VisualPolitik fans, even Donald Trump himself said it, Boris Johnson has been branded on
numerous occasions as the Trump of British politics.
And it's not just an aesthetic comparison, or that both leaders constantly generate a
lot of content for the tabloids.
Because yes, we know that the private lives of these two characters are anything but discreet.
Both are in their third marriages and both came to power with five children each.
The difference is that Boris Johnson, amongst all his partying, has had two more offspring
in his time as premier.
But perhaps there is no better formula for combating the aging of the British population
than a baby boom at 10 Downing Street?
Whatever the case, Johnson's fall has been particularly striking considering that just
two and a half years ago this British Prime Minister was able to reap a resounding electoral
success, the largest Conservative majority since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
So it was a surprising fall for a leader who in September 2021 imagined himself to be the
longest-serving British Prime Minister of the modern era.
(Boris Johnson eyes another decade in power)
Just a few months before being forced to resign, Johnson aspired to surpassing Margaret Thatcher's
11 years in power.
In the end, his run remains at a little over three years.
So the question is: How did such a peculiar guy as Johnson ever come to be resident in
Downing Street?
What is the balance sheet of his era as Prime Minister?
What really brought about his downfall?
In this video we are going to answer these questions, but first, first we have to start
at the beginning.
So that means we need to look at a bit of history.
(WHO CARES ABOUT THE TRUTH?)
Boris Johnson lying to Parliament about his attendance during confinement at Downing Street
parties did not come as a surprise to those who follow British politics closely.
Johnson's career is littered with moments when he struggled with the truth.
In fact, the lack of commitment to the truth is, perhaps, one of the great weaknesses of
this politician.
Do you think we are exaggerating?
Well, no...
Throughout Johson's professional and political career this stain has always been very present.
But let's start at the beginning.
After studying at the prestigious Eton College and then reading Classics at Oxford University,
Johnson began his professional career as a journalist for The Times, from which he was
fired for making up a quote.
After this incident, he was rescued by the Daily Telegraph, where he wrote columns that
began to connect him with the conservative electorate.
And in the early 1990s he was posted as a correspondent in Brussels, where he began
to gain fame for his hardline Euro-skeptical positions.
And this was something Johnson did in a big way: whether or not he had reason on his side,
his style always used exaggeration to ridicule the EU institutions.
In his pieces, Johnson went so far as to say things such as that the European Commission
wanted to ban shrimp cocktails and British sausages, or even that it was seeking to standardize
the size of prophylactics because Italians had smaller sexual organs.
Back in the UK he continued to work as a columnist and ran, unsuccessfully, for election to the
House of Commons.
But little by little thanks to his work and above all to his continuous appearances on
the BBC's "Have I Got News for You" program, he began to become a well-known figure.
He then received an offer to become editor of The Spectator, a weekly magazine on politics,
culture and international affairs.
The condition, however, was that he would not run for parliament.
Which Johnson agreed to and, of course, two years later, reneged on.
As a politician, he won the confidence of the then Conservative leader, Michael Howard,
although he was soon removed after the media exposed Boris' lies about an affair, another
of his great passions.
Nevertheless, the fact is that in 2008 Boris Johnson became Mayor of London.
His performance as mayor earned him great popularity.
This allowed him to win re-election.
His popularity spread throughout the whole country and also the international community
after the hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games.
In such a context and enjoying very high approval ratings, he did what he had said at least
a thousand times that he would not do: run as a candidate for the 2015 parliamentary
elections.
And so, from the House of Commons, he became one of the most prominent figures in calling
for the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, playing a particularly stellar role
in the 2016 referendum.
At that time the Conservative Party had been in power for six years with David Cameron
as Prime Minister.
That referendum was called for many reasons but this you see on the screen was one of
the main arguments.
You see, after the Great Recession, many British politicians, economists and experts who were
skeptical of the European Union argued that the blame for the poor performance of the
British economy had a lot to do precisely with the burden of the European club.
Johnson, who moved like a fish in water in this field, was one of the great speakers
for this campaign from the outset.....
A campaign that, I’m sure I needn’t remind you, was a success and ended with the resignation
of David Cameron.
With the subsequent appointment of Theresa May in the top job to enforce Brexit, Johnson,
as a representative of the most hardcore wing of Brexit supporters, was appointed Foreign
Secretary and remained in office for the first two years of the three years of this government.
A government that was....
A failure.
