I recently spoke by phone with David Runciman, a professor of politics at Cambridge University, about Johnson’s legacy and what comes next for the Tory Party. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Johnson may have permanently altered British politics, what distinguished his style of populism, and the Labour Party’s continuing difficulties.
He would fall back on the idea that a Prime Minister has an obligation and a kind of set of rights that derived from the number of people who voted for him in a general election. And that simply pushes against most of the ways that British politics work. He tried to bypass his parliamentary party. He tried to claim that he could govern without many of them, in the name of the people. It is a form of populism.
It is quite Trumpish—the people against the establishment. And then there’s the other thing that goes with it, which is that the price of that kind of politics is appealing to non-traditional conservatives, and to not traditionally conservative voters, with a bigger state agenda with possibly more public spending. Many people in the Conservative Party are uncomfortable with that.
Brexit is the pure majoritarian project, fifty-two-per-cent-referendum politics, but parliamentary politics is never majoritarian. There is a majority in Parliament under our system, but you can get a majority with a small proportion of the vote. Tony Blair had a majority almost as big as Johnson’s with thirty-five per cent of the vote. And that makes this kind of majoritarian politics slightly at odds with the Brexit rhetoric. Most people in Britain did not vote for a Conservative government.
You said he’s purely a pragmatic, transactional politician, which is how a lot of people have thought about him for a while. Did anything change there? Do you think he believes anything? I don’t know, but it does make a certain kind of sense, because he genuinely believes in the value of political courage. There’s no question that he was awestruck by Zelensky, certainly at the beginning. He thinks his own political career is an exercise in courage. In his resignation address, you could tell he thinks the failure of the people who deserted him was about their cowardice, that they couldn’t withstand the media pressure of being in that storm.
AdeleBatchelder Same place where boris was taking them, Facsism !!!
Boris Johnson comes from a boarding school bulling hazing mentally with all the upper class connections and just carried that into his political life and he is not the only one it's all over the world aud it's insidious .
You could have fooled me…
Something that basically tells us that he probably did not use blackmail as a working tool with his team, and that is kind of unusual and oddly honorable for a right wing politician.
Oh how I wish gop politicians here would follow that example!
This is performative stupidity. This is not even close to what destroyed Johnson. Who is this written for and why do pol profs never call out the obvious truth
The Cambridge professor David Runciman is an bell end.
With respect to professor Runciman, he was made leader of the Conservatives during a period of unprecidented lying, and annointed mainly because of his unprecedented ability to lie and get away with it. He managed to get most of them to lie on his behalf for 2 years.
Boris and Trump must’ve been twins separated at birth.
It’s famously difficult to get people in government to do this
He was a known liar when they took him on, it was one of his selling points, and his cabinet are still lying, he's ditched because he's become an electoral liability. They can blame their collective failures on him and move on, while still doing them.
Complete nonsense. They did go out and lie day after day, and even after telling him to go they are lying day after day. He just became an electoral liability. Nothing to do with integrity.
Not that he asked them to?
So it was being Trump without the cult...
So there were some proper public servants in his cabinet. What an age where we have to marvel at something like this.
That’s what the GOP does everyday for trump. Guess there’s still some with a spine amongst his party.
Why can't Americans give up on the Big Lie and the Biggest Liar on the planet Earth?
The difference between the US and Brit government: Honor.
Exactly trumps ability.
Conservatives and lying go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Send him to America where our GOP has absolutely no trouble lying for trump against Americans, against our laws, against our constitution. Or for kicks.
'People v the elite'. As if the Tories aren't the elite. Northern Ireland & the consequences of Brexit there not mentioned.
I have long given up on expecting insight into British politics or British society from the main liberal US publications, newyorker, nybooks, nytimes and washingtonpost. Very strange how their bias blinds them to the state of Brexit Britain.
WELL UK Tories aren't Republicans
Should have run in America. Our politicians are only too happy to lie day in, day out on behalf of a dishonest leader.
I once read in a child-rearing book that boys have three questions: 1. What are the rules? 2. What happens when I break the rules? 3. Are you going to enforce the rules? Those questions come to mind often as I read the actions of men in power, especially conservative men.
On the 6th of January,the people should make a revolution, but no “Congress”, Trump should stop people immediately, but what Trump’s done is good, his opponents destroy the US. The people should elect Trump, Sanders…but the best is Pompeo.
44 years ago China saw the bourgeoisie wasn’t full justice for promoting democracy, and mainly relied on brain-control. So China found that weakness of US, and made'Chernobyl','64','911',“Eastern Europe“Islamic”...disasters with the US.
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