Boris Johnson's Trump act struggles on the UK stage
As Theresa May gazes across the Alps at Donald Trump, she might do a double take, having just left behind her very own Trump for slow learners, Boris Johnson. On Tuesday she endured another display of Boris the Authentic. He played the NHS as part of playing Brexit, screwing the system and jumping off the cliff.
Don't say this sort of thing doesn't work. Donald is in the White House and Boris is in the Foreign Office. It's called the new politics. While his prime minister limps the Davos walk, Johnson is nursing the wounds from his latest leadership play. He thought he could court favour with voters, not from a public platform but in the inner sanctuary of the cabinet room. He was going to tell the chancellor to give the health secretary more money. To make sure the message got through, he did the Johnson equivalent of a Trump tweet. He told the press what he was going to say.
Cabinet discussions are sometimes leaked after the fact. It is unprecedented for them to leak beforehand. May did not even let Johnson repeat what they had all read, but lined up eight fellow ministers, led by the home secretary, to give him a ritual thrashing.
Trump's Washington leadership is expressed as a Twitter stream of consciousness. They are like edicts from Stalin or a Roman emperor; no one knows each day what he will say. It is rule by anarchy and fear. Trump is accountable only to an electorate.
British politics is less direct and more nuanced. Last year May won the second biggest popular vote in history. But what matters is the arithmetic of parliament, a leader's relations with colleagues, the chemistry of cabinet, the loyalty of friends. To betray that loyalty, as Johnson did on Tuesday, is normally a capital offence. Thatcher would have chucked him out on his ear.
Johnson is no fool. He knows the NHS is popular. Ever since it was nationalised 60 years ago, it has been a political minefield for Conservatives. Demand is unlimited, so supply must be rationed by queuing or charging. Britain has opted for queuing, which means demoralising headlines each winter, and a gift to oppositions.
Johnson uses the Daily Telegraph to destabilise his boss, knowing she is weak and others are manoeuvring to succeed her. The foreign secretary's sympathisers argue that he is playing for high stakes. As he and others showed during the referendum, it is a game without rules. He uses the Daily Telegraph to destabilise his boss, because he knows she is weak and others are manoeuvring to succeed her. He shoots off his mouth on Libyan casualties and Iranian prisoners because he does not care. He flagrantly undermines - he would say strengthens - May's Brexit position, not least when he knows she is about to give an important foreign speech. In the Tory leadership stakes, Johnson's friend and partner in crime, Michael Gove, is playing the shrewd game, concentrating on being popular in his job of environment secretary. Johnson is all over the shop. He is playing the all-purpose outsider: Joe Chamberlain, Enoch Powell, Michael Heseltine. He is appealing to the country over the heads of colleagues and party. He is pretending they need him more than he needs them. Churchill did that and it worked, but it took a war.
At some point, Johnson must presumably imitate Heseltine, pick up his papers and stalk out of Downing Street. But Heseltine spent four years in the wilderness, and still did not become leader. It would require Johnson to have the courage to resign, or May to have the courage to sack him. At present, neither seems up to it.
The Conservative party is now defaulting to loyalty. No one dared support him at Tuesday's cabinet. They did not say he was wrong about the NHS. They said, in effect, Tories do not behave as you are behaving. They do not discard discipline or dump on their own when there is a war on.
All we know of the new politics is that it is unpredictable: in France, in Germany, in Italy, in America, not just Britain. Johnson's career has been a triumph of personality and vanity spending over periodic disaster. In that, at least, he is like Trump. If he plays a cheap card, his supporters cheer. If he makes mistakes, they sympathise.
To err is human and shows you are no automaton. Johnson can crack a joke. He can look stupid. To decry these is to commit the elitist fallacy. But as Jeremy Corbyn has cleverly shown, British politics has always been cabalistic. It is about Westminster, where loyalty to tribe runs deep. To overcome this, Johnson must move mountains. He may have won the NHS vote, but he has alienated his colleagues and they matter. He has far, far to go. -