It Could Be Said #43 Boris Screwed Boris

Boris Johnson Is A Liddle Scaredy-Cat

We may well have just witnessed the funniest by-election results in history.

Uxbridge and South Ruislip was meant to be the most vulnerable of the seats vacated by Boris Johnson and his allies. Indeed rather than a plot to embarass the current Prime Minister, the multiple resignations would be better seen as shenanigans to spare Rishi Sunak’s former boss from being singled out as a loser.

Their spasm had two parts. Firstly, Boris Johnson had to resign before the Privileges Committee’s report into Partygate was published so that he couldn’t be accused of ducking the recall petition and inevitable by-election in a ‘marginal’ seat. Secondly, a bunch of his mates also resigned so that the party’s failure to hold his former seat couldn’t be blamed on Johnson having become toxic in suburban London, because the party had gone down to defeat across the land.

And with crushing swings in excess of 20% against the Tories allowing the Liberal Democrats and Labour to claim crushing victories in Somerset & Frome, and Selby & Ainsty, their scheme had succeeded better than they could have hoped, even despite Nadine Dorries’s decision to delay her temporary ascension to the Royal Household after being punished for trying to delay her entrance to the peerage.

But then disaster struck with the Tories securing a razor-thin victory in Uxbridge and South Ruslip. A victory that raises profound questions for a man that his acolytes once dubbed “The Heineken Candidate” for his ability to win over parts of the country other Tories couldn’t reach. Why did he go to such extreme lengths to swerve a now seemingly winnable recall election, at the cost of not just his place in parliament but even the ability to easily visit Parliament that’s usually extended to most former MPs, let alone former Prime Ministers? I mean, he didn’t even turn out to campaign for Steve Tuckwell; seemingly convinced that his old consistuency was a hopeless cause.

And the more you think about it, the more you realise this belief was slightly odd. In a weird way Uxbridge and South Rusilip feels like one of those US Southern States that has a slender but durable conservative majority which waxes without waning. This, after all, is a seat that didn’t go to Labour in 1997 and trended away from them throughout the 2010s, a decade where London went red. The Tories also held on remarkably well in the most recent council elections in this part of London. The Tory margin over the combine progressive forces may be slender, but it also may be more real and more lasting, than everyone assumed.

There are of course two rationales for Johnson’s disappearing act. The first is that the erstwhile Big Dog is actually a Liddle Scaredy-Cat. Johnson is by all accounts a much more diffident and cautious character than he presents himself to the world, and famously had to be persuaded to run for London Mayor and quickly folded in the 2016 Tory Leadership Election when key backers withdrew. When confronted with the certainty of a recall election, he panicked, assumed all was lost when maybe if he had rolled up his sleeves and fought to retain his seat, he would have won.

Of course maybe he isn’t yearning for a ball of string to make the bad memories go way, but actually the brilliant political strategist his allies claim. In that case his refusal to let the recall process play out, must have been motivated by a realisation he would lose. Given the Tories actually won, that would mean the man who “single-handedly” won the 2019 General Election was a worse parliamentary candidate than some bloke called Steve in a city Johnson won two terms as Mayor in.

The only way that could possibly be true is that Boris Johnson would have swamped the issue that Steve Tuckwell successfully ran on; London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone being extended to cover the consistuency, instead polarising the election around his own personality flaws. And sure, maybe some voters would have overlooked their unhappiness over emissions tests being imposed on their car, if Johnson was on the ballot. But equally, a high-profile incumbent’s personal vote should mitigate against that. Likewise a Johnson who wanted to win a recall election could have prepared the ground better either by letting the recall process playout so as to allow for tempers to die down, or by still resigning to expediate the process and make a virtue of wanting to renew his personal mandate. Either way if he had committed to restanding he could have been preparing for the by-elections months before Tuckwell could.

And think what would have happened if Johnson had won - that really would have been totally Dutch Lager! Those poor deluded Tories who somehow still think Johnson is as popular as he was in 2019, let alone 2016 or 2012, would have been vindicated. Newly able to deflect jibes about partygate by the claim he had been found innocent by his voters, he would once again have a serious chance of becoming Prime Minister again before the next General Election.

He’s instead working on his column for Saturday’s Daily Mail.

What a pity, never mind.