How did Boris Johnson go from hero to zero in less than three years as prime minister? It wasn’t only about Partygate, though the Downing Street parties and Johnson’s woeful response to them was the catalyst for the confidence vote and became a symbol of his premiership.
Many Conservative MPs had doubts about Johnson when he succeeded Theresa May in 2019. The word in Toryland was that his support on the backbenches was “wide but shallow.” Plenty of Tories had concerns about his character. They disliked his disloyalty towards May. He has now reaped what he sowed; his behaviour towards May is one reason why several Tories did not hesitate to call for a confidence vote in him.
However, his opponents range way beyond the group of “bitter Mayites waiting to take revenge” depicted by some Johnson allies. The doubts were put on the back burner when Johnson won his thumping majority of 80 at the 2019 general election, capturing a swathe of Labour seats in the red wall, and then claimed to have “got Brexit done”. Even Tory critics admitted no one else could have managed it.
The concerns did not take long to resurface. Johnson might have been a brilliant campaigner, but he struggled with the hard, messy slog and detail of governing. There were slogans like “levelling up” but even close allies admitted they had little idea of how to put that into practice.
Soon even that vital political priority was overshadowed by the pandemic. The need for lockdowns brought Johnson into conflict with a group of right–wing, mainly Eurosceptic backbenchers who should have been his loudest cheerleaders. To appease the libertarians, Johnson tacked right on policy, moving away from the One Nation conservatism that marked his eight years as Mayor of London.
Although he became a convert to the green cause, encouraged by his wife Carrie and the approach of last November’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, there was little follow through once the conference ended.
Johnson alienated a large chunk of mainstream Tories who disliked the taste of his “red meat” and tendency to look for “wedge” issues that would divide the two main parties and the country. Moderates also baulked at Johnson’s cavalier approach to the rules of the international order. They believed he damaged the image of “global Britain” around the world by twice threatening to legislate to overturn an international treaty with the EU, most recently on the Northern Ireland protocol.
The lurch to the right intensified in recent months as Johnson tried to placate the noisy but muscular group of right-wingers who eventually toppled May. There were attacks on the BBC, the proposed privatisation of Channel 4, a decision to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and silly stunts like a return to imperial measurements.
These angered Tory moderates but crucially, did not satisfy right-wingers, who felt Johnson had become “unConservative” by raising national insurance contributions in April, breaking the party’s 2019 manifesto pled
Many Conservative MPs had doubts about Johnson when he succeeded Theresa May in 2019. The word in Toryland was that his support on the backbenches was “wide but shallow.” Plenty of Tories had concerns about his character. They disliked his disloyalty towards May. He has now reaped what he sowed; his behaviour towards May is one reason why several Tories did not hesitate to call for a confidence vote in him.
However, his opponents range way beyond the group of “bitter Mayites waiting to take revenge” depicted by some Johnson allies. The doubts were put on the back burner when Johnson won his thumping majority of 80 at the 2019 general election, capturing a swathe of Labour seats in the red wall, and then claimed to have “got Brexit done”. Even Tory critics admitted no one else could have managed it.
The concerns did not take long to resurface. Johnson might have been a brilliant campaigner, but he struggled with the hard, messy slog and detail of governing. There were slogans like “levelling up” but even close allies admitted they had little idea of how to put that into practice.
Soon even that vital political priority was overshadowed by the pandemic. The need for lockdowns brought Johnson into conflict with a group of right–wing, mainly Eurosceptic backbenchers who should have been his loudest cheerleaders. To appease the libertarians, Johnson tacked right on policy, moving away from the One Nation conservatism that marked his eight years as Mayor of London.
Although he became a convert to the green cause, encouraged by his wife Carrie and the approach of last November’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, there was little follow through once the conference ended.
Johnson alienated a large chunk of mainstream Tories who disliked the taste of his “red meat” and tendency to look for “wedge” issues that would divide the two main parties and the country. Moderates also baulked at Johnson’s cavalier approach to the rules of the international order. They believed he damaged the image of “global Britain” around the world by twice threatening to legislate to overturn an international treaty with the EU, most recently on the Northern Ireland protocol.
The lurch to the right intensified in recent months as Johnson tried to placate the noisy but muscular group of right-wingers who eventually toppled May. There were attacks on the BBC, the proposed privatisation of Channel 4, a decision to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and silly stunts like a return to imperial measurements.
These angered Tory moderates but crucially, did not satisfy right-wingers, who felt Johnson had become “unConservative” by raising national insurance contributions in April, breaking the party’s 2019 manifesto pled
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