So Boris Johnson has finally resigned himself to resigning. It was not too early. Caught up by lies and scandals, he resigned himself to it on Thursday, not without impenitence, faithful in this to himself, accusing rather those who pushed him towards the exit of having a “herd instinct”. We can always speculate on his ability to bounce back, which he has proven many times during his career. One should rather wonder how this arrant liar, leaning on the old British parliamentary democracy, managed to seize power and hold on to it for so long.
Mr. Johnson being what he is, he will still find cards to play. Resigning as leader of the Conservative Party (PC) while deciding to remain prime minister until the fall, while the party elects a new leader, is one. Voices, and not the least, called for his immediate departure and the appointment of an interim prime minister. We will see how well he will continue to hang on. This is again proof, in any case, that the exercise of power is for this man a game more than a responsibility.
Still, the PC decided that this disheveled jester had reached the end of its useful life. Hence the palace revolution. The resignations presented by the dozens in his government and his cabinet since Tuesday evening, following yet another scandal highlighting the dishonesty of Mr. Johnson, signed his death warrant.
The warning signs had been mounting since at least last fall: in December, around 100 MPs belonging to the party’s right wing had rebelled against their own government by voting no to a plan to fight COVID-19. 19 deemed liberticidal. A plan that Johnson was only able to get through the Commons thanks to the support of the Labor opposition… In fact, we have not given a lot of his skin since last June he barely survived a vote of no confidence where more than a third of its deputies (148 out of 359 elected Conservatives) had voted for his dismissal.
Also, entangled in his lies, his most recent (the one in which he pretended to learn at the same time as everyone else that a member of parliament who had recently been appointed Deputy Chief Whip was accused of sexual harassment) was not at the bottom that too much scandal. Other scandals, in particular corruption and conflicts of interest, burdened his mandate, starting obviously with the “Partygate” – these well-watered parties which were held in Downing Street in the midst of a pandemic while the common Briton was subjected to strict confinement rules.
It is not forbidden to think, however, that the PC, the party in power, would have continued to show indulgence towards Boris if the party had not suffered last month two crushing defeats at by-elections, including one in a constituency in South West England that the Tories had held for more than a century. Or if the polls did not indicate that the British are ridiculously disappointed by the evidence that Brexit, of which Mr. Johnson has been the champion since the first hour, does not give rise to the paradise, neither economic nor democratic, that they were given shimmer. UK inflation in May: 9.1%.
The fact is that Mr. Johnson’s deceit was matched only by his opportunism and his panache. It was he, after all, who led the PC to its flamboyant 2019 election victory, with an 80-MP majority — the size of Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 triumph — on the promise of “Get Brexit Done!” and pastiche the social positions of the Labor Party.
Opportunist, yes: he will in fact have taken advantage in 2019 of the great weakness of the Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He will have been fortunate, on the other hand, to enter the scene in the wake of the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May, competent but terribly dull. Having been twice mayor of London, a city with Labor sensitivities, he will have been perceived by the CP as the one who, despite all his faults, would know how to broaden the conservative electoral base. What was done. The parallel with Donald Trump is obviously striking: Johnson surfed, like the other, on a national-populist wave which consists in denouncing the ” establishment without changing anything.
Some silver lining. Under the regime of the break with the European Union inaugurated by Boris, the United Kingdom today finds itself very disunited, in the best sense of the word, with a Scotland which promises to hold a second referendum on the independence and a Northern Ireland where the separatists of Sinn Féin came out on top, a historic first, in the elections last May. To these developments, Mr. Johnson will have been helpful.