Can we get some smaller words about how he could be toasted? Just because he's a terrible person and a liar to the public doesn't seem like it's adequate. Who would have to align to force him out, and can they get that together?
I don't believe Johnson is necessarily toast.
Cressida Dick made the claim that it's important that those who broke the law knew they were breaking the law.* Which feels like it opens potential wiggle room for Johnson, because he will be perfectly prepared to repeatedly lie on that specific point.
* never mind that that's not how the law actually works
Just to clarify, Dick is making that Johnson wiggle?
I'd like to see ol' Borry J. wriggle his way out of this jam!
I mean, it's been years since I've assumed obvious evil and incompetence makes it less likely you'll be elected or retained in office. But I don't really understand the British parties.
Is there the assumption that if he gets fined and doesn't contest it legally (or does and fails), he automatically steps down? Can't he just double down on impunity: "This is bullshit and an administrative misunderstanding and a conspiracy against me and I will pay the fine to end it but I am in the right and will not step down"?
Maybe people are so upset about covid restrictions, he can't? People keep screaming about them here when as near as I can tell, they are barely enforced.
I am less confident that this is it. Every day that goes past gives more time for something else to distract people. The Met could, and probably will, take months over its investigation before fining a few staffers.
I seem to remember taking the same approach when people said "surely Trump can't survive this latest scandal" - just ask: what do you actually think is going to happen that will lead to Trump not being president any more?
Well, what is the actual sequence of events that leads to Johnson not being prime minister any more?
There are only six possibilities.
1) He dies. Unlikely.
2) He loses a scheduled general election. Quite likely, but the next scheduled election isn't until December 2024.
3) He loses a vote of confidence in the House which in turn leads to an unscheduled general election. Very unlikely, because it would require Conservatives to vote against their own government in order to secure an election they might well lose.
4) He loses a leadership contest. No sitting Conservative prime minister has ever lost a leadership contest - though most have faced one at some point - but the sample size is small, and so I guess it could happen. Who, though, would launch such a challenge? Who would back it? There's not really an obvious opposition group in the party in parliament in the way that there was for Major and Thatcher.
5) He is rendered unfit to serve in the House through bankruptcy or being judged mentally unfit. Also very unlikely.
6) He might resign because he feels it necessary to make amends for his disgraceful behaviour. I personally think he's more likely to run the Marathon des Sables.
Johnson may or may not be toast, but I'd be amazed if any prosecutions came out of this.
British people are both wretched and hilarious, so I expect Lord Spode to survive this little bit of trouble.
On the other hand, the Brits are ruled by their tabloids, so if Rupert deems him disposable, Public School Story Philip Seymour Hoffman will have to split.
9.6: I thought Cuomo would hang on to the bitter end, and I was wrong. I don't actually have any opinion about what Boris is likely to do, but it's hard to predict how shamelessness works out in practice.
That was me -- phone dropped my name.
The Met will never, ever push for a prosecution of a prime minister. They knew the parties were happening at the time and did nothing about it.
Surely there's enough incest and adultery in the conservative party that Inspector Barnaby will have to show up soon.
re: 9
I think 6 is the most likely, as the ministerial code does require a minister who lies to parliament to tender their resignation. But, he's utterly shameless, and so I think that would only happen if it was in response to internal party pressure.
So yeah, I imagine he'll stay, unless the Tory party decides he's enough of an electoral liability that they depose him.
14 is also right. The Met, especially under Dick, is utterly bent. It's not just that they won't prosecute a sitting PM--although I think I agree that would apply with any PM--but there is a very clear and obvious "one law for us, one law for them" position that the Met has taken that is much narrower, in terms of "us", than just "whoever happens to be in power".
the ministerial code does require a minister who lies to parliament to tender their resignation.
Well, that's what it says, but who's going to enforce it?
re: 17
That's what I mean, re: being "utterly shameless". It's self-enforcing, and Johnson probably can't be shamed into enforcing it.
Powerful people hardly ever face consequences, I would be surprised if this situation is any different.
