If the knives are out for Boris Johnson, the scalpels are out for Britain’s already shredded public realm. It would be an error to presume that Tory MPs have had a sudden revelation about the grade-A charlatan they voluntarily installed in No 10. After all, he was previously sacked twice for lying, conspired to beat up a journalist and whipped up Islamophobic bigotry by comparing veiled Muslim women to bank robbers. It is true that the parliamentary Conservative party has been severely bruised by a head-on collision with public opinion: an electorate that has endured the most severe sacrifices since the second world war did not take kindly to its rulers partying until they vomited, in defiance of their own rules. What really rankles with Tory parliamentarians offers a clue as to the likely political direction of our government and, with it, the nation: a belief that Johnson is insufficiently committed to the Thatcherite cause of what is euphemistically described as “rolling back the state” – that is, slash-and-burn cuts to the public sector.
Johnson is no anti-austerity crusader, though he has sought to pretend otherwise. During the last general election campaign, he claimed to have told Conservative colleagues back in 2010 that “austerity was just not the right way forward for the UK”. The Conservatives consummated their love affair with “red wall” voters through strategically targeted spending promises, specifically on the NHS, education and policing. As one would expect from a man with as much loyalty to the truth as his partners, these commitments were not all they seemed: the promise to build 40 hospitals, for example, turned out to be mostly rebuilding or consolidating existing projects.
