Comment

Boris deserves one last chance, but he may be incapable now of taking it

The best outcome is that the PM stays and finally governs like the liberal Tory he claimed to be

How surprised can we really be about Boris Johnson’s No 10 shenanigans? He has always been a rule-flouting, outrage-inducing politician – that’s why he managed to deliver Brexit, save the Conservative Party and win the biggest majority they’ve seen in a generation. Covid-19 restrictions are now being dropped because his vaccine programme (again) triumphed. He has arguably achieved more in 30 months than John Major did in seven years – and he gets kicked out because his staff held a few parties?

But then again, think of all that hypocrisy. No one forced him to send the police after those who broke lockdown rules, but he did so anyway. Then the “fear” campaign, those close-up posters of dying Covid patients. “Look her in the eyes, and tell her you never bend the rules,” said one of them. Now it turns out that this propaganda was ordered by the chief rule-breakers, out on regular booze runs to the off-licence with a specially designated wine suitcase. How to defend that?

You can’t. But nor can I quite bring myself to say that I want Boris Johnson gone. I can certainly see the case for his defenestration: his approval ratings are heading to sub-Gordon Brown territory, and we all know that public trust, once lost, is hard to win back. Reneging on his manifesto pledge not to raise taxes remains an important symbol of his approach to promises. But can we be sure that there really is no saving him? I’m not ready to say that; not yet. He needs – nay, deserves – more time.

Here’s my case. No leader, anywhere, has emerged from Covid-19 covered in glory. Britain ended up with a fatality rate around the European average but needlessly extended lockdowns gave us the worst economic damage. Such damage can be repaired, but the all-important question is whether it will be. This No 10 soap opera, dismal though it is, matters less than whether we can rebuild. And here, Johnson can ask to be judged by his achievements.

It is starting to look like the pandemic left a smaller economic scar than anyone imagined, with recovery running about a year ahead of what was feared just after lockdown. The furlough scheme, while hugely expensive, seems to have worked. As have the jabs: Britain’s booster protection levels are now higher than any European country save for Denmark – and, as a result, we’re now able to abolish Covid restrictions while others are mired in them.

Johnson’s rejection of lockdown was also pretty bold, given that Sage advisers had told him that his failure to act could mean Covid-induced deaths running between 600 and 6,000 a day by about now. The actual figure now stands at around 200. England is reopening with masks no longer mandated in schools (or, soon, churches) and work-from-home advice scrapped. Had he taken Sage’s advice we’d be midway through a winter lockdown. Instead, he listened to the opposition voices in his Cabinet. It worked.

So on the most important issues – vaccines to blunt the impact of the omicron wave, protecting the public from a needless lockdown – he succeeded. But it looks like failure because he has been facing fresh partygate allegations every couple of days. His inability to tell the whole truth about the shenanigans in No 10 (the first rule of managing any crisis) has allowed the drip-drip of revelations to go on for weeks. His failures have occluded his successes, and he’s very much to blame. 

To many Tories, the best case for removing him is that when Covid is over, he’ll continue his depressing slide into illiberal Conservatism and keep edging away from the principles he used to champion. Once Britain’s most vociferous opponent of identity cards, he went on to push through vaccine passports (not compulsory anymore, but still around). In April, he’ll raise taxes again – and keep pushing them to a 71-year high. If he stays, he might have nothing more to offer than big-government conservatism.

What happened to his low-tax, small-state Merry England conservatism? The journalistic spirit was willing but the prime ministerial flesh proved weak: he has come to see “more government” as the solution to most problems. If this continues then, as one rebel MP puts it, “we will have no reason for anyone to vote Tory in the next election”.

There is a way out of this. He can cancel the April tax rise – citing the cost-of-living crisis – and roll out a post-omicron recovery plan. He could go all-out for growth, scrap all Covid regulations (including the plan to fire unjabbed NHS staff) and get back to the liberal Conservative agenda on which he stood for leader. The May elections give a chance to see if he can still win votes on a “recovery” theme. The end of omicron gives him a chance to test this – and try to turn a new page. 

Would he take this opportunity? I’d say it’s 50/50. He’d need to assemble a new No 10 team, ending this tragicomedy of errors. Those who think Johnson needs to go believe him incapable of this. But I’m writing this from his old desk and know how he did my job so well: he had a genius for finding, inspiring and empowering brilliant people. He did that too as London mayor. Can this gift really have deserted him now, when he needs it most?

If the ball were to come loose from the scrum and end up in the hands of Rishi Sunak, I suspect he’d play it quite well. Mayhem would stop, tax would start going down not up – and he is, according to a recent poll, easily the most popular Conservative in Red Wall seats. But he could only take the job after a brutal leadership contest that would risk exposing Tories at their clannish, self-obsessed and regicidal worst.

So the best outcome for the Tories, still, is that Boris stays, shapes up and starts to govern. He might not get the choice when the Sue Gray report comes out: its contents could, still, finish him. His political life still hangs in the balance, as it has done for so much of his career. To the exhaustion and despair of his admirers, he has always specialised in near-death experiences and Lazarus-style recoveries. He might, yet, have one more left in him.

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