UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[YL]

Yes, overall his downfall remains highly satisfying.

However, it would be even better if at some point the voters of Uxbridge & South Ruislip get the opportunity to put the icing on the cake and take it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Even if Truss ends up as the UK Kim Campbell, that still means Johnson ending up as the UK Brian Mulroney.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I’ve noticed that Truss has said some pretty damn reckless things on foreign policy—a fact that might help post-Corbyn Labour’s credibility.

(Not that I’m claiming foreign policy per se is a major issue for most voters. The war in Ukraine’s economic impact is obviously more relevant to most people than the precise details of aid to Ukraine that stops short of directly fighting Russia). 

[Pericles]

Even if Truss ends up as the UK Kim Campbell, that still means Johnson ending up as the UK Brian Mulroney.

Both also have pretty consequential policy legacies despite ending up deeply unpopular.

[Cassius]

Even if Truss ends up as the UK Kim Campbell, that still means Johnson ending up as the UK Brian Mulroney.

Both also have pretty consequential policy legacies despite ending up deeply unpopular.

Certainly the case for Mulroney (privatisation, the GST, NAFTA and environmental legislation all being major aspects of his policy legacy) but for Johnson? Other than 'getting Brexit done', it's difficult to think of any significant policy legacy that his government will leave behind.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Certainly the case for Mulroney (privatisation, the GST, NAFTA and environmental legislation all being major aspects of his policy legacy) but for Johnson? Other than 'getting Brexit done', it's difficult to think of any significant policy legacy that his government will leave behind.

Even then, well, the wheels were already set in motion one way or another. His main legacy (other than the manner of his downfall, which is notable, and the general incompetence) would be the new (permanent?) political crisis in Northern Ireland. Other than that there's... nothing. So much of his government's legislative agenda ended up being cancelled halfway through because he changed his mind about this or that, and extremely poor management of parliamentary time (perhaps in future pick a Leader of the Commons who is not fundamentally indolent? Useful advice for all would-be PMs I suppose, but it shouldn't be necessary!) has contributed further to that issue.

[Pericles]

Even if Truss ends up as the UK Kim Campbell, that still means Johnson ending up as the UK Brian Mulroney.

Both also have pretty consequential policy legacies despite ending up deeply unpopular.

Certainly the case for Mulroney (privatisation, the GST, NAFTA and environmental legislation all being major aspects of his policy legacy) but for Johnson? Other than 'getting Brexit done', it's difficult to think of any significant policy legacy that his government will leave behind.

Brexit is a pretty huge legacy though. By the way, Johnson was really hurt by the fact that Brexit was done, he didn't have a proper vision without it and he wasn't needed by his base anymore.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Brexit is a pretty huge legacy though.

But it isn't his legacy, is it? The general form that Brexit has taken was shaped by May and the general chaos of the 2017-19 Parliament: Johnson's only significant modifications were with respect to Northern Ireland.

[Pericles]

Brexit is a pretty huge legacy though.

But it isn't his legacy, is it? The general form that Brexit has taken was shaped by May and the general chaos of the 2017-19 Parliament: Johnson's only significant modifications were with respect to Northern Ireland.

He delivered it, so it is his legacy even if in a hypothetical world it could have been May's. May's deal also left open the terms of the trade deal, which under Johnson's government were quite hard, though this is easier to change than Brexit itself.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He delivered it, so it is his legacy even if in a hypothetical world it could have been May's. May's deal also left open the terms of the trade deal, which under Johnson's government were quite hard, though this is easier to change than Brexit itself.

He signed the final treaty and the final vote through Parliament was during his administration, but I just don't see why this should be seen as being of great significance. Any Conservative majority administration would have been able to do the latter easily, and we can be fairly sure, given what happened, that any new Conservative leader would have won a majority at an election that year, so lacking in credibility were the principle opposition parties.

[CumbrianLefty]

It is surely indisputable that Johnson as PM achieved far less than in his pseudo-Churchill fantasies.

And that alone has got to hurt.

[Pericles]

It is surely indisputable that Johnson as PM achieved far less than in his pseudo-Churchill fantasies.

And that alone has got to hurt.

Covid was the biggest disruption to daily life since WWII but people won't remember him as a hero for his handling of it but as a selfish asshole, so that's another ironic humiliation.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I thought the consensus was that Brexit is the Eton pig lover’s legacy.

[CumbrianLefty]

I thought the consensus was that Brexit is the Eton pig lover’s legacy.

Already discussed

I think the point many made is that much of the work was already done for him.

[Blair]

The particularly hilarious thing is that so much of the coverage was about how he had re-created British politics and the dividing lines between the parties- the squatting toad comment as an example after his rather rambling conference speech in 2021.

You would have thought they would have learnt after May in early 2017 & the talk of her serving for 10 years. At least Truss will not be entering into office with these expectations.

The one thing he could have had a legacy on was around planning reform- the original proposals would have killed the post 1947 legacy of planning and would have seen a very very different approach.

Although he made the mistake of putting an overzealous idiot in charge of the efforts & ironically the minister responsible in parliament for planning was a Mr Christopher Pincher.

