By Monica Showalter
Like a pockmarked piece of rotten wood, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has seen his government collapse over a series of petty, stupid, self-inflicted scandals, and now he’s going down with it.
According to NBC News:
LONDON — Scandal-ridden British Prime Minister Boris Johnson capitulated to mounting pressure to step down Thursday, announcing his decision after days of high-profile government resignations and calls from fellow Conservative Party members to quit.
“In the past few weeks, I have been trying to convince my colleagues it would be eccentric to change governments when we have achieved so much,” he said in his speech outside No. 10 Downing St. amid loud booing from the crowd nearby. “I regret not to be successful in those arguments and, of course, it’s painful not to be able to see through those projects myself.”
Johnson also said he planned to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen — a move that may face opposition from others in an increasingly hostile Parliament.
Obviously, it’s a sign that the Christine O’Donnell rule holds, even in U.K. politics — that a party with a good plan still needs to have good candidates, and Johnson, though he was a known factor with his shambly disorderliness, engaged in a lot of petty dishonesties and hypocrisies, similar to those of many Democrats, such as, say, Gavin Newsom of California, who’s been just caught vacationing in Montana despite signing a law saying that no state official is to travel there based on California’s wokester objections to Montana’s social policies, and who partied hearty in a maskless French Laundry excursion with Big Pharma lobbyists during the days when he had the entire state on COVID lockdown. Johnson got caught doing that, too, triggering a narrowly survived vote of confidence in parliament for it recently. He also appointed a sex harasser he knew about to a high government post and met a Russian intelligence linked official off the books in Italy out of official channels, to cite his most recent scandals. None of these scandals compare to the scale of scandal seen in Joe Biden — from stealing an election to the laptop from hell. Guys like Newsom survive these things with no repercussions.
Johnson didn’t.
Little scandals like this are tinder when other factors are in play.
Based on a back-of-the-envelope analysis (it’s early), it seems that the real problem was that Johnson wasn’t governing as a true Thatcherite conservative as the voters who had elected him had hoped he would.
The top issue in Britain, as in the U.S. is inflation, or as it’s put in Britain, according to the U.K. press, the “cost of living.” Any plans to fix that? Apparently not.
Issue two was Brexit — he’s still futzing around on that though he was better than his predecessor. Leave means leave.
Three is immigration — the migrants are still rolling in and claiming benefits, going to the front of the line for five-star housing and other things denied ordinary Brits. No sane leader worth their salt would permit that kind of thing going on to please E.U. bureaucrats. There were other assorted bunglings such as refusing to allow Ukrainian refugees in who had sponsors willing to house and feed them. Obviously, something wasn’t working.
Four was global warming. He just couldn’t stop himself promoting that and shutting down Britain’s viable energy putting in place worthless greenie substitutes. Bad policies like that are not only not rooted in science, they are hell on consumers who must deal with higher costs and less reliable energy. To cling to that junk science was absolute poison for his government.
Five was COVID lockdowns — which were as badly managed and driven by quacks as the ones seen in our country and in places like Colombia, where another conservative leader was recently thrown out. The whole thing was the mother of bad ideas and unfortunately, conservatives pay for these things.
In short, he played a conservative on T.V. but he governed as a leftist. That’s a failure to lead, and sure enough, the discontent in Britain is over his leadership, not the Thatcherite elements of his party platform. Johnson’s citation of his “successes” as prime minister — such as lockdowns and Ukraine intevention are rather telling in this regard. He didn’t cite any that Margaret Thatcher would be proud to call her own.
It put his polling numbers in the crapper. It prompted a huge slew of resignations from his cabinet, each character huffing out in a bid to save his or her political skin. It certainly was the same thing did in the president of Colombia’s party a few weeks ago, this claim to be a conservative while governing as a leftist, but Johnson didn’t heed that warning.
Now Britain faces the dangerous prospect of early elections, and the real prospect of the Labour Party leftists taking over. They will dismantle Brexit and print money like maniacs, driving inflation sky-high.
The California experience of having a RINO in office offers a mordant precedent for Britain. Following the exit of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, leaving the state in a mess, the net result has been California’s hard turn toward becoming a blue state. One hopes against hope that this isn’t what happens to Great Britain, too.