Assuming Johnson doesn't face consequences as stipulated, what becomes of NW's "longer term question... whether the party can hold together or if the two wings of the Brexit coalition will break apart"? Does that tension also get sustained indefinitely, or is it largely a matter of unforeseeable future circumstances?
It feels like to the extent there are two wings, they are in complete alignment on party power being sacrosanct and quality of life sacrificeable.
re: 21
That's absolutely correct.
Although "party power being sacrosanct" might be redundant for 95% of MPs.
Thatcher was unbeatable at redundancy.
i'm watching truss with sickened fascination - at some point she'll make her move & despite her seeming to be not smart at all no sireee i v much suspect her unquenchable ambition is going to get her there. will be tremendous for the farcical johnson to be betrayed & annihilated by the obviously mediocre (at best!) truss.
I don't know who Truss is, but mediocrity is an obvious improvement, no?
The end will surely be debased and mutilated, no?
26: she's dumb but vicious & has a lot of true believers suppoerts, she's all about satisfying them. johnson is incompetent but content with holding power, he doesn't seem to have any particular policy ambitions other than "me in power & the good things in life flowing my way".
9.4 seems to be the key point. Who is there who wants to be Prime Minister? For a while Davidson seemed to be angling for replacing Johnson, but she gave up on it. Who is there? Gove? Raab? Does anyone actually prefer someone like that? They're not going to bring back May.
I think the party will dump him after the local elections if not before. And while it is technically true that Thatcher never lost a leadership contest, she went after winning one unconvincingly.
That's, also, was a result of a panic about the next election.
Further to 29: Johnson avoids work like the plague. He's entirely uninterested in the mechanics of how stuff gets done and largely unconcerned about whether it actually gets done at all. Truss, and most of the plausible candidates to replace him, are micromanagers who interfere in everything.
9.4 is true in a pedantic sense but misleading - Thatcher pulled out of a leadership contest by resigning before the second round of voting, David Cameron held That Referendum for fear of having a leadership contest and it resulted in his resignation, and Theresa May resigned under the threat of a rule change to permit a second leadership contest within a year after she won the first. Out of the last four Conservative prime ministers, three were brought down by intra-party conflict and the other, John Major, literally called a vote of no confidence in himself to force his enemies to put up or shut up and then lost a general election two years later.
(The mechanics are that 54 of their MPs must write to their chairman, Sir Graham Brady MP, and ask for a vote of confidence in the party leader, which needs a simple majority. If the leader wins, there is a lockout for 12 months, although see May. If not there is a leadership contest and the incumbent can't run.)
Regarding 9.4, in the US we might say that no US president has been impeached and convicted, but as Alex notes, that's only true in a pedantic sense. Nixon resigned. If Boris goes, I'm guessing that's how he'll go.
I've been favorably impressed by the UK in all of this. For a time, the UK really looked like fierce competitors for stupidest fucking country in the world. For an American Republican, though, this stuff would be a trivial blip -- not a meaningful scandal at all. In conclusion: We're No. 1!
I have no helpful input on these questions, but I can recommend Larry the Cat's Twitter feed to any who don't already follow him: https://twitter.com/number10cat
34: fair point, but the point I should have made was this - we dont know if a majority of Consevative MPs would _ever_ vote to unseat a sitting PM because it's never happened. Johnson would have to resign and I'm really not certain he ever would, under any circumstances.
It's not about parliamentary procedure and precedent; it's about how things play out in the media (including, and especially, the new social media). I suspect Boris may survive this, because is anybody really paying any sort of attention?
most of the plausible candidates to replace him, are micromanagers who interfere in everything.
Which leads me to ask: when people have objectively shitty goals, which is better, a Johnson figure or one of the micromanagers? It seems to me to go plausibly two ways: Johnson allows bad people to go about their badness, while the micromanagers piss everyone off and interfere in effective evildoing; or else nobody bothers accomplishing evil under the slacker BJ, while the micromanagers ensure that at least some evil is done, perhaps even effectively.
