Buccaneering Boris is the energising tonic Britain needs
HIS DETRACTORS only recently claimed he was “on the ropes” but the sensational Conservative victory in Hartlepool shows that Boris Johnson now ranks as Britain’s most dominant leader since Tony Blair was at his zenith.
Johnson has come through everything that his opponents have thrown at him since becoming Prime Minister less than two years ago.
From allegations of “sleaze” and the raking over of his personal life, to the Supreme Court ruling him a law-breaker, from Labour depicting him as a rightwing extremist to claims that his negligence caused tens of thousands of needless deaths in the coronavirus pandemic – all these hysterical attacks have bounced off the larger-than-life persona of Boris.
Not even Covid itself could kill him off, though it put him in intensive care. In fact, the old saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger seems to apply in spades.
This is the man who defeated the Brexit-blockers of the political establishment, won a landslide election victory, devised an emergency economic strategy to cope with Covid and bounced back stronger, reached a trade agreement with the EU without keeping us under its yoke, initiated a British vaccines taskforce that transformed our prospects and is now proving again that he is the Tory leader who reaches the parts that other Tory leaders cannot reach.
JOHNSON has just handed out a brutal electoral beating to Labour leader Keir Starmer, defying rules of political gravity which say that governments entering mid-term are not supposed to be able to do that – certainly not in heartland seats.
So forget the idea, hyped up recently by several household name political broadcasters, of Boris Johnson ebbing away.
There are two kinds of prime ministers.
The more common by far is made up of stop-gaps and fag ends; Major, Brown, Cameron, May. Then there are the rarer era-definers: Thatcher, Blair.
Boris Johnson has now attained such an exalted status and until his many detractors understand this they will not even be able to begin putting together a strategy to defeat him.
Already we are able to make out the main features of “Johnson-ism” and they are largely in tune with the national mood: a patriotic belief in the nation and its heritage, support for well-funded public services, a toughening-up on law and order, a commitment to spreading opportunity and investment to places that have been starved of both and a realisation that Britain should be in the vanguard of countries trying to create a more environmentally sustainable way of living.
The country as a whole believes that he navigated the Covid crisis pretty well, with few voting for the militant antilockdown election candidates who popped up in various places. Bestriding the political common ground is one thing, but with great power comes great responsibility and from here on in Johnson should aspire to be more of a Thatcher than a Blair, who came to feel that he had squandered opportunities by being too hesitant or unwilling to risk his stocks of political capital.
IN THATCHER’S time there were dragons to be slain. With Johnson it is more a case of nettles to be grasped.There is no excuse now to insist that reaching a crossparty consensus on the way forward is essential before social care for the elderly is reformed and improved.
Mr Johnson must press ahead with devising and implementing a new funding scheme himself, whether other parties and leaders choose to back it or not. Going into the next election still presiding over a “Cinderella sector” despite the shortcomings shown up during the pandemic would be unimpressive.
And neither should he slow the pace of levelling up, which alongside getting Brexit done, formed the core of his winning 2019 manifesto. To be fair, he has shown no intention of doing so despite the mind-boggling size of the bills run up during the battle against Covid.
After the dispiriting experience of Theresa May’s premiership with all its dithering and inability to break the Brexit logjam, the arrival of buccaneering Boris has proved a great tonic. He has shown that a can-do attitude and an optimistic outlook are able to co-exist with a moderate political disposition.
Those who have wasted two years trying to convince us that he is an extremist – a British Trump or more ludicrously still some kind of “fascist” – merely advertise their own estrangement from majority opinion.
For now they must sit and seethe while the rest of us hope he makes full use of the remarkable opportunities opening up.
‘The PM has handed out a brutal electoral beating to Keir Starmer’