Boris Johnson is talented as a political escapologist, but evasion of accountability is a different skill from public administration, the absence of which is getting hard even for Tory loyalists to ignore. The gravity of what was implied by Sue Gray’s report into lockdown parties in Downing Street is weighing more heavily on many Conservative MPs after a few days’ contemplation – and correspondence with constituents. The announcement of financial aid to help with the cost of living, cynically timed to move the news agenda on from Partygate, worked only briefly. The report stirred too much public indignation and left too many questions unanswered, not least the matter of gatherings in the flat above Downing Street, over which Ms Gray’s account drew an inexplicable veil of discretion.
Aside from the ethical problems inherent in having a prime minister indifferent to the laws that his government makes, the Gray report exposed a tolerance of disorder in the headquarters of what is supposed to be a leading global democracy. After the initial impact of shock comes the slow burn of embarrassment, and the realisation that Britain is not being governed seriously in very serious times.
That anxiety will not be dispelled by the formulation of policy purely for distraction. There can be no other purpose for the proposal to restore trade in imperial units. The tiny number of people who will be thrilled by the restoration of a right to exclude metric measurements from displays of goods will be hugely outnumbered by the people, including many Conservatives, who can smell the decay in such gimmickry. Reports of a plan to lift the prohibition on expanding grammar schools belongs in a similar category, although it sounds weightier. This is a zombie policy that staggers on in the Tory imagination as a solution to problems of social mobility, despite ample evidence that selective education has the opposite effect. If Mr Johnson thinks his levelling up agenda will be enlivened by reviving discredited schools policy, he will be disappointed.
The same unoriginal impulse is being brought to ignite a proposed bonfire of EU regulation – the function of the “Brexit freedoms bill” announced in the Queen’s speech. Sunset clauses will be retroactively scattered across the body of retained European law, so that they expire regardless of whether a suitable replacement has been conceived. It is a wildly irresponsible idea, conceived in the delusional realm of Europhobic imaginations where every British economic problem has its origin in Brussels directives. In reality, it means legislating for deliberate uncertainty, as if the goal is deterring investment.
Such manoeuvres are undertaken to signal ideological purity, largely for the gratification of Tory backbenchers who can decide Mr Johnson’s fate. But the harder the prime minister scrapes the bottom of the policy barrel, the more desperate he looks. The portion of loyalty he can buy with vacuous measures gets smaller; the patience of voters wears thinner.
Mr Johnson’s career to date has been sustained by a rare capacity for withstanding scandal. Perhaps that gift has not deserted him yet, but the task of political survival is now consuming all of the energy that should be applied to running the country. That is the stark choice facing Conservative MPs. They can have Mr Johnson as their leader, or they can have a functional government; not both.
