The Spine-Chilling Legacy of Johnsonism: How It Will Haunt the Conservative Party Forever!

Good morning. The Conservative Party is haunted by the specter of Boris Johnson, the subject of an unprecedented indictment that has found the former prime minister guilty of deliberately misleading municipalities. Some reflections on Johnsonism, and whether or not he has a path back to parliament, in today’s note.

Without poodle

Could Boris Johnson return to parliament? Safe! The insurmountable obstacle in his path back to Westminster at the moment is Rishi Sunak: under the terms of Conservative Party rulebook, the party council and, in practice, the incumbent leader, decides who he is and who he is not. and fit person to be a Conservative candidate. The most recent examples of this came in 2019, when Johnson removed the whip from 21 Tory rebels, though most of the 21 were eventually invited back into the fold.

That said, former Conservative leader Michael Howard’s decision in 2005 to remove the whip from Howard Flight and firing Adrian Hilton as the potential candidate for Slough it’s probably the best analogy because it created bitter divisions among the grassroots, whereas the Johnson purge did not. But what matters most for our purposes is that Sunak can keep Johnson out of parliament. Since the prime minister’s interests are best served by doing so, he will.

Of course, Sunak won’t be the Conservative leader forever. But for his successor to give Johnson a way back, they would have to settle for two things: first, that their interests be well served by giving a way back to parliament to a politician who is no longer the popular, all-conquering force he was once, but a bitterly controversial figure. And secondly, they should decide what their interests are as boss they have been well served by increasing the number of would-be rivals in the rear.

It is certainly possible that the next Tory leader will be tactically bad enough for that to happen, but not, I would say, particularly likely. And he needs a parliamentary seat, and while there are some parts of the country where Johnson is very popular, there aren’t many. To take the safe Tory seats currently up for grabs: Johnson’s old Henley seat, new Bicester seat and Woodstock and Reigate. The first two are firmly in the affluent, largely pro-Remain areas where Johnson was once very popular and is now very unpopular. I don’t think there is any prospect of him being elected to any of those seats.

Also, Johnson will want to make money and will almost certainly want to write. Essentially anywhere he can do these things is to address an audience of conservative Americans, which means shifting or at least leaning towards an audience far to the right of the fairly centrist positions he occupied as a leader. All of which makes me think Robert Shrimsley’s clever and biting column on yesterday’s events is likely serve as Johnson’s epitaph. (To retrieve what the privilege committee report said, Lucy Fisher and Jim Pickard have has collected the main takeaways here.)

What is equally important, however, is that what you might call “Johnsonism” will haunt the Conservative Party for some time, it doesn’t matter, in two ways. The first is the fictional Johnsonism, praised by his former special adviser and minister David Frost, on the pages of the Telegraph:

Economic liberalism, low taxes and spending, openness to trade, economic reform and deregulation. Boris believes it.

Then there’s the very Johnsonism that contributed to the Conservative victory in 2019. The one that prioritized ending freedom of movement over trade in the Brexit deal. The one that promised more stringent regulation of everything from animal rights to climate change, and promised to spend more on public services. The one David Frost resigned from in December 2021.

These two contested views of the Conservative Party will shape much of the internal party debate for some time: although the man himself, I think, is highly likely to be barred from the House of Commons for the foreseeable future.

Now try this

I’m going to see the Arctic Monkeys this weekend. I hope they will play “Sculptures of Anything Goes”, my favorite song from their new album. However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend!

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