Boris Johnson will be remembered as a great campaigner, who won a majority for the Conservative Party and found himself in the British prime minister’s office, but as someone who struggled once he got there, says Professor Nick Pearce.
prime minister of britain announced that he would resign on Thursdayafter a series of scandals that marked his popularity, even in his own party.
“I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019, many of whom voted Conservative for the first time, thank you for this incredible mandate,” Johnson said as he announced his resignation outside his Downing Street residence Street. , otherwise known as No. 10.
“I know there will be a lot of people who will be relieved and maybe quite a few who will be disappointed.”
But it’s not gone yet. Johnson says he will stay in his post until his Conservative Party chooses a new leader.
Nick Pearce is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. He spoke with The Current guest Rosemary Barton about Johnson’s fall and legacy. Here is part of that conversation.
Are you surprised we ended up now?
No, I’m not surprised. I think this has been a long time coming. The scandals were increasing. They wouldn’t leave. The Prime Minister’s behavior in office did not change and the Conservative MPs eventually reached the point where they had had enough and could not go on any longer.
And when we had cabinet resignations and then a number of ministers followed yesterday to this morning, it was inevitable that the prime minister would have to go, that he would have to resign.
Johnson was elected prime minister in 2019. (Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament/The Associated Press)
There are helicopters in the air filming Downing Street. They usually do this. They film the Palace of Westminster, Downing Street and the car of an outgoing Prime Minister as he or she goes to Buckingham Palace, the Queen to deliver their seals of office and resign. And that is not the case today because it remains in place.
And for how long? We do not know yet. He says, until a new Conservative leader is appointed. But that could take weeks or months and there are calls for him to step down immediately and appoint a caretaker prime minister in his place. So there is still a dispute over the manner and timing of his departure.
I’ve heard some people say it was more like resignation. How does it stick? How will this work? And it’s really possible, don’t you think?
Well, he appointed new cabinet members with the expectation that they will just be there as interim ministers until a new leader and prime minister is appointed.
[Boris Johnson] he showed no remorse in his resignation speech. There was no sense that he had done anything wrong. You can well see the kind of mobilization of a myth of betrayal, a backstabbing myth of his time in power from the words he spoke today.
But it has to go. There is no doubt now that Conservative MPs, his party, have withdrawn their confidence in him and whatever happens sometime in the next few days, and probably within weeks, he will be out of office. What he does then, I don’t know. But he has undoubtedly lost the support of his party.
You talked about a kind of scandal accumulation. Without going through all of that, and it’s a lot, what do you think it was that pushed people over the edge here and just said, okay, it can’t last much longer?
Well, I think there were two really. The main thing was the fact that the parties happened at No. 10 during the COVID lockdown. And the public was horrified by it, a significant turn against him among the public.
And this was reflected in the polls, in the mid-term elections for the government. He informed Conservative MPs that his leadership would mean the possibility of them losing the election, many of them.
But last week, in the scandal surrounding the whipping of his deputy who sexually assaulted two men at the Carlton Club, the Conservative club, the lines given to his ministers to defend his position proved not to be true.
Johnson says he will remain in his post until the party finds a new leader. (Toby Melville/Reuters)
And I think for MPs, for ministers of the crown, to be sent on radio programmes, on television, saying things that turned out to be untrue, which No. 10 then had to correct was the final straw. for many of them.
It degraded their dignity and worth too much. They put up with a lot. They made him leader because he won the election. He did this for them, but even that they could not stomach.
What about his legacy? Because it wasn’t all bad. I think people could point to, for example, his actions in Ukraine in recent months.
Yes. I think certainly the Ukrainian people and their political leadership are very grateful for what the UK has done in terms of supplying weapons, training their troops and supporting them. There is no question about it.
However, I don’t think it would be any different under any other prime minister. It is a consensus position in British politics. It is a point where we are fully aligned, as we often are in foreign policy, with the United States. So I’m not sure it would have been any different, although there is clearly goodwill towards Boris Johnson in Ukraine as a consequence of that.
In other matters, he will be remembered as the Prime Minister who finally took us out of the European Union for better or for worse, whatever you think about it. Just like [Edward] Heath, his predecessor, took us to the European Union, Boris Johnson will be remembered for that.
But he will also be remembered, I’m afraid, for his style of government, for what he did in office, and for a spectacular fall from grace, from a very large majority in 2019 to leaving office now in relatively quick time. So history will not judge him kindly, I’m afraid.
Do you think he was a good politician or do you think he was self-absorbed and concerned about his own image and what have you?
I think he’s definitely a very successful politician on the campaign trail. It clearly had popular appeal. He did it as mayor of London and he certainly did it when he won this election in 2019.
And there will be a section of the British people who will regret his death, but most will have decided and concluded that he was unfit for office.
And No. 10 is a very unforgiving place. It is very difficult to be prime minister in the British system when so much power is concentrated in that building and in the prime minister’s office that you are severely scrutinized, and any character flaws, any behavioral problems, any of those things would be magnified.
And finally all these things about the prime minister, about Boris Johnson, caught up with him and could no longer be avoided. So I think if you ask me “was he fit for office”, I’m afraid the verdict of history will be, no, he wasn’t.
Written by Philip Drost. Produced by Howard Goldenthal. The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
