For billionaires, Johnson is their ideal vehicle.
Because he looks, he presents himself as this cheeky chappy,
who is in touch with the working class
against a liberal elite which is out of touch.
Actually, he's the billionaires b*tch.
Boris the b*tch.
The billionaires b*tch.
What you might call mass popular democracy
which Britain had until very recently has been replaced.
To a system of politics which is much more oligarchical.
It would be recognised by Donald Trump, Modi in India, Putin in Russia.
The super rich call the shots.
Johnson represents a British domesticated version of that.
There's a remarkable moment
when Johnson's leadership was in the balance.
A few hours ahead of the vote and suddenly a letter from
a large number of the richest men in Britain
published, significantly in Murdoch's Sun,
"We are behind Boris 100%" - unwavering support for Boris Johnson.
In order to make clear that message they didn't say specifically
we will withdraw our money.
But that meant then Nadine Dorries goes on live TV.
"The Conservative Party donors have said themselves that they
arn't going to support the party if the Prime Minister is removed
a number of MPs in marginal seats need to hear that
and need to understand what they are doing."
And she is saying this to the MPs in marginal seats
who need this big donor money in order
to be able to sell themselves to their local voters.
Massive moment.
I don't think we have ever had that kind of direct intervention
in British public life from the super rich
and you can see what they want it is access to power,
it is contracts, we saw this with COVID when Tory donors were rewarded endlessly.
You would hope that in a well managed democracy
the purpose of political power was to challenge the super rich and make
sure they didn't get what they wanted under Johnson political power has been a
vehicle for the super rich to make sure that they do get what they want.
The second element of Johnson is that the media class and the political class
have merged in Downing Street, they are the same thing.
And so all the stuff that we as journalists get taught that it's the task of the press
to hold Government to account and there is a separation of powers is no longer the case
There has been a merger. Murdoch, Associated newspapers, the Telegraph,
three big groups that control 70-80 per cent of newspaper reading market,
they all backed Johnson to become Tory leader, they all backed him to become pM,
and they all backed him in his moment of crisis, without exception,
absolutely crucial to his success in commanding the support of Tory MPs.
You can't help but observe that Johnson has had a whole series of policies that help the press,
From the Covid subsidy that you never read about of course,
it is reckoned that nearly 100m was funnelled into the papers,
the legislation, the undoing of the Leveson reforms,
a number of examples of the interrelationships. Staff moving from Downing Street to the Sun
and the Mail, and back again,
incredible attention with which the PM devotes
And he handles that relationship really well with a professionalism and an understanding
that he doesn't give to other matters like resolving Brexit or dealing with the pandemic
And the newspapers must be paying a price for this because so many of their readers are disgusted
by the sense of entitlement and arrogance and criminality in Downing Street
and the repeated lies about it from Johnson and his creatures around him
But the papers have taken that on the chin because it is more important to have
their man who is going to serve their interests in Downing Street.
So this means we have a mutation in British democracy
You go back to the post-war era the days and you have mass political parties,
The parties were part of civil society As the membership collapsed, you had the rise of
a new class of Tory donor but also Labour donor, Tony Blair used the donors ruthlessly
to exclued the Trade unions, It raises enormous questions for Keir Starmer,
He is trying to buy into the blair model but remember it is quite similar to this,
Blair went after big money and the news papers in order to defeat the unions,
so is Starmer just going to be a slightly softer version of oligarchical politics,
or is he going to be something else? Starmer made a choice after becoming leader,
rather dishonestly, because he presented himself as coming from the left, but he made
a choice not to define himself against Johnson, but to define himself as not being Jeremy Corbyn,
a classic Blairite pivot, Blair chose to win by
sucking up to Murdoch and the billionaires and Starmer appears to be doing the same thing,
So maybe all he will be is a more scrupulous version of Boris Johnson.
I wrote to Starmer about 18 months ago with a dossier of Johnson's lies
suggesting that he should challenge Johnson on moral grounds,
He should raise the issue of Johnson's lies in the HoC and he wrote a very polite letter back,
But he didn't do anything about it and didn't join in with Caroline Lucas and others
in going to the speaker and raising issues about integrity.
And it does strike one that the way he became Labour leader, making a serious statements,
that he has basically reneged on, has held him back from making a full attack on Johnson.
Starmer could, if he took a principled stand on Johnson, and didn't cringe-makingly
go after Murdoch's support, if he challenged the whole system
it might be the whole making of Starmer. But he has showed no sign of doing that.
I spent a lot of my time asking how I could reconcile the Boris Johnson I worked for
as editor of the Spectator with the PM today.
It is quite difficult because Johnson then was a borderline libertarian,
cosmopolitan, metropolitan, Conservative a very relaxed immigration,
and now we have the PM in Downing Street who is more and more authoritarian,
very darkly racist in some of the language he has used,
driven by what is more and more a very ugly desire for power as against principle,
loves to have really indifferent people around him.
One of the reasons I loved working for Boris was he had very different people around him,
it was a very exciting, lively, generous atmosphere.
Look at Downing Street and he surrounds himself with people with no talent but appeal to the
big donors who run the Party, or who appeal to the Party
membership whose support he still needs. And although what the outsider looking
in sees is a buffoon, that is not the case. He has a very firm grasp of where power lies.
Which I didn't really ever spot. His Tory party has developed themes
which developed in New Labour under Blair and under Cameron.
He has made the Tory Party the party of billionaire money
and secondly of the press barons. Boris Johnson's conservative party is not
the party which has governed Britain for 200 near years.
It is more like a - party or a Trump party. There are lots of elements of Trump's Republicans.
It is a new method of governing in Britain. A very interesting case in the leadership
election where one Tory MP revealed that he had been offered a bung in
his constituency in order to vote for the Johnson leadership
shows naivety on two levels, one Johnson and secondly smells like corruption.
The use of the state to award supporters for the politics of cronyism.
Very dangerous. He is dismantling the Britain he has inherited.
I speak as a conservative but Johnson is not a conservative.
He has the name conservative and has the machinery of the party but what he
is doing is not conservative. What he is doing is moving
towards authoritarianism.
Attacks freedoms. Attacks institutions of the state.
It is far-right and it is very dangerous. No conservative can, should, support this.