Her tousled hair is a reflection of her messy, improvised style that goes in all directions. His wry gaze seems to tell you, “You won’t get me.” It is I who, in the end, will roll you in the flour! “
The point is that over the years, and until quite recently, that is generally what has happened. Boris Johnson was once a prominent columnist from Brussels who told British Conservative newspaper readers all kinds of tales, exaggerated, even fictitious, about the turpitudes of the European Union. Scandals of lies, fabricated quotes and even plagiarism were associated with his name, but he still got away with it.
Mayor of London then minister, sabotaging the authority of the former Prime Minister Theresa May from inside the Conservative Party (entangled in post-referendum vaudeville in 2016), he was a maverick without convictions, an adventurer of the policy having bad control of its files. But with the genius of an effective slogan and a killer formula.
Barely two years ago, he won hands down, with 44% of the vote and 56% of the seats, a general election conducted on the theme ” Get Brexit Done ! »And by mimicking the social policies of the left.
So was done and, at the last minute of 2020, the UK was finally leaving the European Union.
But the year 2021 – and in particular the autumn which is coming to an end – will have been the moment when the insolent luck of Boris Johnson will have left him, when the banter and the political spectacle will not have been enough.
The end of the year turns into a nightmare for the British. Inflation is exploding, shortages are spreading. Supply problems, which also affect Europe, are exacerbated by Brexit and a strict immigration policy, which has left the country without truckers, with supermarket shelves half empty.
COVID-19 infections are skyrocketing. After promising a free and deconfined Christmas 2021 thanks to vaccines (70% vaccinated at two doses, which is not that high … and with a lot of AstraZeneca on top of that), Johnson has just brought back in disaster a “Plan B” which should never come out of the drawers: compulsory mask, health passport and company…
But on December 14, nearly 100 Conservative MPs (out of 365) rebelled against their own government, voting against this plan … which ultimately only got through Parliament thanks to the massive support of Labor MPs: humiliation for Boris the great boatman!
On the 16th (last Thursday), in a by-election, the Conservative Party lost a stronghold it had held for two centuries. What is more, in a ballot triggered by the forced resignation of an elected official caught up in a paid lobby affair (for pharmaceutical and food companies) … an old friend that Boris Johnson had wanted to protect!
Add to this the delayed scandal of the big parties which took place in the apartments of Downing Street in December 2020, while the country was forcibly confined … and we have in total a certain portrait of the “decadence of the elites” – that- at the very same time that the pro-Brexit leaders of 2016 (including Johnson) denounced with a vengeance.
The popular classes, who supported this project of 2016 which is now a reality, and who had passed in good part to the Conservatives in the general election of December 2019, are in the process of abandoning the formation to which they had rallied to one moment.
Taken to task, Tuesday in Parliament, by the leader of the opposition Keir Starmer – who today is spoiled for choice for the angles of attack and who spoke of a regime “which has lost the confidence of the people” -, Boris Johnson only found the answer of worn lines: “You have a fondness and a nostalgia for the European Union”, adding without laughing: “If we had not left the European Union, the United Kingdom – Uni would today be confined and without vaccines! “He thus betrays a certain dismay … perhaps the sign that Boris has lost his” magic touch “.
And then the day before yesterday, the bouquet: David Frost, Minister for Relations with the European Union, ex-Brexit negotiator, a close ally of the Prime Minister in the vicissitudes of recent years, resigned to Boris Johnson.
He said he was “disappointed with the political leadership of the government”. According to Mail on Sunday, this great conservative is “disillusioned”: he was against the establishment of the Green Pass (British version of the vaccine passport), approved last week in the Commons, against health restrictions, and hostile to “green investments”, which he considers excessive. He also deplored the deadlock, facing Brussels, on the question of Northern Ireland and its commercial status … still unresolved detail of Brexit.
The current defeat of the conservatives in London gives a new example of what we have already seen elsewhere, in particular in Italy with the League of Matteo Salvini.
Populists are great at whining in opposition and getting a strong protest vote… but they are less convincing when it comes to having a positive agenda and carrying it out.
François Brousseau is an international affairs columnist for Ici Radio-Canada. This column is taking a break and will be back on January 10. [email protected]