian mannerisms.

Johnson’s Downing Street measured policy - whether it be picking a fight with Brussels by disowning the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland or deciding to render refugees to camps in Rwanda - against its capacity to fan the flames of culture wars and draw dividing lines with political opponents. 

As mayor of London some years ago he had found it useful to play the part of a One Nation Tory. As prime minister he judged it to his advantage to swerve to the right and turn the Conservatives into the party of English nationalism. Values, ethics, even competence, have played no part.

History, of course, will record Johnson’s role as the leader of Britain’s break with the EU. He is the politician who claimed to have “got Brexit done”.  It’s curious to say the least that a politician should ask for credit for the most serious act of self-harm in Britain’s peacetime history.

We have also learned since, of course, that it is far from “done”. Johnson’s attempt to renege on the deal he struck with Brussels has put in jeopardy the fragile peace in Northern Ireland. Elsewhere, voters are now paying the economic price. Trade volumes with Europe have fallen sharply. So too has inward investment. Growth has slowed as businesses have been hit at once by the barriers to trade with Europe and the absence in Britain of European workers. 

More profoundly, a nation once proud of its internationalist instincts and role on the global stage has become a byword for pinched, defensive nationalism. It is largely ignored by its allies. European leaders have decided they could not trust Johnson; Joe Biden that he had nothing much to say to the leader of one of America’s closest allies.

Johnson’s support for the beleaguered government in Ukraine is held by some to present a counter case. In reality, it reflected personal opportunism. His fulsome support for Volodymyr Zelensky in the war against Russia’s Vladimir Putin can be precisely dated to a surge in his domestic troubles at home. Only then did he turn his back on his rich Russian pals.

It is hard to imagine the Conservatives can recover from this. Most of those now in the race to replace Johnson have been deeply complicit in the destruction he has wrought. Tom Tugendhat is an honourable exception. For the others, “we were giving him the benefit of the doubt” is an excuse as lame as it is untruthful. Labour’s Keir Starmer now has an opportunity to present his party as a government-in-waiting. The rest of us can allow ourselves a moment of relief - in the sobering knowledge that it will be a long road back.