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“British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a no-confidence vote on Monday, securing enough support from his Conservative Party to remain in office… Johnson won the backing of 211 out of 359 Conservative lawmakers in a secret ballot, more than the simple majority needed to remain in power, but still a significant rebellion of 148 MPs… Known for his ability to shrug off scandals, the charismatic leader has struggled to turn the page on revelations that he and his staff repeatedly held boozy parties that flouted the COVID-19 restrictions they imposed on others.” AP News
Many on both sides agree that Johnson’s political future looks bleak:
“On Monday night, more than four out of 10 of his colleagues said that Mr Johnson should go. That rebels could be found from all wings of the party, rather than in one organised faction, is an indication of how far the rot has spread…
“With such backbench resentment, it is hard to see how Mr Johnson will get the 38 bills in his Queen’s speech through parliament. The prime minister has been unable to convince the public that he has the answers to household incomes being squeezed by inflation and public services being stretched to breaking point post-pandemic. His rhetoric of ready fixes and easy wheezes might have been funny once, but no one is laughing in a crisis. Voters won’t believe a prime minister who has repeatedly failed to tell the truth about Downing Street’s pandemic partying. It will take more than a reshuffle to restore confidence in Mr Johnson’s premiership.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian
“In British politics, there is no such thing as victory in a confidence vote. Instead, it tends to mark the beginning of the end, the start of a leader’s slow death. Theresa May announced her resignation less than six months after winning hers (by a bigger margin), while Margaret Thatcher lasted just 48 hours. John Major managed to stay in office after winning his. The result was electoral annihilation… Mr. Johnson is now badly, perhaps fatally, wounded. The likelihood that he leads the party into the next election has plummeted…
“Conservatives backed him primarily not because they liked him or owed him loyalty or thought he shared their vision. They backed him because they believed he was a winner. Now that this no longer seems to be the case — the Conservatives, suffering from Mr. Johnson’s nosediving popularity, are polling seven percentage points behind the opposition Labour Party — lawmakers are revising their opinions.”
Katy Balls, New York Times
Other opinions below.
“The prime minister followed the advice of government scientists and imposed three long lockdowns. The restrictions on personal movement and socializing were unprecedented. Mourners were banned from funerals, pubs were closed, and the elderly were trapped in their homes. The lockdowns were deeply unpopular, especially when Christmas gatherings were prohibited in 2020. Mr. Johnson justified the sacrifice by appealing to the Blitz spirit and a shared burden…
“The ‘Partygate’ revelations were typical of British office life, but Mr. Johnson had banned the British from drinking at their desks and in their gardens. He had betrayed the public’s trust, and his legalistic denials seemed furtive and unconvincing… As Orwell had written of political gluttony, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’”
Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal
“[The party] scandal could be survivable (ask California Gov. Gavin Newsom ), but Mr. Johnson’s bigger problem is his mismanagement of the British economy. The country is in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis as inflation hits 9% and domestic energy rates rose 54% in April alone. The economy started to contract this spring, while business and consumer confidence are plunging…
“Mr. Johnson’s Tories have few ideas of what to do about this, and the ideas they’ve tried are bad. Tax increases top their agenda, including an increase of 2.5 percentage points on the payroll tax that took effect in April… The broader lesson is that parties of the right fail when they lose sight of the free-market policies that produce economic opportunity and growth. The Tory slogan about ‘levelling up’ parts of Britain left behind sounds like a joke when real incomes are falling.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Losing 148 of his own party’s members in a secret ballot, as Johnson just did, shows the anger among his peers is deep and unlikely to fade. Conservative Home’s snap poll of Tory Party members on Monday morning found 55 percent wanted the prime minister booted from office. Public polls find that large majorities of Britons, including a large number of Conservative voters, agree… Shed a tear for Johnson, but not more. He served his party and his country well, leading Conservatives to victory and Britain to Brexit. Party and country now need someone new, and it will get that person. The sooner the better.”
Henry Olsen, Washington Post
“As Mayor of London, he helped propel the Brexit campaign to an unexpected win in the 2016 referendum. Three years later, he led the Tories to an overwhelming victory over the Labour Party on a promise to ‘get Brexit done,’ even managing to flip the so-called ‘red wall’ of historic Labour strongholds in northern England. And then he accomplished his central campaign promise by successfully negotiating and passing the Brexit deal that many had deemed impossible. Along the way, he earned a reputation as something of a political survivor. ‘That nothing ever seems to stick drives his opponents mad,’ wrote Tom McTague in a 2021 profile of the Prime Minister…
“To Americans facing the imminent comeback of a former president who quite literally attempted to overthrow democracy, the uproar over ‘partygate’ might seem quaint, even trivial. But the revelation that Johnson and his staff were flouting Covid rules while ordinary people were being laid off and dying alone in clogged hospitals almost perfectly played into the prime minister’s reputation as a pampered child of privilege with a breezy disregard for protocol…
“Johnson may have survived the immediate challenge to his leadership, but he’ll emerge from today’s vote embattled, with his aura of untouchability evaporated.”
Noah Y. Kim, Mother Jones
“[Johnson has made] Trump-like attempts to centralize power in his own office, neutering his Cabinet as well as Parliament itself. In theory, this threatens the British system of government. But another thing Johnson shares with Trump is that his pretensions of power greatly overshadow his willingness to do the hard work of [ensuring] that his many edicts are actually implemented. Since the great Brexit drama, his rule has been more clown show than Il Duce revival…
“Lately, Johnson has displayed a willingness to undermine parts of the 1998 Anglo-Irish peace agreement, and he has introduced some divisive and nasty efforts to shore up the Tory base by banning noisy protests and deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, regardless of where they came from…
“Even now, his raw political instincts—as opposed to his governing abilities—shouldn’t be underestimated. By shifting the Tories further rightward on social issues and leftward on economics, he is pursuing a populist strategy that is designed to splinter the opposition Labour Party’s traditional working-class base.”
John Cassidy, New Yorker
