Till the end, Boris Johnson tried to cling to power and office, insisting on staying on as caretaker PM, defying the clamor within the party and Parliament that he should make an immediate exit.
By: Editorial |
Updated: July 8, 2022 7:41:12 am
In the end, it was a non-cooperation movement within the ruling party that led to the resignation of the British Prime Minister. The revolt within the Conservative Party-led government against Boris Johnson began with the resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid on Tuesday. Over 50 Conservative MPs have since quit the government and a bulk of the party leadership, including Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi – who had replaced Sunak just 24 hours before — insisted on the PM’s departure. Till the end, Johnson tried to cling to power and office, insisting on staying on as caretaker PM, defying the clamor within the party and Parliament that he should make an immediate exit.
While the revolt — triggered by revelations that Johnson knew about and ignored reports of sexual misconduct by former Deputy Whip Christopher Pincher — may have been the proximate cause for his resignation, what also counted against him were several episodes of legal chicanery and perceived impropriety. It took a while, though, for Teflon John to run out of lives. Exactly a month ago, Johnson made it through a no-confidence motion after Partygate — a spate of reports about revelry at the prime minister’s residence-cum-office even as the rest of Britain suffered under strict Covid-19 restrictions. He thumbed his nose at international law and treaties agreed to by his own government in the case of the Northern Ireland Protocol and steel tariffs, causing his ethics adviser to resign.
For the most part, Johnson’s continued presence in the office, despite scandals, repeated and proven lies and a seeming disregard for the rules and conventions of British democracy, stemmed from his undeniable popularity. That the party lost two crucial by-elections (where they had won comfortably in 2019) in the last week of June, perhaps made it easier for ministers to openly stand against the PM in a display of outrage after the Pincher episode. For those like Sunak, now a frontrunner for the premiership, it makes political sense to get some distance from Johnson. Johnson has been among the most prominent populists in the world of the last decade — he donned that mantle even before becoming PM with his campaign for Brexit. In a time of economic and geopolitical crises, the lesson from the fall of Britain’s outgoing PM is clear: If not tempered by a sense of propriety, and a longer perspective, populism can have a limited shelf life.
Source:- Indian Express.