And just like that, it’s over. Boris Johnson is stepping down – albeit, not just yet.
He is sticking to the spirit with which he has conducted himself through the string of scandals which have brought him down. From Owen Paterson to Partygate, the prime minister has invariably favoured stubborn, counterproductive resistance.
This approach has never made a difference, in the end. It didn’t save Paterson’s job, it didn’t prevent the photographs of various “work events” leaking to the papers, it hasn’t forestalled the devastating collapse in both his personal ratings and the Conservative party’s polling, and it hasn’t averted his own departure.
In each case, it made the process longer and more painful than necessary, and this twilight zone end to his premiership promises more of the same. A few more weeks of corroding the Conservative brand, presiding over a cabinet in which the best-known members openly covet his job and the rest likely won’t be in theirs for long.
Little wonder that MPs are looking for ways to expedite the leaving process. But barring the unthinkable, such as supporting a Labour motion of no confidence, their options are limited. A full Tory leadership contest is a necessarily time-consuming affair; even if the 1922 Committee expedites the early stages, you still need weeks to allow the final two to campaign for the national ballot of party members.
For all that, however, the general sense among Conservatives is one of relief. This unfortunate chapter might not quite have ended yet, but it is ending. By the conference in October, the party will have yet another leader, yet another chance at a fresh start. Fourth time’s the charm.
In fact, it is remarkable the extent to which the party has not been divided by the overthrow of a leader who just three years ago led the party to its first proper overall majority in more than 30 years – and recorded a record-smashing net approval rating of +92 in ConservativeHome’s cabinet rankings.
The prime minister does have his committed supporters among the grassroots, and a small band of loyalists in the House of Commons. But there is no great bloc of sympathisers prepared to serve as praetorian guard.
Indeed, the “crazy briefings” from his handful of loyalists about deselecting rebellious MPs or calling an early election just helped push even more ministers over the edge, ensuring a steady drumbeat of resignations right up to Johnson’s own.
On Wednesday night, when the siege of the Winter Palace was in full swing and it was not yet obvious whether Johnson would actually resign, one of the rightwing thinktanks was having its summer bash. One might expect a big crowd of Tory politicians, wonks, hacks and activists, on the eve of a revolution against a triumphant leader, to have been bitterly divided.
But if there were any Johnson supporters present, they were keeping very quiet. Among those who actually make the machinery of Conservative politics work, he had nobody left. The Daily Mail may try to invoke the spirit of 1990 – with a recent headline reading “What the hell have they done?” – but Johnson is no Thatcher. 1990 was the fall of a titan; yesterday was the death of a salesman.
This disillusion was not just down to the prime minister’s misconduct. It reflected a mounting sense of frustration that the man who proved so adept at winning a majority has proven almost totally unwilling to use it.
Having built a huge stock of political capital, he refused to spend it – and eventually burned through the lot while getting very little done. From planning to defence to infrastructure, he has retrenched and retreated over and over again.
The question hanging over the Conservative party now is: what will he do next? Unless he changes his mind yet again, Johnson will spend this summer as the ghost at the feast, reigning but not ruling as the various contenders fight for his crown.
But what then? Does he quit parliament – another unsalvageable byelection for the party – to go and make his money in the private sector? Or does he linger on in the Commons, throwing grenades at the frontbench?
This latter is the more dangerous option by far. Whatever his failings as an actual governor, Johnson is a first-class political illusionist. Once at a safe distance from the hard choices of actual power (and restored to his column in the Daily Telegraph) he can return to painting an impossible but beguiling portrait of his low-tax, high-spending, have-cake-and-eat-it Conservatism – an impossible standard against which his successor, grappling with inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, can never measure up.
What Conservative MPs and activists need to remember, as they prepare to choose their fourth prime minister in six years, is that this sorry position is where buying into such fantasies gets you. There is no way to deliver urgently needed reform without angering those parts of the electorate (often the very Tory parts) who are doing well out of the status quo.
Whether or not the party is willing to hear this – and indeed, whether any of the leadership contenders have the courage to tell them – remains to be seen. If not, ultimately Boris Johnson will go down in history as a symptom of the Conservative party’s decline, not the cause.
• Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
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