Boris Johnson is clearly drinking in the Last Chance Saloon – an unfortunate metaphor in this case – but historically that has not been a bad place to be.
Nothing concentrates a Prime Minister’s mind better than the thought that he or she nearly lost their job over a crisis. A close encounter with death in politics sharpens the mind of a premier.
It will, we hope, be Boris.
Attending a party at 10 Downing Street for 25 minutes during a lockdown – and then obfuscating – is not, historically speaking, an important enough issue upon which a Prime Minister should be forced to resign.
Although it was not a good example of impartiality, many were outraged by it. It should not have been enough to bring an end to the political career a Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority.
When one considers the crimes and misdemeanours of former premiers, for which they did not resign, it helps to put Boris’s party error into perspective.
Neville Chamberlain, mistakenly believing he had prevented war, sold the Czech people over to the Nazis in Munich. He remained as Prime Minister even though 4,300 Britons were killed or injured in the terrible Norway campaign.
Clement Attlee survived Lynskey Tribunal 1948, where 60 Ministers and top civil servants were interrogated about corruption.
Anthony Eden survived all votes to remove him from office over Suez Crisis. In which Eden had misled parliament about the Suez Crisis and was then forced to resign due to illness, Harold Macmillan was forced to resign due to ill-health, not the Profumo scandal.
These are serious and important issues. It isn’t a Downing Street party.
Boris Johnson is clearly drinking in the Last Chance Saloon – an unfortunate metaphor in this case – but historically that has not been a bad place to be, writes ANDREW ROBERTS
David Lloyd George purchased shares in American Marconi Radio Company when he knew that the British Government was planning to invest heavily into its UK subsidiary. This is a blatant act of insider trading.
Margaret Thatcher authorised the leaked information during the Westland case that was damaging to one Cabinet Minister.
John Major had sexual relations with Edwina Curie, his Cabinet colleague. Tony Blair took a £1 million donation from motor racing tycoon Bernie Ecclestone just prior to changing the rules on tobacco advertising in the sport.
Each Prime Minister takes many decisions every day and is likely to make mistakes. However, that doesn’t mean they have to lose their job.
There is also something profoundly decadent about Britain’s obsession over a party that took place in May 2020, when more than 100,000 Russian troops are massing on the Ukrainian border, Chinese fighter jets are probing Taiwanese airspace, and Iran has reportedly returned to enriching uranium for a bomb that, with the right delivery systems, could reach the UK (whom they term ‘the little Satan’).
What must Presidents Putin and Xi, and the mullah leaders, think as they malevolently plot their New World Disorder, of Britain’s politics being entirely taken up with the Prime Minister’s brief attendance at an outdoor gathering?
The biographer of Otto von Bismarck, AJP Taylor, was written by the historian. Taylor speculates that Otto von Bismarck deliberately made problems for himself in the hope of overcoming them.
Sometimes one feels that way about Boris Johnson’s unforced errors. Although the truth is that, had Boris not lost his consigliere Sir Simon Milton – my friend who was his Chief of Staff as London Mayor, and who died of leukaemia aged 49 in 2011 – he would surely have been advised to avoid the party.
What is urgently needed is a new Chief of Staff whom the PM respects and listens to – such as Lady (Simone) Finn, the steely yet sassy deputy Chief of Staff – and who can get a grip on No 10.
You have plenty of time to change the fortunes of Conservatives before the next Election. A week in politics is considered a very long time. The 34 months that are left before the next election is quite an eternity.
Although it’s normal for governments in the mid-term to be in a slump, this does not necessarily mean they will lose their way. As Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Margaret Thatcher show, victory is possible. The kind of memes being put out about Boris’s party-going might stay funny for a week, but hardly any longer. We cannot have government-bymeme.
Once this Tory leadership election is over – assuming there even is one – the party needs to look again at the absurdly low figure of 15 per cent of MPs required to trigger a leadership vote. It was created in 1998. The rules are not appropriate for an organization which considers itself the natural party to government.
A party that has been at the top for over 12 years like the Tories will still have 15% of its elected members. These MPs may have been overlooked or dismissed from office, disappointed in their work, or have left for another reason. To reflect a genuine desire to change, there should be at least 25% threshold.
However, the Tory party is never attractive in a leadership battle.
‘We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water,’ wrote the late Tory grandee Alan Clark about an earlier contest. This party is at the forefront of a period when party disunity has the most devastating effect on electoral prospects.
Attending a party at 10 Downing Street for 25 minutes during a lockdown – and then obfuscating – is not, historically speaking, an important enough issue upon which a Prime Minister should be forced to resign, writes ANDREW ROBERTS
Indeed, the best comment over the current row over claims about backbenchers being blackmailed by whips was made by Sir Nicholas Soames, who was an MP for 36 years, and who tweeted: ‘Goodness me! We have such fragile plants in Parliament today. They’re being brutally whipped. #trulypathetic.’
I’ve seen MPs respond in strong Anglo-Saxon languages to whips who attempted to threaten them. This is the right way to do it. It is typical for modern politicians to whine and secretly record their colleagues.
If Boris Johnson had sold all the gold in the Bank of England at a ludicrously knockdown price, like Gordon Brown did, or signed Britain up to an ‘ever-closer union’ with the EU at Maastricht, as John Major did, or spent years frustrating the democratic will of the people as Theresa May did – then, yes, he should resign.
He instead went to work for just 25 minutes under lockdown. This was not the right thing. It would have been one thing if his presence led to Covid-19 being caught and killed. But it didn’t.
The past gives perspective to the future, something we appear to have lost completely in all this chaos. This also shows us that people vote for the future, and not the past that will arrive four years later in General Elections.
A proven Election winner who saved Britain from a Marxist-Leninist Prime minister, protected Britain during the most severe peacetime crisis in a century and accurately called Christmas 2021 despite much of the government advice would not be discarded. His rehabilitation deserves another chance.
Many premiers have had a few drinks in the Last Chance Saloon. After being somewhat embarrassed, they pushed open the swing doors and stepped onto the streets to win again. Boris ought to get the chance.