Tories turn on the PM
Pressure is mounting on Boris Johnson. The new year will bring no relief. Emily Hohler reports
Coming so soon after the “humiliating defeat” in the North Shropshire by-election, David Frost’s departure is a “body blow” to Boris Johnson and the “latest sign that his position may come under serious threat in the New Year”, says Henry Hill in The Daily Telegraph. While MPs have been “growing impatient” with Johnson’s “self-inflicted disasters, from Owen Paterson to the Downing Street parties”, the Brexit minister used his resignation as an opportunity to “launch a broad-spectrum” attack on the government. From the hike in National Insurance to “coercive” Covid-19 policies and the “pivot towards the public health nanny-state”, his frustration reflects that of a “sizeable body” of Johnson’s original supporters. And although he didn’t mention it in his original statement, it probably isn’t a coincidence that he chose to quit a day after the government “signalled that it was softening” its “red line” on allowing the European Court of Justice jurisdiction over Northern Ireland. Hardline Brexiters, “many of whom were already in open revolt over Covid-19 restrictions”, would regard this as an “unacceptable capitulation,” says Heather Stewart in The Guardian.
Danger from the right
Frost’s resignation illustrates the danger Johnson now faces from the Tory right, says George Parker in the Financial Times. In the view of these MPs, who include those on the 100-strong “Clean Global Brexit” WhatsApp group that evicted Nadine Dorries for defending Johnson, the bare-bones trade deal with the EU that Frost finalised a year ago was supposed to give the UK the freedom to “forge a new, Thatcherite, economic path”. As
Nigel Farage tweeted: “Frost is leaving the government because he is a conservative and a true Brexiteer. Boris Johnson is neither.”
This idea that the whole point of
Brexit is “radical supply side reform” underlines the “continued failure of the Conservative party” to understand the “shifting demographics of the Tory vote,” says Stephen Daisley in The Spectator. Exit polling on referendum day in 2016 found that Leave voters were primarily concerned about sovereignty and immigration; just 6% gave the economy as the deciding factor.
Nor was it the deciding factor among
Red Wall voters who turned Tory in the 2019 election. These voters are not “clamouring for quirky blonde Thatcherism” (Liz Truss) or a “suaver, dishier Osborneism” (Rishi Sunak). We still don’t know what effect 18 months of “having wages paid and small businesses propped up” will have on attitudes towards state interventionism, but it “seems unlikely to have made the public more libertarian”. The one advantage Johnson has is that he understands “what the Tory party is now”.
The pendulum will swing back
When it comes to choosing leaders in the UK, the pendulum “swooshes between two broad personality types: stars and stewards,” says Clare Foges in The Times. Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony
Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May – after which voters wanted the “fizz” of Johnson. The main “steward” contenders are currently Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Sunak, and of these it is surely Sunak, already “making the argument for fiscal prudence”, who “will win out”.
For now, Johnson, though reportedly “disconsolate and isolated”, looks “safe”, says The Guardian’s Stewart. Few believe Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee, has received “anywhere near” the 54 letters required to force a vote of no confidence. More than half of Tory MPs would have to vote against him for a leadership race to be triggered. But an “intensely difficult period” lies ahead. There is the investigation into the “lockdown-busting parties”, ministers must decide whether to “defy Tory rebels and impose Covid-19 restrictions” this week, and the local elections in May look set to provide voters with “another opportunity to kick the government”. “Any or all of these events” could lead to his downfall.