Kicking out a prime minister who has won a massive 80-seat majority is quite drastic for a party, especially when it appears that the Tory party took well less than 24 hours to forget why it did it.
he biggest problem with Boris Johnson was that whenever he was faced with a difficult decision or was in an awkward corner all he knew how to relieve the pressure on himself by telling naked lies until the problem was gone for a few seconds, the consequences of which were on worry about it at a later time.
He promised too much and delivered too little. It’s not just that he pretended there hadn’t been any parties during the lockdown, even though he had attended them. Ultimately, what was just as damaging was that everything would be “world-conquering” — even if it didn’t exist. Government as a form of sociopathic narcissism had been eliminated.
And yet, here we are, on what looks a lot like the first day of the Tory party leadership contest, and they’re definitely all at it.
There is hardly a candidate in the field, as things stand now, who has not already pledged to cut taxes. Nadhim Zahawi thinks he will cut the base income tax rate twice in the next two years. Jeremy Hunt has promised to “cut all taxes” just like he did three years ago. Liz Truss will “reduce taxes from day one as prime minister”.
Do any of them see a problem here? They are trying to replace the greatest fantasist of them all – the man who would say and do almost anything if he could see political self-interest in it. Johnson is an instinctive tax-cutter. So the person most likely to replace him at the moment is – Rishi Sunak.
And yet, as they faced the reality of the government, both men, and especially Johnson, saw very clearly that there was a massive crisis in social care funding, that public services were on the brink of collapse and that they had just borrowed about £1 as well. 400 billion (473 billion euros) to tackle Covid. So, what did they do? They raised taxes.
While it may seem absurd to say such a thing, based on the available evidence, Johnson is quite a bit like the adult.
Johnson and Sunak’s most recent budget was detailed on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, as “the death of conservatism”, and not without good reason. They raised taxes to the highest level in 80 years, obviously because they felt they had no choice.
Don’t Zahawi and Truss and everyone else give themselves a moment of concern that all they’ve done in their leadership campaigns is make big promises that the most I-will-say-everything politician the country has ever had couldn’t quite deliver on himself to make?
Few believe these tax cuts stand any chance, but we will all be forced to carry out the motions, to gather in sweaty rooms for official leadership “launchings”.
So far, the main highlight has been Penny Mordaunt having to edit her campaign video to remove convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius from his prominent position. The uproar over this caused British Paralympic sprinter Jonnie Peacock to ‘officially’ ask to be removed.
Javid hadn’t even bothered to shoot another video before getting out of the race last night, instead republishing the 2019 as what could be more inspiring than that?
Sunak expects the whole country to be #ReadyforRishi. You might imagine that the main question would be Rishi’s willingness, unlike the rest of the country, who he says have some sort of obligation to prepare for his arrival.
Once upon a time, not long after the EU referendum, David Cameron and Boris Johnson had dinner together.
Johnson is said to have asked him, “What happened to you?” Cameron was an even bigger Eurosceptic as far as Johnson was concerned, but he hadn’t had the courage to follow his convictions.
Cameron’s response was to tell him, “I grew up.”
In other words, he understood that government involves more compromises than is ideal, that ideological beliefs are a lot less important than the mundaneness of people’s lives.
While it may seem absurd to say such a thing, based on the available evidence, Johnson is quite a bit like the adult.
Whoever follows him will have a politically rude awakening, and it will be ordinary people who pick up the bill again.