Owengate: Johnson the charlatan and Paterson the naif
It should have been very different. Boris Johnson enjoys grand-standing and Glasgow was an ideal venue. There would have been plenty of grounds for scepticism. Even if they had not added to the carbon count, many of COP26’s proceedings would merely have produced the purest hot air. But even if his shallowest qualities had been prominent – which they usually are – Boris would have had fun. Then the fun stopped and the PM became mired in toxic political waste. His faults came to the fore.
Boris has never tried to understand the Commons, nor has he taken the trouble to become a good parliamentary performer. Because – at least up to now – he has always been able to goof and charm his way out of any difficulty, he has rarely bothered to think his way through detail in order to acquire that vital attribute, grip. He has no interest in objective truth. To him, truth is a matter of convenience: his convenience. To be fair to him, this has often worked. As he has survived troubles and scandals that might have sunk six normal Prime Ministers, it is hardly surprising that he had come to believe in his own invulnerability, and he has been justified in doing so. Up to now. As a politician, he has been all souffle and no substance. The souffle has now collapsed.
There is an irony. 0wen Paterson has all the strengths which Boris lacks. He is an honourable man with principles and strongly-held beliefs, which led him into public service and public life. But he also has the defects of his qualities. There is rigidity; there is little subtlety. Owen Paterson has never been good at thinking round corners or foreseeing political danger. He was convinced that his motives were impeccable and that he had worked in the interests of public health. He was simply unable to understand how others might either see things differently – or see political advantage in pretending to do so.
He has another problem. There is absolutely no cynicism in his political make-up. That is a major source of weakness. So when the PM and he had dealings, a charlatan who is all cynicism was in partnership with a naif. There was never a healthy relationship.
Matters were also made worse by the last Cabinet reshuffle, which brought another of Boris’s character flaws into sharper focus. It was a mystifying affair, in that merit played hardly any part. With one or two exceptions – Messrs Jenrick and Williamson – the promotions and dismissals had a random quality. The PM seemed uninterested in gathering strong ministers around him. Indeed, he appeared to resent and fear strength in others, such as Rishi Sunak. They might become rivals. As a result, no member of the present cabinet can claim to have Boris’s confidence or to enjoy more than a superficial friendship with the PM. Then again, Boris does not do friendship. Only interested in others as a means of his gratification, he has hardly any close friends. That does not endear him to his supposedly close colleagues.
Nor does he have a reliable source of good political advice. Having got away with so much for so long, Boris was over-confident. He thought that he could just bluster his way through Owengate. There is a wonderful fellow called Stephen Sherbourne – now a peer – who has always believed that the backroom boys should stay in the back room. In consequence, he is largely unknown, even though he played a vital role for some years in Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street. If he had stayed on, he would have prevented her defeat in 1990. In recent weeks, he would have been aware of the hazards involved in defending Owen Paterson, and of a possible stratagem.
A friend of mine recently committed a faux pas. He allowed his shotgun licence to expire, so was summoned to the local cop-shop. He asked another friend, a lawyer, to come with him. “He doesn’t need me,” he was told. “All you need is six words.” What are they? “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.” That worked.
Something similar might have worked for Owen. In the face of an apology, the Commons can be forgiving, especially to a man living in the shadow of tragedy. If Owen had accepted that he had transgressed, but said – with no belligerence – that he was so concerned with food safety issues that he had not realised he has breaking the rules, he might have escaped with a shorter sentence. Simple defiance was never going to work.
The Labour party is delighted. They will have read about the degringolade years from 1962-64, when allegations of sleaze helped to scupper the Tories and bring Harold Wilson, a genuinely sleazy man, to the Premiership. They will also remember the Major government, when charges of Tory sleaze were so successful. They are now hoping for a repetition.
They are likely to be frustrated. If the Tory party concluded that Boris was now irredeemably toxic, he would not last for long. Even before last week, he commanded little affection and less respect among his parliamentary party. They put up with him because he has been a winner. If that ceased to be the case, the letters would pour in to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee.
In the mean time, damage could be done. Sir John Major has identified the real risk arising from this mess. It is nothing to do with the reputations of either Boris Johnson or Owen Paterson. It is the potential damage to parliament’s reputation. If the voters came to believe that their MPs are corrupt shysters, they would be grievously in error. But that would not prevent damage to our democracy, partly by deterring good people from going into politics. Perhaps there ought to be an enquiry into the current regulations; John Major would be an excellent Chairman and would command public respect.
“Respect” is not a quality which has ever been associated with Boris Johnson. That is never going to change. He was always an improbable Prime Minister. A lot of Tory MPs will now be asking themselves whether he has become an impossible one.