It is customary, when someone is near death, to reflect on the life that person lived: Was time spent wisely, or wasted? Were good deeds done, or harm caused? It is much the same with a political death. As Boris Johnson’s government gasps its final breaths, many of us are reflecting on how this prime minister and his colleagues have used almost three years in power and the damage they have wrought. Not the candidates for the new Conservative leader, though; they’re ready to move on.
More than 10 candidates have declared their intention to replace Mr. Johnson and what most of them really want to talk about are the taxes they’d cut and how they’d fix the country. But I hope they’ll forgive me if I find it hard to see any of them as firefighters. I think it’s because they’ve spent so long propping up an arsonist.
Mr. Johnson stepped down on Thursday after his Conservative colleagues resigned en masse. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the Exchequer, were the first, on Tuesday evening. Others followed quickly until more than 50 had gone and Mr. Johnson, despite his protestations, simply no longer had the numbers to continue.
For British voters, it was surreal to watch ministers who had supported Mr. Johnson through an endless succession of policy U-turns and scandals suddenly decide he is unworthy of office. (The right-wing British press was similarly newly outraged, a body that until now had slavishly defended Mr. Johnson, even as he hid from reporters in a fridge.)
Mr. Johnson’s character — entitled, narcissistic, careless — has long been on show for anyone who cared to look. And his colleagues always knew he had a casual relationship with the truth. In Mr. Johnson they saw a great pretender who would say whatever was required to win them a majority and then take the country out of the European Union, no matter the consequences. If last week was a pretty ignominious week for British politics all around, few aspects were grubbier than the ministers who feigned that the realization of who Mr. Johnson really was was somehow a surprise.
Now he’s gone, more or less, and several candidates for leader have thrown their hat in the ring, but are we really supposed to believe that the rot is out?
Mr. Johnson’s government won a general election in a landslide at the end of 2019 on a pledge to “Get Brexit done” and make a break with almost a decade of Conservative austerity. Once the job of Brexit was done, however, the wider policy agenda was a mix of the cruel and the inept.
The government created a social care plan that had no plan for social care. It cut social security payments for families that were already skipping meals. It pushed through laws that reduced the rights to protest and a controversial elections bill. Mr. Johnson pledged to “protect” the National Health Service throughout the pandemic, but as he leaves office, it has record waiting times. He claimed that 40 new hospitals would be built by 2030, but about a week ago the official watchdog for government spending announced an inquiry into the claim; apparently, most of them are just extensions or refurbishments of existing hospitals.
The most damning example of this government’s failings was the pandemic. Lockdowns were only belatedly and reluctantly imposed, resulting in 20,000 more deaths, according to one estimate, than if they’d been imposed earlier. In tendering contracts for personal protective equipment, Mr. Johnson’s government did a better job of lining the pockets of friends and donors than protecting the public. A case in point: It allocated the equivalent of $44 billion of public money on a test-and-trace system that made “next to no difference” to the spread of the virus.
By January of this year, Britain had become the first country in Europe to pass 150,000 deaths from Covid — per capita one of the worst death rates in the world. And, as you’re no doubt tired of reading, as people died, Conservatives partied. The revelation that 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, held boozy parties as the rest of the country was in strict lockdown could hardly have been a starker sign of Mr. Johnson’s entitled indifference. But scapegoats were found, made to resign, and the government carried on.
Then came this year’s soaring inflation, which hit 9 percent in May, and an attendant cost-of-living crisis that has put basics like food, energy and fuel out of reach for many. Some families turning to food banks — the number of people that do has skyrocketed in the past decade — are reportedly now turning down potatoes. They can’t afford the gas to boil them.
Mr. Johnson had no answers to these problems, but whenever concrete policy failed, he could always distract with a culture war, taking aim at just about anything or anyone — the publicly funded BBC, the European Convention on Human Rights, trans people and refugees.
Somehow, after defending him through all of it, the Tory faithful have decided that now enough is enough. In his resignation letter Mr. Javid — who is now running to replace Mr. Johnson — criticized “the tone” the prime minister had set in recent months, saying he could no longer “in good conscience” remain in his post. Mr. Javid’s “conscience” was unmoved, however, when the government started deporting asylum seekers. Mr. Sunak wrote that he had always been “loyal” to Mr. Johnson but had “come to the conclusion we cannot continue like this.” Of course, Mr. Sunak — who is now a favorite to be the next prime minister — remained “loyal” when Mr. Johnson was fined for attending parties during lockdown, because he was partying, too. (If speaking out late were not bad enough, two others hoping to be the new party leader — the minister for trade, Penny Mordaunt; and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss — opted for near silence last week.)
As this calamitous changing of the guard plays out, Britons are enduring the biggest pressure on living standards in a generation, families are struggling, and public services are creaking.
The candidates can contort to distance themselves from Mr. Johnson, but let’s not forget exactly how we got here and who was complicit. In the coming weeks, some of the very same figures who have spent months enabling him will present themselves as a “fresh start” untarnished by this unpleasant business. Until last week they were content to elect and enable a known charlatan. The consequences are as grave now as they were predictable then.
The New York Times
