A year ago on Friday, Boris Johnson announced his resignation as prime minister. His Downing Street statement signalled the end of probably the worst and certainly the most chaotic government in modern British history. But it also brought an end to one of Britain’s most miserably consequential administrations of recent times, which took – or in some cases failed to take – actions for which this country is still paying the price, while the man himself coins it on the international speechmaking circuit.
Mr Johnson had presided, if that is the right word for someone so narcissistic and slapdash, over the government of the disastrous Brexit deal; over the botched response to the Covid pandemic (the courts ruled on Thursday that Mr Johnson’s unredacted pandemic era WhatsApps will be handed to the Covid inquiry); and has showed a selfish disregard, verging on corruption, towards many of the most basic rules and ethics of government. A year ago it was clear that he did not understand he was not up to the job. That is still true a year on. In a new interview, asked about the events that led up to his resignation, he leans his head to one side and pretends to snore. He just doesn’t get it. But he just doesn’t care either.
Thursday’s report on the Chris Pincher case provides a tawdry and well-timed reminder of why Britain is so well rid – we hope – of Mr Johnson. In late June last year, Mr Pincher, then the Johnson government’s deputy chief whip, got extremely drunk at the Conservative Carlton Club. In the club bar, witnessed by fellow MPs, he sexually harassed and groped two men, whose complaints became common knowledge. Mr Pincher resigned from the government the next day.
Characteristically, Mr Johnson responded by feigning ignorance about the MP’s character. This was a lie. Mr Johnson, when foreign secretary under Theresa May, had in fact been warned in person about Mr Pincher’s conduct. That revelation was the final straw for many Tory ministers about their already discredited leader, and helped to trigger Mr Johnson’s resignation a few days later. The Commons standards committee has now ruled that Mr Pincher’s conduct was inappropriate, damaging, an abuse of power, and breached the parliamentary code of conduct. The committee is unquestionably right. There can be no other conclusion from their report, not least in the week when BBC Newsnight reported that a sexually predatory culture remains prevalent at Westminster.
Mr Pincher faces an eight-week suspension from the Commons, enough to trigger a recall petition among voters in his Tamworth constituency. His days as an MP are clearly numbered, and he may resign anyway. This would trigger the fourth difficult byelection for the Conservative party this summer, following the three due in two weeks’ time in Selby and Ainsty, Somerton and Frome and Mr Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
A year ago, the Conservative party had a chance of regrouping and renewing. It has failed to do so under either of its post-Johnson leaders. Twelve months on, the government is haplessly obsessed with migration and culture wars rather than the economy, the cost of living and the health service. Conservative MPs are still paying the price for Mr Johnson’s failures and low standards and, in cases like that of Mr Pincher, their own. Mr Johnson may have moved on. But the Conservative party, which he tainted so deeply and damagingly in so many ways, has not.
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