Theresa May, who did not believe in Brexit, did not manage to make practically any progress.
And so amid doubts about whether Brexit would really be possible, the opportunity came for
our protagonist of this video: on 24 July 2019, Boris Johnson became the Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom.
Suddenly the discourse changed completely and five months later, in the elections of
12 December, Boris Johnson crushed all his rivals.
The United Kingdom had a new emperor...
At least in political terms.
Boris Johnson's election campaign in 2019 was very clear, he asked for the vote to achieve
two things: to carry out Brexit without looking back and to prevent Jeremy Corbyn, the then
far left-leaning Labour leader from taking over the British government.
It was a success: the classic Conservative fiefdoms were joined by many traditional Labour
constituencies that had backed Brexit and were not particularly enthusiastic about their
candidate's left-wing populism.
And so, VisualPolitik viewers, many things can be said, but on this occasion Boris Johnson
kept his word:
After his crushing defeat, Corbyn was left out of the political front line and just when
it seemed impossible, the British Prime Minister managed to close a deal with the European
Union so that Brexit would be fully completed by 31 January 2020.
It is true that the agreement was not exactly what the hardline
Brexiters wanted, since Northern Ireland continues to belong to the European single market for
goods...
Something that has since been a huge headache and an inexhaustible source of political conflict.
Why?
Because belonging to the European goods market means not being part of the British market
itself.
This trade border in the Irish Sea makes many in Britain uncomfortable and even Johnson
himself frequently threatened to break the so-called Northern Irish Protocol.
And that's not all: Brexit is an opportunity but also a risk.
Whether it will turn out better or worse in the medium and long term will essentially
depend on the policies adopted by the British government.
This seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?
The problem is that it was sold otherwise.
Many pro-Brexit leaders, including Johnson himself, painted the picture that everything
would be a bed of roses.
That the mere exit from the European Union would mean something like turbo-charging the
economy and that suddenly everyone would be richer and more prosperous.
But the reality is the opposite....
In the short term Brexit means a lot of uncertainty and the need to carry out endless adjustments
that slow down the economy.
For example, according to data from the Center for European Reform, so far Brexit has meant
a 10% drop in investment and trade for the UK compared to global growth of 6%.
Yes, in the medium to long term it could be a great opportunity but that will require
time, patience and above all policies that improve British competitiveness.
And here, Johnson has not been particularly up to the task either.
He has presented many interesting grand plans, but when it comes down to it, very little
has been implemented and very little progress has actually been made.
Instead, what he has done is to spend hand over fist and increase taxes on business.
And that, that's something that has also contributed to eroding his clout within the conservative
movement.
But we can't just talk about Brexit and its consequences.
The Johnson era leaves us with many more stories.
Listen up.
(HALF-TRUTHS AS POLICY)
VisualPolitik viewers, foreign policy has been the area where the changes brought about
by Brexit are most noticeable by far.
While the European machinery tends to be slow and ponderous, London has become much more
agile in establishing its position on the major issues on the international scene.
Which has meant that Boris Johnson himself is now more beloved abroad than in his own
country.
For example, check out who was most delighted that Johnson overcame a no-confidence motion
in June.
Indeed, the UK is supporting Ukraine wholeheartedly.
In fact, in Ukraine they are so grateful to Boris Johnson that they have dedicated a street
to him in the city of Odessa.
And it surely won't be the last.
Then, the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom marked
another major diplomatic victory, something along the lines of, London is back on the
international stage.
But the good news pretty much stops there.
You see, another area in which he ultimately achieved outstanding leadership was in the
management of the pandemic.
The British government made a strong commitment to vaccines and achieved vaccination rates
similar to those achieved by Israel in the early stages of the vaccination process.
Something that also caused Brexit supporters to stick out their chests with graphs like
this one:
Of course, not everything went so well for him.
At the national level, his flagship policy was known as "Levelling up".
His aim was to achieve greater economic development in the midlands of England, Wales, Northern
Ireland and Scotland.
In other words, in all those parts of the country that have not been as successful as
the London metropolitan area and the major English cities.
The idea was to greatly increase public investment in these areas.
For decades the UK Government has talked about reducing the inequalities between the dynamism
of London and the south of England and the rest of the UK.
Much has been said, but little has been done, and with little success.
Everything continues to be concentrated in The City.
And everything indicates that this will continue to be the case for the time being.
Well, betting on Levelling Up had an added incentive for Johnson.