This is both an abstract question and a specific one. I have no preëxisting assumptions.
JRoth: uh, either way, evil gets accomplished, but at least under Johnson, there's a better chance of massive incompetence bringing the entire house down ? Idunno ....
johnson has no solid personal or ideological base of support among tory mps. those elected for the first time along with him might have formed his mp base of personal support, but this latest scandal seems wonderfully calculated to alienate them & their constituents. also it sems that johnson's people may actually have a particular talent for pissing off junior tory mps, merely by living their best entitled asshole lives. truss, on the other hand ...
johnson got to be pm bc he was "electable" & promised to plunge in the suicidal brexit knife. he isn't anymore & the deed's been done it's just a question of strategic timing now, truss will pick her moment & stick in her dagger when she chooses.
My guess is Johnson stays longer than people think because junior MPs love his impunity and hope supporting him will ensure they can act as flagrantly in the future.
I suspect Boris may survive this, because is anybody really paying any sort of attention?
The most recent survey I've seen found that only 98% of people in Britain were aware of the details of the story, and barely 73% think he's doing a bad job.
So I think some people are paying a bit of attention, yes.
(It has just struck me, typing that out, that logically 27% think he's doing a good job or are not sure. The Crazification Factor!)
31: the top-polling candidate is current chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, although it turns out he managed to "accidentally" turn up at the party because he thought it was a cabinet committee meeting. (Ironically, if he wasn't transparently lying, actually doing that would be totally on-brand for him.) Other options beyond him and Truss include basically every Conservative you've heard of, notably Michael Gove, Priti Patel, and Jeremy Hunt. They're all terrible in different ways - Gove for his combination of Napoleonic ambition and bungling, Patel for ferocious refugee-battering authoritarianism, and Hunt for a combination of corruption, mediocrity, and dullness.
Polling: here's some polling of different options with the public, although not particularly fresh: https://mobile.twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1475560303781978112
Sunak has the least-bad numbers, Gove the worst, and it's important to note that Truss's are qualified by her extremely poor name-recognition.
This poll covers people who say they're members of the Conservative party (I don't know how Opinium developed the sample or how they checked that): https://mobile.twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1483153525442064387
Members don't particularly want a leadership challenge (although it's not up to them) but if there were one they put Sunak 1, then Truss, then all the others dead-last, and pick Sunak in the run-off. Fieldwork was before 17th January, so a whole bunch of politics has happened since then.
Conservative *voters* are rather different, with a plurality (and near majority) wanting Johnson out: https://mobile.twitter.com/YouGov/status/1485985006472376322
You need only look at the Daily Mail's sudden solicitude for the plight of Eastern Europeans to understand that Johnson is in a corner. The Telegraph seems to have given up on him because it is so completely crazy that it thinks the nation is yearning for a more Thatcherite government.
44. It should also be remembered that it was Gove at the Education Department who initially wished Cummings on us. At Ed they systematically destroyed all performance analysis, because they knew they were right, so why did they need to monitor it?
44. It should also be remembered that it was Gove at the Education Department who initially wished Cummings on us. At Ed they systematically destroyed all performance analysis, because they knew they were right, so why did they need to monitor it?
Johnson exposed as lying about wretched Pen Farthing's wretched doglift (and ironically, confirming that wretched Farthing did in fact tell the truth)
48: Boris Johnson authorised Afghan animal evacuation, leaked email suggests
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-60143279
I thought it was an elevator just for dogs.
Because the buttons are too high for small dogs on people elevators.
I've been reading really dismayed stuff about ?pending? British legislation to make it possible to de-state citizens without telling them? Really?
(Worst timeline.)
Well, shit.
(The summary I found, at Byline TimesM.)
The summary is largely accurate, especially on immigration bill. And if it passes, I sincerely hope that the next Labour government would 2) repeal it, shortly after 1) using it to remove the British citizenship of Boris Johnson (entitled to US citizenship), Priti Patel (entitled to Ugandan citizenship) and Dominic Raab (entitled to Israeli citizenship).