Bust Boris in denial and facing economic immolation
This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter for Reaction subscribers.
On Monday evening, Oliver Dowden was a key figure at the Tory party’s big summer fundraiser held at the V&A in London, where he was assigned the table featuring Russian-related donors. But in parliament and the voluntary party Dowden is properly popular with colleagues, as a mainstream Tory with deep roots in the party. When he and Rishi Sunak backed Boris Johnson early in the 2019 leadership campaign, penning a joint op-ed with Robert Jenrick, it was seen as the next generation endorsing a winner.
In recent months as party chairman Dowden grew steadily more appalled by Johnson’s leadership and the tin-eared way the small group of advisors around the Prime Minister urge him to cling on as though everything is going to be okay. Can’t they see, Dowden asked friends, how bad the economic situation is going to get? The effects of inflation and the squeeze on the cost of living have only just started to be felt. On mortgages, energy, food, it’s all going to get much, much worse, and the Tory leadership seems not to grasp the seriousness of the peril facing the country and the party. What could he do to wake people up?
Dowden’s answer was to resign first thing on Friday morning in the wake of two by-election defeats. On the way out the door he sent a devastating letter to the Prime Minister. The text was menacing as much for what it left out out as for what it contained. Dowden made only one passing reference to serving in Johnson’s team, stressing instead that his personal loyalty is to the Conservative party and its activists and volunteers, rather Boris.
The resignation left Number 10 and CCHQ scrambling to find loyal replacements to do the media round at breakfast on Friday. Priti Patel and Dominic Raab toured the studios and tried to spin what had just happened, to little effect because the results speak for themselves.
In Tiverton and Honiton, Devon, the Lib-Dems secured a giant 29.9% swing and overturned a Tory majority of more than 24,000. In Wakefield, Yorkshire, Labour defeated the Conservatives.
What should really worry the Tories is that those voters who have had enough have figured out anti-Tory tactical voting. Labour lost its deposit in Devon and the Lib Dems lost their deposit in Wakefield.
There is some talk from pundits and from Boris supporters that the result wasn’t as good as it looked for Labour and the Liberal Democrats because turnouts were down and lots of Tories stayed at home. This misses the brute, raw political reality. A loss is a loss. A 29.9% swing is a 29.9% swing. Staying at home rather than voting is often the first step in a process of full defection, unless a party in power listens to the warning and changes, really changes.
Boris Johnson is in no mood for that. Even though he said on Friday morning that he is listening, but will go on, his conduct and that of his acolytes since he narrowly won a confidence vote among Tory MPs suggests only that he and they are denial. Any criticism is treated by Team Boris as treason. The man himself is lost in a world of his own imagination, in a bubble, angry with critics in the Tory-leaning parts of the press. Can’t he see, he says, how there is a really good plan and it’s going well? Don’t they understand that this is mere mid-term turbulence?
Time and again Prime Minister’s get themselves into this delusional state of mind, concluding it’s everyone else who is missing the point. In part this is because power is seductive and congenial: PMs are surrounded by a machine that whizzes them around at speed making them feel important. Over time the effect induces increasing Prime Ministerial detachment from reality – why can’t the critics see how hard I work and how brilliant I am? One for the psychologists and historians. Might it be worse with Boris Johnson, as he lives to be loved and is baffled when love, or something more base, is not forthcoming?
The comparison made by a desperate Team Boris with Thatcher’s setbacks is particularly misjudged, only serving to highlight the contrast with he premiership. It is true that by-election defeats are a feature of mid-term government. As Johnson’s fans point out, Margaret Thatcher suffered numerous such reverses and then recovered to win the 1983 and 1987 general elections. The differences this time should be obvious, though.
Not only was Margaret Thatcher engaged in a historic programme of reforms; she had a clear analysis and policy on tackling inflation and securing the country’s energy supply. That cannot be said of the current incumbent. She was also on the crest of a rising wave ahead of 1983 and 1987. The economy was recovering from the long after effects of the oil crisis of 1973 and the 1970s industrial carnage, and adapting from the early 1980s changes in British economic policy.
