Will survive, will not survive? Will his flippancy and arrogance end up sinking Boris Johnson? Stunned by a series of scandals, not the least of which is the embarrassing revelation that took place last year, in full sanitary restrictions, a Christmas party at 10 Downing Street in which dozens of people were said to have participated, the British Prime Minister suddenly sees his political horizon blur radically. He is challenged from within his Conservative Party itself – a machine known to be impatient with its leaders when they falter, as Theresa May can attest.
No question, therefore, of Christmas celebrations on the sly at the Prime Minister’s residence this year … And for good reason. Because, obviously, public opinion takes it rather badly that Mr. Johnson’s entourage was celebrating while the pandemic containment measures prohibited any gathering of two people from different homes. Then because the Omicron variant is now taking, by Johnson’s own admission, the proportions of a “tidal wave” in the country.
Either the Omicron variant is spreading, there as elsewhere, at an unprecedented rate, as the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Tuesday, and cases are increasing at a staggering rate in Britain, the one of the countries most affected by COVID-19. But it is an understatement to say that, like Donald Trump in the United States, Mr. Johnson excessively politicized the management of the pandemic and procrastinated a bit, from the start of the health crisis, as to the seriousness of the disease. Referring to a tidal wave and announcing on Sunday a massive acceleration of the campaign for the third vaccine dose, Mr Johnson once again gives the clear impression of acting less out of concern for the well-being of the population than out of interest personal policy.
Having been very useful to them up to now, the man is losing credibility even among his own, a sign that does not lie. Possible he bounces? Of course. It is not for nothing that this Brexit mastermind is a “Teflon man”. Then, the next general elections do not take place for two years and the Conservative Party has in the Commons a comfortable majority of 79 seats, won under his leadership in 2019. However, the unfavorable polls multiply. And that the ” partygate Is not the first alleged scandal, or even the most serious, to have splashed the government in recent times.
Cronyism, when you hold us… The rules of tenders for public contracts having been suspended in the name of the Covidian emergency, journalists have brought to light the existence of lucrative contracts passed in secret and in all opacity at friends of the regime – what the English press quickly described as ” chumocracy “. One of the most high-profile cases, among others, involved Mr Johnson’s MP and friend Owen Paterson, who was suspected of bribery for earning hefty lobbying revenues but which the Prime Minister was stubbornly defending , before finally letting go. Another case, typical of the salons of power, concerns sums advanced by a Tory donor for the renovation of Mr Johnson’s Downing Street apartment – about which the latter allegedly kept secret …
The left-wing press that hates him is unleashed, of course. “It’s a calamity to have the worst post-war prime minister, by far, as the country goes through its worst post-war crisis,” wrote in an editorial on Sunday. The Observer in a devastating critique of Johnson’s carelessness in dealing with the pandemic. He […] embodies the politician who sees politics as a game rather than a duty. He is totally unfit to rule the UK. “
The right-wing press is also stirred when it sees that conservative blood-smelling wolves are starting to circle around Mr Johnson. “There is an end-of-regime stench emanating from Downing Street that it is no longer possible to ignore,” wrote one of the editors of the Daily Telegraph.
Sunk by a Christmas party? May be. This would not be without irony, he who, precisely, considers politics as a game.
In the immediate future, he urgently needed to vote this week in Parliament for the measures he announced last Wednesday to curb the spread of the Omicron variant: telework “as much as possible”, compulsory wearing of the mask in the theater and in the cinema and, for the first time, the introduction of the vaccine passport in certain public places, which would surely meet with strong opposition from the right wing and libertarian of the Conservative Party. Measures which, however, were going to be voted on in Parliament thanks to the support of the Labor opposition. But which are part of a politico-pandemic crisis which we can inevitably doubt that Mr. Johnson will be able to curb.