Cartoon: First published in Columbia Missourian, U.S.,
July 7, 2022 | By John Darkow
REPORTER'S
NOTEBOOK
The truth about Boris Johnson’s legacy
Westminster will remember the British prime minister
for his lies.
BY JACK
BLANCHARD
July 9,
2022 4:02 am
Jack
Blanchard is POLITICO’s U.K. editor. He was previously London Playbook‘s first
author and the host of Westminster Insider.
All
politicians are liars — but few of them lie with the ease of Boris Johnson.
For the
most part, this is not their fault. The British system of Cabinet government
requires ministers nodding along with all manner of nonsense they don’t agree
with. Party unity demands our politicians prostrate themselves before morning
news program presenters to say things we know they do not believe.
That is our
political system. It’s churlish to blame politicians for taking part in it,
even when they approach it with the obsequiousness of ministers like Michael
Ellis or Grant Shapps.
But Johnson
— past tense, now, of course — was in a different league.
Johnson
could, and did, lie for England. The charge sheet against him is vast and
hardly needs repeating, stretching back as it does beyond the breaching of our
quaint Westminster conventions, and all the way through to his first jobs in
newspapers, his first shadow Cabinet posts, his first marriages.
That he
brought his longstanding contempt for the truth into Downing Street should have
come as no surprise. There’s no evidence he can operate in any other way — nor,
until this past week, that he ever needed to.
What was
surprising, however, about his three eventful yet oddly underwhelming years as
prime minister, was just how quickly his lies infected the rest of government.
Political
journalists are hardly pillars of virtuous society, but they do not appreciate
being lied to. In a decade working in Westminster, I’ve seen five prime
ministers’ official spokesmen and women come and go, along with countless
deputies. Daily, we would watch them tiptoe around the truth, deflect or
distract from it, offer out half-formed pieces of information to protect their
masters in Downing Street. Such is their job — and we pay them for it.
But they
never lied to us. That was the deal. They never lied.
Under
Johnson, this changed. Over Partygate, Pincher and goodness knows what else,
Downing Street would tell lies to the press and so — by proxy — to the country
about what was going on inside the heart of government. Too frequently, we were
told — at times forcefully — that a story was wrong, only for it to turn out to
be true.
Senior
ministers were dispatched onto broadcast media to do the same. Perhaps, if
we’re feeling charitable, they all did so unwittingly. Perhaps.
Anyway.
This article was meant to consider Boris Johnson’s legacy, and in a very
obvious sense it is Brexit that towers above all else. Unusually for a prime
minister, with Brexit Johnson achieved something genuinely seismic which will
resonate for decades hence, changing the course of the country for better or
for worse. Just as unusually, this was a project he began from the backbenches,
in 2016, only finishing the job when he entered Downing Street three and a half
years later.
Changed,
too, is the shape of the Conservative Party, Johnson having rediscovered a
long-forgotten Tory path leading deep into post-industrial England.
These were
both lasting changes to the shape of British Conservatism. The next Tory leader
will not abandon Brexit — nor newly-converted Conservative voters in Bassetlaw,
Blyth Valley or Bolsover either. Not without a fight, at least.
But in
Westminster, it is the lies that will be the legacy.
Johnson was
frequently — and wrongly — compared to Donald Trump by his detractors, a cheap
shot that hopelessly underestimated his wit, his intellect, his generosity of
spirit, his powerful political brain.
But on his
propensity to lie — perhaps along with his sheer, naked ambition — there was
surely something there.
Unlike with
Trump, however, we can be hopeful the lies will not outlast the liar.
It seems
clear now that even if Trump does not seek the presidential nomination in 2024,
there is a whole army of mini-Trumps marching mob-handed through the Republican
movement, honing the same techniques, waiting to pick up the baton.
But as
we’ve seen over the past week, the Conservatives are not the Republicans.
Unlike
Trump, Boris has been rejected by his grand old party, thrown out of office not
by voters but by scores of his own MPs, sick of the lies and the bluster and
the deceit.
The
likelihood now must be that the Tories will pick someone who promises to
restore some honesty and some honor to the office of prime minister — whatever
their politics, whatever their views on Brexit or tax or anything else.
If a
re-embrace of veracity proves the ultimate legacy of Boris Johnson, then
Westminster, at least, will be richer for that.
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