Today, on economics (though not on defence and foreign policy) this is a government buffeted by events, with no clear analysis let alone a plan. What is the Prime Minister’s insight on the mess the Bank of England is in, or on the cost of living, industrial unrest and the likelihood of rising unemployment? Remember, after an inflation spike and strikes, unemployment took off in the mid-1970s and didn’t stop until the mid-1980s. Right now, people would settle for some order being restored to government. At some point, perhaps later, the country will need the shock of a government or leader prepared to deliver tough truths. The only path to prosperity is modernisation, investment, efficiency, and improved productivity.
This is not Boris Johnson natural terrain. He has never, and I keep saying this because it is true and it merits repetition, had any interest in economics and political economy. In Borisworld it’s just something that happens, while he races about doing what he fancies.
Boris Johnson is a good times guy with no interest in economics, at a moment of economic peril worse than the financial crisis of 2008. Directly ahead is the worst period since the oil shock of 1973 and it may be worse than that because it coincides with a war in Europe and the need to rearm the democracies to resist Russian tyranny. This is the backdrop to the fights brewing over food, commodities, rare metals and much else. When voters seek reassurance and answers during a testing time, when they are becoming poorer, they have a Prime Minister they simply don’t trust or believe. The benefit of doubt he had before, with Covid, was all used up by Partygate, all gone. What’s coming for Boris Johnson if he tries to cling on is economic immolation.
What happens next? The Prime Minister is abroad for the next week, which is a dangerous place to be when the Tory party is plotting. I assumed when I started writing this newsletter earlier this morning that they would let him perform another of his escape acts, as he always does, because the cabinet is too cowardly.
Then Oliver Dowden resigned and the story started to speed up. Lord Howard has intervened too. The former leader can hardly be dismissed as an aggrieved Remainer. He was a Brexiteer. He has had enough and told the BBC: “The party and more importantly the country would be better off under new leadership. Members of the Cabinet should very carefully consider their positions. It may be necessary for the executive of the 1922 committee to meet and to decide to change the rules so another leadership could take place.”
In the no confidence vote a few weeks back, 148 voted against Johnson, though some who voted for the Prime Minister did so with reservations. The 148 is now at least at 158. No, it’s much more than even that says my friend Tim Montgomerie, Conservative commentator. It is question of when, although Johnson will simply refuse to quit, say his allies.
Evenentually even the “greased piglet”, as Boris is termed by David Cameron, will get caught. Close to half the parliamentary party and rising having had enough. The Tory chairman has resigned. The day after a crushing defeat Boris’s supporters are making mad April 1945 Berlin-style warnings about punishing traitors and snakes when it should be obvious the Prime Minister is not in a strong enough position to fire anyone remotely senior.
Hold onto your hats.
What I’m watching
Stranger Things. Finally, six years late, I decided to try it following the recent burst of attention the small town US sci-fi series has received because it has made the Kate Bush song “Running up that Hill” popular with young folk. Is all the fuss about Stranger Things justified? Yes. And as someone who loves the 1980s, the period detail is perfect. It mines films such as E.T. and Close Encounters. But two episodes in I turned to Google (how dystopian, wild and futuristic that would have seemed to us in 1983) to find out how many parts there are until we get to know how it ends. If I’ve googled correctly there are 32 episodes of Stranger Things! Yes, 32. That’s a day and half of viewing. It’s three times longer than rolling by-election coverage from Tiverton and Honiton. Could the concept of putting these thrilling stories with a beginning, a middle and an end into 90 minutes or two hours of entertainment, and perhaps screening it at a large public venue called a cinema, ever catch on?
Where I’m going
To see the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park with my son. This is the umpteenth time I’ve seen them, more times than I can remember. In 1990 at the old Wembley we went because, we friends agreed, this was obviously going to be the last time it was possible to catch them before Keith checked out. He’s still here, though sadly his friend and drummer Charlie Watts is no longer alive. I’ll try to write something about Keith and the concert. Writing about music – about the sublime – isn’t easy but I’ll attempt something about the nine lives of Keith Richards, the coolest cat there is. Cat is such an evocative word when Richards uses it. He’s connecting with the old jazz players and blues shufflers, reaching way back into the mid-20th century and the American Renaissance that took in pop culture and high art. At Altamont in 1969, when the crowd started to riot and a concert-goer was killed by the Hells Angels in front of the stage, Keith threatened to halt the concert if “those cats”, the Angels, didn’t stop beating people up. The Stones played on and then got out, albeit narrowly, in a packed helicopter. They’re still rolling, incredibly.
Have a good weekend.
Iain Martin