Even after everything, Boris Johnson will stay.
By: Arshia S. Tabatabaee
Tags: Boris Johnson, UK Politics, UK, Conservatives, Labour Party

Photo by Alex Motoc on Unsplash

While many have pointed to the recent Party Scandal as the end of the Conservatives, I beg to differ. I would argue that this, nor the Owen Paterson scandal have been the moment where the Government has stumbled, instead to get a full picture we must go back to August.

The turbulent month of August was not only a defining moment for the Conservatives or the country at large, but instead a sign of weakness in the western world combined. I remember going on holiday at the time and picking up a copy of the New Statesman named ‘The Retreat: How the Afghanistan crisis exposed the delusions of Western Powers’. During the fall of Kabul, both Boris Johnson and at-the-time foreign secretary Dominic Raab were on holiday and only returned when public pressure mounted on them.

Prior, the Government occasionally showed weakness, yet they were always riding on a wave of Political honeymoons and Covid incumbent boosts. Everything afterwards went downhill — the Energy Crisis (that is still ongoing), the cut to Universal Credit, the increase in National Insurance, the HGV Driver shortages, which made the government back-track on much of its rhetoric regarding immigrant workers to the annoyance of the reactionaries in the party and so much more. In fact, if I were to make a list of every single government failure or scandal, there’d probably be more of them by the time I finish everything up to now. The latest embarrassments of Boris Johnson have been particularly damning, however.

First was the Owen Paterson scandal — where the Conservative MP (now resigned) broke lobbying rules and instead of being condemned, had Boris Johnson’s support of changing the system that lobbying rules are based on. This began a sequence of events that led to a major decrease in trust by Conservative MPs in Boris Johnson and then shortly after an even greater scandal, which one might call the final nail in the coffin — the scandal that Boris Johnson was engaged in a Downing Street party last year when lockdown rules were in place. If nothing else, this has hurt the Prime Minister more than anything due to the public’s attentiveness to the story. To many people, this really was when Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer’s almost-slogan “One rule for us, another for them” rang. Now public trust which Boris Johnson has relied on for so long is completely gone. YouGov’s approval tracker of Boris Johnson has put him as 71% disapproval, and among every category and list, he is now unpopular.

Shortly after the Owen Paterson and Party scandals, Britain Elects — the largest poll aggregator in the country, showed a 4 point decrease in Conservative support and a 3 point increase in Labour, making Labour the most popular party in the country. Following was two by-elections, one where the conservatives narrowly survived in Bexley & Sidcup, and a second one where the party lost a seat that they had held for most of its existence by a landslide. A catastrophic disaster for the Conservatives at large.

Yet Boris Johnson is a political maverick in my eyes — and in his eyes too, I would presume. Since the 16th of December, Parliament has gone into recess giving Boris Johnson time to recover from his recent blows and it is highly speculated that we will go into a new Lockdown post-christmas, forcing a short-term Bipartisanship among Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and the Labour Party who is often criticised for supporting Government covid efforts. Soon there will be two more by-elections: One in Southend following the murder of the former Sir David Amess, which is unlikely to be contested by other major parties out of respect, and the potentially not-confirmed Leicester East by-election, seat of former Labour MP Claudia Webbe, where there has been a slow increase in support for Conservatives in the past General Elections — a seat Boris Johnson will absolutely fight to the death over should he be given the chance.

Finally, Boris Johnson has also spent much time forcing his political opponents in the Conservative party into checkmates. His two main rivals are Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, the former who has been appointed to continue the roles of the previous Brexit Minister after Lord Frost’s resignation, forcing her into what POLITICO calls a “poisoned chalice” where she will either become unpopular in her own party or in the general public. While Rishi Sunak’s general popularity is high, he is likewise a character who would be deeply scrutinised should he be forced into a situation of leading the Government through his recent fiscal policies and Thatcherite attitudes that would push many voters away from him. In a way, the conflict between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Boris Johnson in the form of HS2 and spending can also be used by Boris Johnson as political ammo in the case of a leadership election.

For all my arguments, I think the potential for Boris Johnson to be removed as Prime Minister is fully possible, yet it is highly naïve to think the man who seems himself as a Churchillian figure will go without a fight. Even after everything, Boris Johnson will stay.