Please understand: this is not a new leadership bid by Boris Johnson. The foreign secretary’s long article about Brexit in the Daily Telegraph is merely the latest chapter in a campaign for the top job that began in May 1997, when he stood (unsuccessfully) as Conservative candidate in Clwyd South — and probably earlier. Those who are surprised have not been paying attention.
Among those not surprised is the home secretary, Amber Rudd, who delivered a withering critique of her colleague’s intervention. On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, she said she did not want Johnson “back seat driving” or “managing the Brexit process”.
What is certain is that, for all his jolly japes, Johnson is much less impulsive than he seems. He has done more calculating than Casio. The best joke I have heard in Tory circles since his 4,000-word article appeared is that he wrote two: one of which said that Brexit was going to be a punishing experience, thanks to perfidious Johnny Foreigner, and that we should brace ourselves for impact — but that he decided to go with the optimistic, Britain-can-make-it version.
In so doing, he has piled the pressure on the prime minister, who is to deliver a speech on Britain’s departure from the EU in Florence on Friday. How to trump her own foreign secretary’s showmanship? As he declared that “this country will succeed in our new national enterprise, and will succeed mightily”, one imagined Private Baldrick and Lieutenant George crying: “Hurrah!”
Undoubtedly, Johnson has been stung by a series of suspiciously clustered and well-briefed newspaper columns savaging his record at the Foreign Office, as though No 10 were preparing the ground to sack or demote him. Of the unnamed sources quoted in these pieces, he raged to one friend: “Who are these critics, and what have they run?”
If nothing else, his grand statement means that, if the prime minister fires him now, it will look as though he is being punished for boldness rather than perceived incompetence. Allied to this is his fear that the dream of Brexit he sold to the public in last year’s referendum is being lost in a sea of minutiae, cautious technocracy and timorous compromise.
In particular, he balks at the idea of paying for access to the single market, or an interim arrangement of this sort that becomes indefinite. Most remarkably, he has revived the notion — the heart of the Vote Leave campaign — that Brexit will yield a weekly 350 million pounds (Dh1.75 billion) dividend for the NHS: this in spite of the fact that the UK’s net payment to Brussels is much less (the excellent Full Fact site estimates that the actual figure is around 250 million pounds.
Note too that the pledge was conspicuously absent from the Conservative manifesto. Michael Gove and Priti Patel are reportedly keen upon its reprieve, insistent that the promise was too resonant in 2016 to be arbitrarily ditched a year later.
Other cabinet colleagues argue that the “whole problem” facing the Brexit negotiators is the unreasonable public expectations raised by Vote Leave. When you are dealing with 27 other EU member states, each with its own technical demands and objections, it does not help to have your own side heckling.
Really, though, there is no mystery to the foreign secretary’s outburst. What defeats most politicians, in common with boxers, is time. For years, Johnson has been described as the Young Turk. Now, aged 53, he is merely part-Turkish. It is not that he is too old for the top job: May is 60, and Jeremy Corbyn 68 — and Vince Cable, at 74, will give his first leader’s speech to the Liberal Democrat conference this week.
For years, Johnson has been described as the Young Turk. Now, aged 53, he is merely part-Turkish
No, Johnson’s problem is not senescence but novelty — or rather, its loss. He is no longer what Michael Lewis would call the New New Thing. In the Tory party, that mantle seems to have passed — unbelievably — to Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose fancy-dress approach to politics (come as Lord North, it’ll be fun!) has made the foreign secretary look positively bureaucratic by comparison. And that would never do.
It has been argued that Johnson’s long essay is low on substance and evades the gritty drudgery of deal-making. But that is the whole point. No senior British politician in living memory has believed so absolutely in the power of brio, charisma and will. He is the love child of Nietzsche and Wodehouse.
Of course, he has not resigned. Next month he will have to sit on the platform at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, cheering the prime minister to the rafters. He knows that removing a Tory leader is no easy task.
In spite of countless media reports using the phrase, there is no such thing as a “leadership challenge” under the party’s rules, changed by William Hague in 1998. A vote of confidence in the incumbent is triggered only when 15 per cent of Conservative MPs (47, at present) send letters to the chairman of the 1922 Committee. If the leader is defeated, only then is there a contest between new contenders.
It was, and remains, my view that May — having failed spectacularly in the electoral mission she set herself — should have announced a timetable for her resignation on the morning of June 9. However, she did not; and, more to the point, her party decided, cravenly, to postpone its inevitable collision with reality by supporting her in the days that followed, and endorsing her invidious deal with the Democratic Unionist party.
May is still in No 10 because her MPs fear that what comes next may be even worse. But the chemical compound of this government remains hopelessly unstable. The question is not if but when it will implode.
Which is why this is really about the prime minister, rather than Johnson himself. The ridiculous pretence that all is well in her administration has been decisively and brutally punctured, and cannot be restored with a straight face. Sit back and get ready for the main feature. This was only a teaser trailer.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Matthew d’Ancona is a senior Guardian columnist.
