Shredded reputation leads to Boris Johnson's nasty fall

Shredded reputation leads to Boris Johnson's nasty fall

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/shredded-reputation-leads-to-boris-johnsons-nasty-fall

Shredded reputation leads to Boris Johnson's nasty fall

Jonathan Eyal

Global Affairs Correspondent

The Straits Times 

2022-07-07

LONDON - He rose to power on the back of a wave of popular support few previous British leaders enjoyed.

But after less than three years, he is now leaving office a broken man, with his reputation in shreds, more the object of ridicule rather than pity.

The rise and fall of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson can be summarised this way: He was a brilliant inventor of what seemed like a revolutionary manifesto for Britain's political reform. But he was neither able nor mentally suited to carry it out.

Mr Johnson was always his own worst enemy.

Unlike most confidence tricksters who pretend to be serious, upright people until they are found out, Mr Johnson made no such pretences. From the moment he first stepped into the public eye, it was evident that the dividing line between truth and fiction was never one to concern him.

And for many years, it did not appear to concern his employers either. He got fired from his first job as a journalist because he was caught inventing quotes. He then landed another job as a journalist and reported on stories that never happened.

He promised his media employers that he would not run for politics, and broke all of these promises. He vowed to the people of London that he would not engage in national politics while serving as their mayor, but promptly broke that promise.

And, of course, he promised each of his three wives and countless girlfriends eternal devotion, a pledge that was valid only until another lady appeared on the horizon. Nobody knows how many children he has fathered; the current estimate suggests at least seven.

Any other politician with such a patchy personal record would have struggled to remain relevant. But because he never appeared to take himself seriously and claimed to be morally upstanding, Mr Johnson came across as authentic. He was the archetypal member of the establishment who acted as the ultimate anti-establishment candidate.

His ultimate confidence trick worked because it combined with an intelligent strategy and political vision.

When the referendum on Britain's continued membership in the European Union was called in 2016, Mr Johnson hesitated about which side to take. At one point, he had two speeches prepared: one arguing for staying in the EU, the other one for leaving.

He ultimately decided to support Brexit, not because that was what he believed in or that he was persuaded this was in Britain's national interests, but only because he calculated - correctly - that this is what would propel him to the premiership.

He was also a visionary, perhaps the first British politician to realise that Brexit represented a broader social revolution perpetrated by those suffering from globalisation.

By promising to "level up" society to help those left behind by the forces of the market economy, Mr Johnson won the December 2019 election with the biggest landslide any ruling Conservative government had secured since the heydays of Lady Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s.

Yet, like former United States president Donald Trump, Mr Johnson set himself up as the voice of the dispossessed and, like Mr Trump, he did not know what to do with the mandate once he got it.

His disorganisation, disdain for procedures, and inability to concentrate on any government topic became legendary.

And what initially looked like merely amusing episodes of lies and half-truths from someone outside government became monumentally unfunny when perpetrated by a prime minister.

British voters were not amused to discover that, while they were banned from attending even the funerals of their loved ones during the pandemic, their prime minister was holding alcohol-fuelled parties at his official residence.

Nor was it amusing when MPs from Mr Johnson's party became embroiled in one sex scandal after another, with him denying any knowledge or responsibility by peddling stories that invariably turned out to be untrue.

Meanwhile, the strength Mr Johnson's party used to be famous for - prudent management of the economy - turned into its biggest weakness: Britain is now the weakest among the world's top economies.

Few British prime ministers leave office willingly. But while most are pushed out because of specific political difficulties, Mr Johnson is being driven out of office because his reputation has simply evaporated.

Over the past few days, more than 50 government ministers and officials have resigned from his government largely because, as many have pointed out, their own reputation would suffer if they remained associated with the Prime Minister.

Mr Johnson's fate is the perfect confirmation of the old political adage: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.