Boris Johnson beleaguered after worst week of premiership

AN OLD English adage holds that cats have nine lives, and this may well apply to Boris Johnson too who has - so far in his career - defied political gravity as an MP, London mayor, and prime minister.

Yet, after what has been his worst week - and indeed month - in 10 Downing Street, he may now have used up perhaps up to 8 of those 9 lives, with his premiership continuing the wild, roller coaster ride of the last 21/2 years. The latest misfortunes to greet the prime minister are Friday (Dec 17)'s by-election loss in North Shropshire, a safe Conservative seat held by the party since the constituency's creation in 1832, plus the resignation on Saturday of Brexit minister David Frost.

Frost cited in his resignation letter "the current direction of travel" of the government, including his fears over perceived "coercive" lockdown measures and a wish for the United Kingdom to become a "lightly regulated, low-tax" economy. However, he may well also be concerned that Johnson, in his current bout of political weakness, is about to be forced into significant compromises on key Brexit issues, including the Northern Ireland protocol.

Frost's resignation will see Foreign Secretary Liz Truss take over Brexit negotiations with the EU. While she was a Remainer in 2016, and thus not a long-standing Brexiteer, she is a potential replacement for Johnson as prime minister and may well therefore take a harder-than-expected line with Brussels to enhance her leadership credentials with what is an increasingly Eurosceptic Conservative Party membership.

Some 2 years after his landslide general election victory in 2019, Johnson is therefore now badly on the back foot with predictions from some Conservative backbenchers of a leadership challenge in 2022. What is increasingly clear is that while he may be one of the best campaigners in UK politics with his ability to use simple slogans like "Get Brexit done" to cut through to the electorate, his ability to govern is much weaker.

The reason for this dichotomy is his skill set. For much of the last 2 years of the coronavirus pandemic, his approach to tackling the crisis has been chaotic and incoherent, reflecting the fact that his style is "big picture" and not details-focused, while his flamboyance is less suited to the demands of the pandemic era than previous times.

To be sure, the decisions that Johnson has had to make during the health emergency have been very hard, and any alternative leader would have made mistakes too. Yet, the United Kingdom has had one of the worst death rates per capita in the world, while its economy was one of the hardest-hit in the G20.

Worse could yet still be to come if the United Kingdom heads into another lockdown this winter. Johnson has insisted such a lockdown will not be needed, and it would be a further body blow to his authority if this is now required.

Already, he is being roundly criticised by both a cadre of right-wing MPs and libertarians, plus also leading conservative-leaning newspapers, for making only modest tightening of restrictions last week. With more restrictions being urged by many scientists, his political space to act on this issue is narrower than 2020.

Yet, the nation may be on the verge of a huge health and economic emergency with skyrocketing infections on a trajectory to exceed 100,000 new cases a day, a big jump in less than a week thanks in large part to the highly transmissible Omicron variant. On Sunday, the nation recorded 82,886 new cases, a 72 per cent rise on the 48,071 total recorded last Sunday.

This is the barometer ministers will be looking at very closely over in coming days, plus the speed at which hospitalisations and also fatalities jump. If hospital admissions tick up significantly, it may be difficult for policymakers to ignore implementing further restrictions possibly before Christmas, which UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid did not rule out on Sunday.

While Johnson has long had critics within the ruling Conservatives, there is growing disquiet within the party about whether he can last in office in 2022, let alone the next general election. When he scored his huge win in December 2019, it was widely forecast at the time that he could remain in office for much of the 2020s, yet the roller coaster ride that his premiership is proving means his term could yet end far sooner.

Pandemic questions and rule-breaking

This is not just because of Johnson's stumbling political performance during the pandemic. In addition to this are the problems that come from his extraordinary, risk-on approach to governing the nation.

From the very start of his premiership he deliberately took a more adversarial approach to Brexit than predecessor Theresa May. The culmination of this saw him suspend Parliament, illegally, in a decision that was ultimately overruled by the Supreme Court, causing embarrassment for the Queen who had to formally approve the suspension request sought by Johnson.

To be sure, some of Johnson's gambles have paid off for him. He took a major risk for instance in pushing for a pre-Christmas election in 2019, the first December ballot for a century, at a time of extraordinary political volatility.

Since the turn of 2020, however, the prime minister's "high wire" approach to governance has generally backfired. In February and March last year, he originally opted for an "outlier" pandemic strategy, styled by some around as a "herd immunity" approach, which was out of kilter with many countries in much of the rest of the world which imposed restrictive measures faster and/or utilised much wider "mass" testing.

Fast forward 18 months to today, and there are still big questions over the government's strategy to the pandemic, and there has been public outrage recently over a series of high-profile cases where senior Conservative politicians and staffers have not adhered to restrictions. While Johnson previously had much goodwill from the nation after his own brush with death from Covid-19 last year, and was riding high in the polls, the government is now losing public support. Labour has, at least temporarily, overtaken the Tories in some polls by double-digit margins.

The gathering storm now facing Johnson may yet see his prime ministership having an ignominious ending in 2022. Despite his hold on power seeming unassailable even 6 months ago, after the May local elections, his premature departure from office in these circumstances is a growing possibility unless he can turn a political corner fast.

The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.