Crash!
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It’s the noise the whole world just heard coming from London. Boris Johnson’s reign as Prime Minister has just been shattered.
Cheer ! The best way to react to this resignation is to congratulate yourself on it.
We live in a time when democracy is in decline.
Where populist, lying and unscrupulous leaders like Boris Johnson are on the rise.
Where these demagogue politicians take advantage of the loss of confidence in democratic institutions to triumph, but also to cling to power despite their shortcomings.
It is therefore reassuring to see that in the name of “integrity”, many elected members of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom have the courage to show the door to a toxic leader.
It was Boris Johnson’s former health minister, Sajid Javid, who used the word. After resigning, he claimed that the British are entitled to “integrity from their government”.
We understood that Boris Johnson was ready to lie like a tooth-puller to achieve his ends – and that he did not hesitate to transgress democratic norms if necessary – when he was one of the figureheads of the Brexit side.
His national-populism (he notably promised the British to liberate them from Europe and its migrants), his charisma, and his dubious methods led him to the post of prime minister in 2019.
Then, scandals multiplied around him like, in the Gospels, the loaves and fish around Jesus.
The most recent: he appointed an elected official who had been accused of sexual misconduct as his party’s deputy chief whip, and he lied when he denied knowing about the allegations.
Towards the end of last year, Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood was already hinting that his government had lost its “moral compass”. It had not improved since, but Boris Johnson refused to leave his post.
And he probably wouldn’t have thrown in the towel had it not been for the wave of resignations within the Conservative ranks.
This should serve as a lesson.
Demagogue clowns can be curbed.
Their political bombs can be defused.
These politicians are poisonous, but there is a counterpoison. It is often found within the very political formation that gave birth to these monsters.
Imagine if more Republican politicians in Washington had been willing to show courage and integrity in recent years! We would not be wondering if Donald Trump will come back in force in 2024. He would have been deposed and would have spun in Florida with his tail between his legs.
Republican politicians have not dared to put him in his place and he continues to puff out his chest.
Political parties and their elected representatives have a responsibility when it comes to ensuring the resilience of a democracy. Conservatives in the UK have come to understand this. Republicans in the United States ignore it.
Since Canada is not immune to the disturbances that shake Western democracies, one of our major parties could end up with a populist demagogue at its head. If he became toxic, would other elected members of the party dare to show him the door?
It’s less hypothetical than you might think, as the Conservative Party of Canada is increasingly captive to its radical wing. Let’s remember that in 2017, Maxime Bernier came within a hair’s breadth of winning the leadership race.
Would the elected representatives of this political formation have disavowed him if he had slipped as he did as leader of the People’s Party?
Jean Charest has just predicted that the Canadian Conservative Party could become “a pale copy of the Republican Party”.
If ever a possible leader of this political party starts following in the footsteps of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, let us hope that a large enough number of Tory MPs will take inspiration from what happened in London rather than in Washington.