Boris blues: stop Johnson, this is a national emergency
This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, exclusively for Reaction subscribers.
I woke up this morning (this sounds like a blues number) hoping that yesterday had been a bad dream. Boris Johnson, the shambles of a human being who had to announce he was quitting the premiership in disgrace in July, is attempting to return as Prime Minister of this country.
It was not a bad dream, unfortunately. As of Saturday, it looks as though Johnson really is running for the Tory leadership in the wake of the resignation of Liz Truss. On Saturday morning he returned from holiday in the Dominican Republic. His British Airways flight landed and Johnson was whisked away to meet his deluded band of supporters. Some of his oldest friends are telling him, sensibly, to forget it. Charles Moore did so in the Daily Telegraph. Others are cheering and urging him on. At the time of writing, he’s running.
But hold on. Why was Johnson on holiday in the first place? Parliament is not on holiday, this is not recess, everyone else was back in London working last week during the drama. Undecided Tory MPs, the hard of thinking, should surely have asked themselves this question. When from the beach Johnson rang round on Thursday and Friday, telling all manner of people all manner of different things they want to hear, as is his way, did they pause to ask why he was on holiday? He told several MPs the “culture” would be different this time if they gave him another chance. If anyone needed a clue that it won’t be different this time with Johnson, him calling from holiday, when parliament is not on holiday, is a clue. It won’t. He never changes.
The return of Johnson is such a spectacularly suboptimal idea on so many levels that it should not need explaining. In case there is any doubt, the central reason he must be stopped relates to the markets and the urgent need to restore some credibility to British policymaking. Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor has begun this vital work. The return of Boris would mess this up and introduce a “buffoon premium.”
I know I bang on a bit about the financial history I like so much, but it is relevant at this moment of crisis. Since 1694, and the establishment of the Bank of England, which birthed the modern state by enabling the government to borrow reliably, governments have had to take care when borrowing abnormally large amounts in an emergency, such as during a war or a pandemic. Running a large deficit, needing to borrow a lot, means having to pay attention to what those who lend the money think. Governments that forget this, Labour and Conservative, and then the Trussites in the last two months, get their country into difficulties.
This is not to say the markets have some unique wisdom. They are not a single organism or entity possessed of some magical intelligence. They are thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people, running around trying to make money. But for all their imperfections, when it comes to government debt they are the lender, and the government on our behalf is the borrower.
On the fringes of the centre-right, deep in the right wing entertainment complex, are a group of increasingly crazed anti-market commentators working for clicks and airtime saying this role played by the markets is all very unfair and proves the world is run by the Davos elite and globalist bankers, and maybe even Bill Gates. Even if this is the case, and it is clearly not, if you find Davos annoying (and there I agree, Davos is annoying) why would you advocate a loose, reckless national policy that makes the country even more dependent on borrowing from the markets in a time of danger? You wouldn’t. The sensible answer to the dilemma is clearly to be pragmatic, run orderly national finances on the back of trusted national institutions, and provide investors with confidence the country has not gone mad. A significant chunk of the Conservative party, the oldest and until now one of the most successful electoral forces around, has lost touch with this core reality.
Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, with Hunt as Chancellor, has a shot, no more than that, at restoring reality-based policy and a semblance of national prestige after the Johnson/Truss disaster.
Sunak may not be perfect, no-one is. He made mistakes as Chancellor and can be stubborn. I am concerned he is too much the“finance guy” who doesn’t think in terms of geopolitics and the threat from Russia and China. Even with spending restraint now in order, defence and national security spending are going to have to rise and taxes to pay for it, considering the extent of the international peril. Yet these are important matters that can be discussed sensibly if there is some return to cabinet government and the Tories are patriotic enough to refuse the egomaniac Johnson another go. Hasn’t he done enough damage to this country in the last three years?