His absolute majority meant that the Tories obtained MPs in the most unexpected places.
And this has generated two major currents in the Conservative Party.
The classic liberal current of the Tories in London and the southeast has been joined
by another movement, a very conservative but much more interventionist one: that of the
north and the Midlands, which is calling for a sharp increase in public spending.
And that is where Johnson had wanted to stake much of his political capital, and for that
the government had to mobilize huge amounts of public investment.
The problem, of course, is that resources are not infinite.
Stimulus plans to support the post-Covid recovery, coupled with the costs of the pandemic itself
and the UK government's plans have brought about something that could doom the Conservative
Party even if Margaret Thatcher herself were here:
(U.K.
Is Among First Western Nations to Increase Taxes to Cover Covid-19 Costs)
VisualPolitik viewers the British healthcare system is not at its best.
Waiting lists are multiplying and affecting millions of patients.
And as economic growth is far from what was expected and even further from what was promised
during the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson sought to increase his resources by pulling
the old classic: raising taxes.
In this way, he increased the taxation on workers' salaries by 2.5 points to be shared
equally between companies and their employees.
In addition, the corporate tax rate will increase from 19% to 25% in April 2023.
The driving force behind these measures was Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who was reportedly opposed to financing the spending expansions entirely with debt.
Whatever the case, what is clear is that stimulus plans may be more or less popular, but raising
taxes is something that almost nobody likes, especially on the conservative side.
Especially at a time like this.
(UK inflation hits new 40-year high of 9.4% as cost-of-living crisis deepens)
And then there is the energy crisis and the ever-increasing bills for British households.
So, naturally: broken promises, disappointments, inflation and tax rises have eroded Boris
Johnson's political capital and his supporters within the Conservative Party.
Of course, his resignation has had much more to do with his personal behavior than with
the mediocre performance he has achieved so far.
Listen up.
(DECEPTION AS A SURVIVAL METHOD)
At this point it is also not worth going into too much detail about all of Boris Johnson's
comings and goings with the Partygate scandal.
And just a side note, can we stop attaching the "gate" tagline to any scandal – it's
not like Watergate was a water scandal!
Johnson tried to fool the British people, Parliament and everyone else.
The reality is that in May 2020 a bunch of senior government officials gathered in Downing
Street Gardens for their traditional Friday drinks while the rest of the British population
were banned from socializing and doing practically anything other than being at home or possibly
at work.
So you can imagine the outrage provoked by news items like this:
(Boris Johnson fined by police over lockdown-breaking parties at UK government premises)
In response to this, Johnson even said that, well, nobody had warned him that attending
those events was in breach of the rules of social distancing approved by his own government.
As you can imagine, in the face of such an obvious porkie, there were many Tories who
began to withdraw their support for the Prime Minister.
Johnson then launched the so-called Operation Red Meat, a desperate attempt to regain the
support of his own people.
This Operation Red Meat included such crazy policies as handing over control of the English
Channel to the Royal Navy, which does not have adequate vessels to combat illegal immigration.
It also included an agreement to deport undocumented immigrants to African countries such as Rwanda
or Nigeria, something that made Prince Charles of England put aside his neutrality to describe
this policy as appalling.
And so, Johnson gradually lost the confidence of the Tories to the point that in early June
2022 they presented him with a no-confidence vote.
Johnson managed to overcome the motion but his government was mortally wounded.
And the final straw for the Prime Minister was the Pincher scandal.
Chris Pincher was a senior member of the Conservative Party parliamentary group who resigned at
the end of June after being accused of sexually assaulting two men.
The scandal erupted when it became known that Pincher had been appointed to this post by
Boris Johnson, despite the fact that the latter already knew that he had similar allegations
from his time at the Foreign Office.
The Pincher scandal led to the immediate resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi
Sunak, and also of the Minister of Health, Sajid Javid, who was very eloquent before
Parliament in defining the drift Johnson
was taking.
The resignation of these two ministers was the beginning of the end.
In just 36 hours, as many as 50 senior government officials resigned from their posts.
And that, that was the end, at least for now, of Boris Johnson.
And I say for now because there are already rumors that the British leader is set to return
to the front row to regain the throne that has been snatched from him.
Be that as it may, his farewell in the British Parliament left no one indifferent:
But now that we have reached this point, it's time for all of you: What memory will Boris
Johnson leave in your mind?
What advice would you give to the future British Prime Minister?
Leave us your answer in the comments.
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All the best and see you next time.