[Oryxslayer]

The particularly hilarious thing is that so much of the coverage was about how he had re-created British politics and the dividing lines between the parties- the squatting toad comment as an example after his rather rambling conference speech in 2021.

You would have thought they would have learnt after May in early 2017 & the talk of her serving for 10 years. At least Truss will not be entering into office with these expectations.

The one thing he could have had a legacy on was around planning reform- the original proposals would have killed the post 1947 legacy of planning and would have seen a very very different approach.

Although he made the mistake of putting an overzealous idiot in charge of the efforts & ironically the minister responsible in parliament for planning was a Mr Christopher Pincher.

I mean the geography of electoral victory has changed, and pretending it didn't happen is willful ignorance. Lots of Labour seats in the north are now marginals. Labour will be winning back nearly 100% of them next election if polls stay as they are, but the margins are what matters and those will likely remain close to the overall NPV. Meanwhile, a lot of seats in the south that Labour and the Lib-Dems won during the Blair landslides have had their Tory bases fall out from under them and are also now marginals, but the full extent will not be revealed until after the next election.

The issue is giving Boris all the blame/honor from this result, a personalization of politics more similar to presidential systems. Arguably a lot of the problems the Tories internally have right now seems to be because they maintained and fostered this illusion to their own detriment. Now the old guard has zero ideas how to win what was so recently opposition turf besides maintaining a PM who has lost these voters confidence according to polls. These are just generational trends and shifts in individual preferences which got accelerated by Brexit. For example the Tories have long been nibbling away at the once-solid Labour wall of seats in the Eastern Midlands covering the former coalfields, Brexit justa llowed them to speed things up and sweep.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Except that all indications are the voters who have moved heavily into Labour's column over the past year are people who did not vote (or voted for minor parties) Labour in 2019 but were previously loyal supporters and people who voted Conservative in 2019 but who previously often (though by no means always) voted Labour. In a society in which half the electorate has no sense of identification or loyalty to any individual party and in which even those in the other half are a lot more conditional about the latter than was once typical, electoral volatility will always be capable of cutting in multiple directions and concepts like 'realignment' are not very useful as they imply a solidity and a permanence that does not actually exist. This also means that a lot of traditional British methods of analysing elections - largely developed during the stable and highly-partisan postwar period - are equally inappropriate. 2019 was a particularly strange election as not only was at an Issue Election (a very rare thing in British politics this side of the 1930s), but, by that point, the principal opposition party was in the odd position of being unusually attractive to some parts of the electorate that are generally marginal supporters at best while being unusually unattractive to parts that are usually quite firm supporters. In general I would say that psephologists would be better off accepting the chaos and trying to find out the patterns that govern it, rather than try to insist on the existence of an order, a structure and a teleological direction that does not exist and no longer can.

[EastAnglianLefty]

More broadly, a lot of seats that are now marginal have previously been marginal or semi-marginal. There have been some changes (largely where the demographics or economic structures of a seat are quite different from what they were 40 years ago) but overall the electoral map outside Scotland or London isn't actually that dissimilar from what we'd have seen four decades ago.

[JimJamUK]

Labour is in a relatively worse position than it has traditionally performed in the places that trended Conservative in 2017/2019, but is in a relatively better position than it was in 2019 (the comparison to 2017 will be a bit more spotty). Muh Trends are neither inevitable nor completely reversed, and they will have changed yet again by 2024.

[TheTide]

More broadly, a lot of seats that are now marginal have previously been marginal or semi-marginal. There have been some changes (largely where the demographics or economic structures of a seat are quite different from what they were 40 years ago) but overall the electoral map outside Scotland or London isn't actually that dissimilar from what we'd have seen four decades ago.

In all of this talk about Red Walls and Blue Walls, one never hears much about the likes of Swindon South, Crawley, Pendle etc. These are the kinds of seats that would put Labour in government on the current polling; the Tories could certainly lose Leigh and Winchester and still win a majority.

[CumbrianLefty]

Johnson emerged yesterday to tell us this country has a "golden future".

There was a time when such empty boosterism worked with a depressingly large number of voters.

Maybe not just now, though.

[Pulaski]

Johnson emerged yesterday to tell us this country has a "golden future".

There was a time when such empty boosterism worked with a depressingly large number of voters.

Maybe not just now, though.

Unfortunately that golden tint is from every other country taking a big piss on us.

[MABA 2020]

Johnson emerged yesterday to tell us this country has a "golden future".

There was a time when such empty boosterism worked with a depressingly large number of voters.

Maybe not just now, though.

Yeah the general sense I get from people in my life, (most of whom have been pretty sympathetic to this Conservative government in the past) is that everything seems to be going to sh*t at the moment and the future seems pretty bleak.   

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course these moments of crisis have been common enough in modern British history, though this is the first since Black Wednesday to be to a large extent self-inflicted. It's right to be pessimistic about the short-term, but there's no reason to be for the future beyond that. We've been here before: younger posters might not be aware quite what an absolute state this country's public realm was in for most of the 1990s for instance.

[CumbrianLefty]

I think its the sense of "things will get worse before they get better" that is currently concerning quite a few though. And the sense of "learned helplessness" amongst many non-Tories after the repeated reverses since 2010 shouldn't be overlooked either. People need to start striving for better again.