The Observer view on why a general election in Britain is now essential
Three and a half months ago, he was forced by his party to resign his premiership in disgrace. Yesterday, Boris Johnson landed back in the UK, fresh from a holiday in the Caribbean amid the squall of drama that surrounds his every move, to attempt the launch of his bid to lead the country again in the wake of Liz Truss’s resignation. There is perhaps no greater symbol of the contempt the Conservative party has for voters than the scores of MPs apparently willing to disregard the fact he is being investigated for misleading parliament – and may well face a Commons suspension and perhaps even a byelection before the year is out – in order to re-elevate to high office a charlatan who has repeatedly demonstrated that he is devoid of the integrity citizens should expect from their prime minister. Even some of his close former backers are warning him that to proceed would do his party great damage.
This absurd state of affairs is just the latest chapter of the decade-long Tory psychodrama that has imposed untold hardship on British people, eroded their trust in politicians and made Britain an international laughing stock. It is the sorry tale of a governing party that abandoned any attempt to fashion real solutions to the problems the country faces in favour of populist rhetoric about Brexit, without considering the consequences – for its own fortunes, for our political institutions and for the country as a whole. As a result, the UK is mired in an economic crisis made immeasurably worse by the actions of four successive Conservative prime ministers. It should not be left to Conservative MPs, or Conservative party members, to decide who the right person is to steer us out of this mess. The country needs and deserves a general election to choose its next prime minister.
A 12-year legacy
The disaster of Truss’s brief premiership – the shortest in history – has had a long gestation. Her six weeks in office, during which she tanked the economy with a huge package of unfunded tax cuts, have been the culmination of 12 years of Conservative leadership: a woeful tale of bad decision after bad decision.
The UK went into the 2010s with a much improved public infrastructure after 13 years of Labour government, but still facing a series of profound economic and social challenges. The financial crisis served as an expensive reminder of the skewed nature of British growth: too heavily reliant on the financial sector without sufficient diversification; too driven by consumer spending fuelled by rising house prices and not enough by business investment and exports; too sustained by economic activity in London and the south-east, with some of the biggest geographical inequalities among wealthy nations. The housing crisis was getting worse, with growing numbers of people shut out of homeownership for ever; politicians had bucked the question of how to fund older care in an ageing population; and too many young people – disproportionately from poorer backgrounds – were leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy skills.
So at the start of the last decade, Britain was in desperate need of a government that would formulate serious and long-term answers to these challenges, taking advantage of historically low interest rates to borrow to invest in skills, infrastructure and in schools, hospitals, childcare and adult care. Instead, it got a coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats that implemented deep spending cuts, underfunded and understaffed the NHS, pursued ideologically motivated structural reform of the education system that did nothing to address the attainment gap between children from poorer and wealthier backgrounds and widened inequalities by cutting tax credits for low-paid parents to fund tax cuts for the more affluent. The divide in public investment between richer and poorer areas increased. Altogether, David Cameron and Nick Clegg created the fertile territory for Brexit: growing numbers of voters felt disillusioned with sluggish wage rises and a lack of economic opportunity in large parts of the country, while richer areas continued to power ahead.
Brexit lies
This is what left the gap for the right, Eurosceptic flank of the Conservative party to step forwards with its populist solutions. For them, Brexit was always shaped by the libertarian fantasy that throwing off the shackles of European labour and consumer protections could fulfil the dream of a lowtax, low-regulation state. But they knew they could not sell this to the electorate. So instead, Brexit was pitched as the answer to the country’s economic malaise and its national loss of confidence. Brexit, it was claimed, would free up billions of imaginary pounds for the NHS, curb immigration to promote wage growth and allow Britain to take back control of its destiny and relive its glorious past. Voters were lied to; they were told, for instance, that a vote to remain in the EU was a vote for a border with Syria and Iraq.
Of course, the main impact of Brexit has been to make Britain’s structural economic problems even worse: to make exports harder, growth worse and economic inequalities sharper. The vote to leave the EU meanwhile strengthened the Tory ideological right, pushing it to demand ever more from party leaders. Brexit became progressively harder than it needed to be, first under Theresa May, then Johnson, whose late decision to support Brexit helped him surf the Eurosceptic wave into No 10 in 2019.
Johnson-Truss chaos
Johnson won a decisive 80-seat majority when he went to the country in December 2019. But it was not his personal popularity that delivered him such a large win; in Jeremy Corbyn, he faced the least appealing Labour leader for generations. The election campaign, masterminded by Dominic Cummings, was a populist rehash of the EU referendum campaign, with its slogan to get Brexit done while simultaneously levelling up the country, two entirely contradictory objectives.
Johnson owed his position to the right of his party and that was reflected in the hard-as-nails Brexit he delivered. Throughout his premiership he showed complete disregard for the principles of public life, overlooking serious allegations of sexual assault among his parliamentary allies, lying to the public about the implications of the Northern Ireland protocol, unlawfully suspending parliament to try to bulldoze a Brexit deal through. He made similarly bad decisions during the pandemic, delaying the imposition of social restrictions in a way that caused more economic damage and more deaths and personally flouting Covid regulations while so many others made huge sacrifices to save lives. He was manifestly unsuitable as a leader and deeply unpopular by the end of his tenure; it should not have taken his party three years to eject him from office.
Johnson’s downfall paved the way for the Conservative membership to foist Truss on the country. Without any democratic mandate, she announced tens of billions of unfunded tax cuts at a moment when she also, rightly, announced a very expensive package of support for people’s energy bills. The markets reacted swiftly and brutally; the pound plunged and the cost of government borrowing and interest rates shot up, raising mortgage repayments over the next two years for many just as the cost of living has also soared. Despite U-turning on almost every element of this package, the economy has been left permanently damaged. No prime minister has caused so much chaos so soon into their premiership. Any authority Truss had with her parliamentary party – many of whom did not back her for leader – disintegrated entirely last week, leaving her with no choice but to resign.
The final reckoning
This tale of reckless incompetence must end. The Conservative party has wreaked enough damage on Britain. Its poll ratings are at a historical low. The party that still commands a majority in the Commons has lost the faith of the British people. It has surrendered any moral authority it once had to govern. If Conservative MPs or, even worse, Conservative party members, impose a prime minister on the country without a national debate and a democratic mandate, people will not forgive or forget. Britain needs an election that gives voters the chance to trigger a change of government, so it can begin the painful recovery from the last 12 years of misrule. This process will require long-term investment in our public services, skills and infrastructure and realigning more closely with the EU to try to repair the damage done to Britain’s exports.
The Conservative party’s dramatic downward trajectory should serve as a warning to any politician tempted by the heady pull of populism. Promising voters the earth with reforms that will actually make their lives worse may win votes in the short term when packaged with a good sales patter. But there is always a reckoning; always a moment when the voters see through the deceit. That reckoning is what Conservatives are now being forced to confront. Their political implosion must not be allowed to wreak fresh harm on the rest of the country.