Still have doubts about Sunak? The great Republican animal PJ O’Rourke, when explaining in 2016 why he was voting for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump, said he thought Clinton was wrong about everything, but wrong within normal parameters. It was the perfect way of putting it. And Sunak is not even wrong about everything. He’s right about a lot. If the Conservative party cannot work out a way of making him Prime Minister by this time next week, it might as well stand aside and hold a general election in which it will be crushed.
Things can only get better for Labour patriots
Revolver – the cool, monochrome, meritocratic masterpiece by The Beatles – is re-released next week. Giles Martin, son of producer George Martin, has remixed the songs with the help of new technology that takes apart the old four track masters. The pre-publicity has got me thinking a lot about the mid-1960s and Labour, considering the party is as it stands heading back to power.
What will a Labour government be like? The recent biography of Harold Wilson, PM when Revolver appeared in 1966, is a good place to start finding out. The Winner is by Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, one of Labour’s most intriguing thinkers, a serious academic now on the opposition front-bench as shadow international trade secretary.
It’s obvious that if Labour can continue marginalising the far-left, and avoid a blow up at the hands of the gender identity fanatics who want to abolish women, then the party will run on an updated version of the mid-1960s agenda, emphasising new technology, social solidarity, modern Britishness.
To my eye Wilson and Keir Starmer are similar personalities, though Wilson was an extraordinary speaker and Starmer is not. The Starmer speeches have been much better of late, though. He is like Wilson in that you never quite know what he thinks about anything and will shift to where power lies. Wilson was a bureaucrat trained in the post-Second World War orthodoxy of nationalisation and command and control policy. Starmer is a machine lawyer, a puritan prosecutor, a bureaucrat from the law, the London law. This has become the bastion of the modern centre-left from where it fights its battles to change society.
It is aligning rather well for Labour. Higher taxes are in fashion, and every time someone suggests materially lower taxes Labour can for the next twenty years point to a video of Liz Truss. The next Labour government will spend a fortune on infrastructure, by increasing taxes further, and may even get the benefit of a global economic recovery in a couple of years.
There is a downside, of course, a price to pay. Revolver was released in the summer of 1966. It was followed by the technicolour Sergeant Pepper in May 1967. In November 1967 the Labour government announced the devaluation of the pound. In an infamous broadcast, the slippery Wilson said the pound in your pocket had not lost any value, which was not really true because imports would become more expensive. The Chancellor then resigned. It was ever thus.
Choose messy democracy any day over totalitarian China
They do it differently in the Chinese Communist Party. Chilling footage from the ruling party’s latest Congress shows Xi Jinping’s immediate predecessor Hu Jintao being escorted out of the closing ceremony. The old boy doesn’t want to leave. A heavy in a Covid mask gets him out of his chair and the former leader of China exchanges a brief comment with Xi as he is led away. Xi’s supporters have now strengthened their position, say China experts, to such an extent that he has complete control. There is no credible internal opposition to his increasingly hardline domestic and foreign policy on subjects such as Taiwan. This makes a clash between China and America even more likely.
The purging is a reminder of what we in the West are up against when it comes to totalitarian China. It is also a reminder that our messy democracy is far superior from the perspective of human freedom and basic dignity. We may be appalled by the behaviour of the Tory party, inflicting terrible leaders and all sorts of chicanery on the country. At least they can be removed. There will be a general election, and it may come very soon if the Conservative party keeps this up.
And, breathe
This week’s newsletter is slightly shorter than usual and that’s because of the Tory party. I’m sure I’m not alone in finding their antics stressful. I was woken early this morning by a journalist friend calling to explain why a particular Tory MP had flipped and like a crazy person started advocating the return of Johnson. Amid a war in Europe, with a serious and rising risk of nuclear escalation, on the verge of a European recession during an energy crisis, they are forcing the rest of us to use up headspace contemplating the horrifying prospect. On balance, it seems Sunak will win, but there are some cognitively constrained Tory MPs out there and it could be a close run thing. So, I’m going to stop writing now and turn off my phone for a bit. We’re driving to West Sussex for a walk and then dinner with friends in an effort to forget about it all.
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