There isn’t much good news in the world these days, so it’s worth taking the time to appreciate the glorious implosion of future former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
His crushing win in 2019 against the hapless Labor Party Jeremy Corbyn seemed to usher in a long period of right-wing dominance. johnson, said The Economist, “is well placed to become one of the most powerful prime ministers of modern times.” Less than three years later, undone by scandal, incompetence and his own party’s rebellion, he has announced his intention to resign as soon as a new conservative leader is found. There may not be new general elections anytime soon, but if there were, polls suggest Labour could win a majority.
Wednesday I listened to the hosts of the left British podcast “Oh God, what now?” respond, almost in real time, as Johnson’s ministers abandoned him en masse. Their elation was contagious. “This is not an analysis, this is a giggling euphoria!” said the journalist Ian Dunt. At least someone there is having fun!
For an American liberal, however, the Schadenfreude that Johnson’s collapse brings is mixed with jealousy. We see how a still functioning democracy sends its bombastic populist leader because his amorality and narcissistic dishonesty were just too much. On Wednesday, a day after his resignation as health minister, Sajid Javid stunned Johnson during Question Time in the House of Commons: “We have seen in major democracies what happens when divisions are entrenched and not bridged. We can’t let that happen here.”
Johnson, a nationalist demagogue and liar, has often been compared to Donald Trump, right down to his fluffy yellow hair. Their political careers show certain parallels.
The shocking success of the Brexit referendum, the reason Johnson eventually came to power, foreshadowed Trump’s even more shocking presidential victory. Both men created new electoral coalitions by invading disgruntled working-class voters. Both got brutal stunts against immigrants, such as those of the Johnson administration recent plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Both shared a disdain for the truth and the standards of their respective governments.
But of course Britain and the United States are very different countries, and not just because the UK is a parliamentary system, a generally more effective form of government than our own presidential system. Britons can apparently still be appalled by sexual harassment and blatant falsehoods from officials, even if those officials are on their side. Their country is not heavily armed and has no powerful faction that regularly threatens violence. Britain still seems to have minimal social agreement about acceptable political behaviour. Her government is falling apart precisely because her society is not.
Entangled as I am in the demoralizing woes of American politics, I envy the relative strangeness of the scandal that eventually toppled Johnson: lying about someone else’s sexual misconduct! The end of the Johnson era was precipitated by an MP named Christopher Pincher, who recently got drunk and groped two men in a private Tory club.
It turns out that Pincher, who hired Johnson as a deputy head whip in February, has been accused of sexual harassment multiple times in the past. Johnson and his allies claimed he was unaware of the allegations when he gave Pincher the job, but he did, even allegedly a joke that the MP was “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature”.
Both Pincher and Johnson behaved clearly blatantly. What’s odd is the near-universal condemnation of their behavior, and the widespread recognition that, after years of bullying and dishonesty, Johnson’s concealment was the last straw. Imagine having the last straw!
I felt equally wistful when I thought of Partygate, the scandal over Johnson’s secret pandemic socialization that led conservatives to hold a no-confidence vote last month, which the prime minister survived. Occasionally I’ve asked British people if there was really widespread anger at Johnson, or just satisfaction in getting a hold of him. After all, under Trump, Americans largely became accustomed to hypocrisy, even if they still felt the need to expose it. But everyone I spoke to told me that the outrage was real.
That was partly because Britain’s lockdown was much stricter than ours, and applied to the whole country; unlike from Trump celebrate in 2020, Johnson broke the rules his administration imposed on others. But to be truly enraged at hypocrisy, you have to have some expectation that those in power will abide by the rules. And to be ashamed of the revelation of hypocrisy, as the Tories seemed to be, you have to accept that the standards that apply to others also apply to you. Another way of saying this is that intolerance of hypocrisy implies a democratic sensibility, in which everyone is bound to at least the same restrictions.
Johnson’s career ends, at least for now, as Trump’s should have ended — with public distaste that prompted his own party to impeach him. Like Trump, Johnson initially wanted to stay in power when it was no longer viable; unlike with Trump, there was never any prospect of him summoning an armed mob. Watching Johnson fall after he lives through Trump is like chasing a slasher movie with a cozy mystery. Both can be murder stories, but only one has a comforting sequence.
“We deserve a better class of bastards,” Dunt said in the podcast. We all do. Yet as an American I have to say: be grateful for what you have.