Boris Johnson’s once dominant, now disgraced government is most likely to be remembered for his lying. Not just about his conduct and that of his cronies, but about what his government was achieving. Forty new hospitals, the fastest growth in the G7, falling child poverty, falling crime, the biggest reduction in tax for a quarter of a century, Brexit without a border in the Irish Sea: the exaggerations and fabrications came so thick and fast that his critics were sometimes too overwhelmed to effectively refute them.
All politicians lie – some of the time. The need to get out of tight corners and the contradictory desires of voters sometimes demand it. But it’s hard to think of a precedent, apart from the Trump presidency, for a government in a supposedly sceptical democracy trying to construct such a complete parallel reality, and for long periods convincing many of its core supporters and sometimes many other people. That Johnson was ultimately brought down by a lie, about what he knew about Chris Pincher, does not alter the fact that for almost three years constant lying was a strategy that served the government pretty well.
It’s common to attribute Johnson’s lying as prime minister to his personality, and to the crucial part that untruths had already played in his rise to power. From his attention-getting Telegraph articles about the EU in the 1990s to the NHS funding promises on the side of the Brexit bus, the breakthroughs in his coldly self-serving career usually involved making stuff up.
Yet the focus on Johnson as a political conman, uniquely willing and able to dupe voters and colleagues, is in some ways highly convenient for the Conservatives. While it’s embarrassing for the party that he took them in for so long, the Tories don’t embarrass easily, and any replacement can be presented as a welcome contrast – as what the rather correct, ex-military leadership contender Tom Tugendhat calls “a clean start”. As shown by the electoral success of Tory leaders who have emphasised their differences with their predecessors, such as Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Johnson himself, many voters are easily persuaded that the Conservatives have changed their spots.
Moreover, Johnson’s lying premiership was not simply an aberration. It was also a temporary solution to a big Tory problem. While the party remains good at winning – or, at least, not losing – general elections, since at least the start of Theresa May’s premiership in 2016 it has struggled to achieve much in government. Even the few reforms the Tories have managed to implement, such as Brexit, have been more about trying to create the conditions for national change rather than actually changing the country.
Under May, the absence of achievements helped to create the impression that her government was directionless and stuck, and to persuade millions of voters that her party’s time in office ought to be up after approaching a decade in power. But under Johnson, a similar vacuum was filled by his boasting and inventions, dignified by his colleagues and a largely compliant media as “boosterism”. The ban on MPs calling each other liars in the Commons – which is either very naive or very cynical, depending on how you view Britain’s political rules – meant that Johnson’s almost fact-free approach was hard for even the most forensic opposition politicians to challenge.
With the great liar on his way out, the Conservatives need a new solution to their governing problem. One approach would be to face up to the scale of Britain’s economic, social and environmental crises, and to adapt Conservatism so that it can begin to deal with them. The party has rethought its approach to reflect changing realities before: in the late 1940s, when it came round to the Labour idea that a Britain battered by the Great Depression and the second world war needed a better welfare state; and in the 1970s, when it decided that the increasingly erratic postwar economy needed to be disciplined, almost whatever the social cost.
Yet both of those painful rethinks happened when the Tories had recently lost power. Circumstances are very different now, with their ascendancy well past the decade mark and the next election, against a Labour leader whom most Tories do not fear, probably not for another two years. Rather than adjust their policies to address Britain’s deepening problems, it’s tempting for the Tories to swap one set of illusions for another.
The latter is what most of their leadership candidates seem to be doing so far. Despite deteriorating state services and public finances, they promise tax cuts. Despite decades of deregulation that have produced great social stress and diminishing economic returns, even Jeremy Hunt, supposedly one of the more centrist contenders, promises to make Britain “the most pro-business economy in the western world”. Despite the fact that Johnson’s culture wars left most voters cold, many of the candidates suggest they will continue them.
Aside from his dishonesty, the main problem with the prime minister for his would-be successors seems to be that he was not rightwing enough. “Sitting opposite a portrait of Margaret Thatcher in his Commons office”, Sajid Javid told the Sunday Telegraph last weekend that he wanted to make their party “Conservative again”.
It all feels like the Tories retreating into their comfort zone. But Thatcher’s Britain is long gone – as even the rightwing press sometimes indirectly acknowledges. In the same edition of the Telegraph, there was a lifestyle article, admiringly written, about a sustainable wedding in east London, complete with “foraged grasses in the bridal bouquet” and vegan food. The couple could conceivably have been Tories. But it didn’t seem that likely. Since the Thatcher government, the Labour majority in their constituency has more than quadrupled.
Promises made in leadership elections, it is true, are not always a good guide to what the winner will do once they have to appeal to a wider electorate, as Keir Starmer has demonstrated. And one of the Tory frontrunners, Rishi Sunak, has at least hinted that he would try to be a frank prime minister, saying he would not offer Britons “comforting fairy tales”.
Yet this is the same politician who claimed in February that “the free market is positively correlated with almost everything … desirable for humanity” – as if the cost of living and climate crises were not happening. If you want a more realistic national leader, this feverish Tory leadership race is not the election that matters.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
