Resign - and challenge May
Incendiary. Incisive. In the corridors of power As we gaze into a global abyss, our Foreign Secretary has proved he cares about just one thing: his colossal ambition. So come on, Boris, if you really are such a visionary man of destiny. . .
IT’S time for Boris Johnson to put up or shut up. He needs to drop the pretence he cares about Brexit. He must ditch his self-indulgent claim to be the standard-bearer for a modern, energetic, optimistic Conservatism. And instead resign from the Cabinet, call on his colleagues to submit the 48 letters required to begin a Tory leadership contest, and attempt to unseat Theresa May as Prime Minister.
He would almost certainly lose. Indeed, it’s highly unlikely he would secure sufficient support to even trigger a challenge. But there would at least be some honesty – perhaps dignity – in drawing a line under his sociopathic ambition with such clarity and finality.
Neither honesty nor dignity are qualities that currently attend our Foreign Secretary. As was evidenced by the events of last week, and one of the great acts of modern political treachery. On Sunday, Johnson flew to the US as part of the final, desperate diplomatic effort to prevent Donald Trump ripping up the Iran nuclear deal. It’s worth underlining that point again. He was not in Washington on a jolly.
The nation’s most senior foreign affairs Minister was sent to the capital of our most important international ally – under instruction from the Prime Minister – in an attempt to convince this ally not to embark upon a course of action that could lead to a war in the Middle East and a conflagration that could consume the globe. And he chose that precise moment, and stage, to stab his Prime Minister in the back. She was, he told the watching world, the architect of a ‘crazy’ foreign policy over Brexit.
She was not in charge of her Cabinet, he said, with colleagues voicing ‘different concerns about different aspects of the argument’. Mrs May seemed to want to be ‘locked in the lunar pull of Brussels’, he chided, rather than looking to deepen ties with the US.
THE international community was t r yi ng frantically to stop a descent towards war. The Prime Minister was trusting her Foreign Secretary to throw his shoulder into that effort. And her t r ust was betrayed. Because even then – with the world teetering on the abyss – her Foreign Secretary still had only one thought. Himself.
Until relatively recently there was a convention that Opposition politicians would refrain from criticism of the Government when travelling abroad. It has since fallen into abeyance. But even in our age of crude political cynicism, surely it shouldn’t be too much to ask for senior Ministers to sheath their duplicitous daggers when on foreign soil. In the case of Boris Johnson it clearly is. Ever since his elevation to one of the major offices of state, he has decided to live by a different code. A code which says he should wait until Theresa May is in a position of maximum vulnerability – or maximum dependence upon him – then strike.
Last September, as the Prime Minister was overseeing the response to the Parsons Green terror attack, he launched an abortive leadership bid under the guise of his ‘Brexit vision’. In the run-up to her ‘make or break’ Florence speech, he popped up to draw his own Brexit ‘red lines’. On the eve of the first Tory conference following the disastrous Election, he redrew them in an exclusive newspaper interview. And each time was forced to frantically backtrack, with a nauseating, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth protestation of fealty to Mrs May.
Such disloyalty is, of course, part of the natural rough and tumble of politics. But there is something increasingly disturbing about Boris Johnson’s serial attempts to defenestrate the Prime Minister. Not least because she was the one who brought him back from the political wilderness after his own disastrous leadership campaign – a campaign that ended with his brutal assassination at the hands of former ally Michael Gove. Until now, his increasingly desperate attempts to purloin the keys to Downing Street have principally caused damage to Boris Johnson himself. There has been something Gollum-like in his transition from Conservative golden boy to the jealous and embittered occupant of Carlton Gardens, his evenings seemingly spent gazing across the Mall, muttering ‘I’ll have you, my precious’ under his breath.
BUT as we saw last week, the Foreign Secretary has ceased to be the primary victim of his own egotism. Britain has not, as some have claimed, become an international laughing stock, because no one is laughing any more. A permanent member of the UN Security Council does not have a credible Foreign Secretary. And as a result, it does not have a credible foreign policy. Such a position is simply unsustainable, which is why Boris Johnson now has to put his money where his mouth is. He believes he, rather than Theresa May, has the vision to lead Britain through the Brexit labyrinth. He believes he, rather than Theresa May, has the populist touch to see off the New Bolshevism of Jeremy Corbyn.
He believes he, rather t han Theresa May, has the political finesse to bring the party’s warring factions together. And we know all this because Boris Johnson now spends every minute of every hour of every day boasting he does. Not a week passes without another finely crafted article drawing another immutable red line. Or a speech that veers like an Exocet out of his foreign policy brief and detonates in the midst of his Cabinet colleagues. Or a briefing from one of his numerous – though mysteriously nameless – ‘friends’ lauding his greatness, and traducing all around him.
‘Theresa May should sack him,’ goes the cry. But that misses the point. It is Boris Johnson who is destiny’s child. Fatefully calibrated to the times, with the foresight, charisma and acumen to lead Britain into the post-Brexit promised land. Or so he would have us believe.
Which is why now is the occasion for him to rise. To align the man with his moment. For the good of the country, and the world, Boris must put up – or for ever shut up.
LAST month I reported Labour MP John Woodcock had been targeted for suspension by allies of Jeremy Corbyn. At the time I wrote: ‘Corbyn’s team spent a day drawing up a hit-list of their biggest critics… and Woodcock is top of their list. They’re currently trying to think up a way that they can justify suspending him.’ Eleven days ago it was announced Woodcock had indeed been suspended, for allegedly sending inappropriate texts to a former staffer. Woodcock contests the charge. I now understand two other moderates who are on the hit-list are Chris Leslie and Ian Austin. Let’s see what happens to them.