Thursday 7 July 2022

After the "Resignation"

Boris Johnson is simultaneously gone but not gone. He's resigned but hasn't resigned. He's Schrödinger's Prime Minister. But one thing isn't ambiguous about his status: the longer he stays on, the greater the damage inflicted on the Conservative Party and the chances of his successor. Consider, for example, Johnson's reasons for not quitting immediately. First, the official reason. Downing Street was briefing that he has agreed with Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, he would stay on until October. An untrue claim. Johnson also said he would do his duty by the British people until the end. And then we have what might be the real reason: the lavish wedding anniversary bash the Johnsons have planned in at Chequers. Smacks of the time when Johnson squatted in One Carlton Gardens, the Foreign Secretary's London residence, after he flounced out of Theresa May's cabinet.

The problem is Johnson's staying on only multiplies the points of pain his forcing from office was supposed to avoid. One of the main reasons why Johnson submitted to pressure was because the bulk of the parliamentary party went on strike. With a third of government jobs vacant and, presumably, not enough people willing to fill them as he frantically rang around last night, government threatened to seize up and Johnson could no longer rule. Don't ever let a Tory tell you collective action doesn't work. But having made a song and dance of resigning, would the obscure and barely-heard-of getting their name on the Sky News ticker for putting the boot in go back to their jobs for the summer - and make them look like utter fools?

There's a more serious point for the party as well: how Johnson's staying on can only entrench divisions. Most of the parliamentary party want him gone yesterday - helped by Johnson's dismissive turn in his resignation statement against his critics and usurpers. A rump - mostly loyalists - are happy for their anointed one to stay. This can only cause more tension, more bad blood, and more dysfunction as this alignment becomes sublimated through the Tory leadership contest to come. Who's going to be the custodian of Brexit? Who will be the champion of the (barely existent) levelling up wheeze? Who's going to traipse around the world stage affecting best buddyship with Volodymyr Zelenskyy? And who will affect to be the most loyalist of the loyal to the departing Johnson? The initial rounds of the leadership contest, due to take place next week, are sure to be messy.

And then there it the more dangerous issue: Keir Starmer's threatening to make political weather. For once, he has approached their crisis in a way guaranteed to maximise Tory pain and Labour advantage. For one, he's made it clear that Johnson was gestated, enabled, and supported by the Tory party. Rightly everyone, even those who began the avalanche of resignations, are tarred with the same brush. The problem isn't Johnson the bad apple but the Conservatives per se - an attack line that has been severely lacking from the front bench until very recently. Second, he's argued that it's unacceptable for Johnson to stay on given the corrupt practices, sleaze, and not to mention the sexual predator he brought into the heart of government. Again, very strong language for Starmer, but rhetoric backed by the promise of action. He's threatened to table a vote of no confidence in the Commons and that could prove doubly painful. Do Tory MPs rally around a Prime Minister they've just denounced as unacceptable and unsuitable, or vote for a general election they've done no preparation for, have no leader, and would almost certainly lose given the shifting tectonics of Tory support? Given the choice, it can only be the former - with all the agonies that entails.

It's fitting that as the Johnson moment has met its denouement, it comes dragging fresh crisis in its wake. It could not be happening to a nicer party.

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3 comments:

Nigel Butterworth said...

You've gotta hand it to the old Etonian, he must have picked up something from his lessons on Rhetoric back in his school days. He calls upon all the 'canons of rhetoric'. In particular his use of Ad populum, an appeal to the authority of the crowd (15 million voters can't be wrong but his parliamentary colleagues 'the herd' certainly can. Notice Johnson never uses the words: resign or resignation. The Sophists would have been proud.

Old Trot said...

I'm completely unconvinced a General Election is in the offing. Why would a Tory Party with a circa 80 seat majority fall into that trap ? They will just select another ghastly , sociopathic , Leader to be PM. And on the neoliberal shitshow will trundle - with the Starmer-led NuLabour2 Party continuing working feverishly to 'cleanse' their ranks of anyone vaguely of the Left - including those cowardly bozos from the 'Socialist' Campaign Group of MPs - who pathetically supposed that by adopting a supine compliant profile they would be spared - to continue their very well remunerated careers as cosmetic 'Left' adornments to this now firmly merely Tory-lite neoliberal NATO-loving, privatisation allowing, party of the Thatcherite/Blairite consensus.

The huge danger for the working class now is that the entirely bogus mirage of a very near future Labour government will , yet again, give the various Trades Union bureaucracies the opportunity to sell out the rising tide of industrial action - "so as not to give the MSM the opportunity to discredit the Labour Party". Because the bureaucracy will claim that a Labour government, any type of Labour government, will automatically be better than a Tory one. Wake up guys, a fully restored Blairite neoliberal Labour Party - totally craven before the power of Capital, will be pretty much identical to a Tory government in the key policy areas - if missing out the constant partying and the most blatant corrupt robbing of the public purse that we saw in the PPE contracts for instance. And a Labour Government would in any case have to be in coalition with the lesser Tories of the Lib Dems - so don't expect any slowdown in the privatisation of our NHS, or any let-up in the inflation-enabled austerity on steroids for most of us that lies ahead even if a Lab/Lib Dem government somehow was elected out of the current crisis. Not that I think that will happen anyway- but the union bureaucrats will use that illusion to justify damping down currently fast-rising strike levels across the range of public and private industry and services. .

Jim Denham said...

'Old Trot': you may be old, but you're no Trot:

"the entirely bogus mirage of a very near future Labour government will , yet again, give the various Trades Union bureaucracies the opportunity to sell out the rising tide of industrial action - "so as not to give the MSM the opportunity to discredit the Labour Party". Because the bureaucracy will claim that a Labour government, any type of Labour government, will automatically be better than a Tory one."

1/ There is logical no reason why campaigning for a Labour government need mean selling out industrial action. Unless you're a craven reformist or a crazy syndicalist. Learn to walk and fart both at the same time!

2/ Do seriously doubt that a Labour government - "any type of Labour government" - will "automatically be better than a Tory one"? Seriously? Time to re-read Lenin, Old Syndicalist.