The possible candidacy of the former prime minister shifts the division of the Conservative Party from the ideological field to the personal
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has returned to London with the ambition to recruit the 100 members of the Conservative parliamentary group who will enable him to enter the second phase of the election process to replace the resigned Liz Truss. After a long flight from Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, he has until tomorrow afternoon to reach his goal.
The feelings Johnson evokes were shown during his journey. A Sky television reporter, who bought a ticket for Johnson, his wife and two children on the flight, says he was booed by other travelers on board. It evokes luminous sympathies and firm rejections. His close friends confirm that he is willing to rule with those who overthrew him, but he has not yet confirmed his candidacy.
The former prime minister’s associates tell the BBC he already has 100 votes, but only 51 of his supporters have announced their decision. Rishi Sunak is the favourite, and last night he added 114 support and the third candidate, Penny Mordaunt, the only one to have confirmed her candidacy since Friday, gets 22 public approval. The parliamentary group holds 357 seats.
If elected, Johnson would spend his first months as prime minister embroiled in a Commons committee inquiry into an allegation that he lied to Parliament about the ‘Partygate case’. Officials fined and damaged in their professional records for participating in Downing Street celebrations during the pandemic will testify before the committee.
If it concludes that he lied when he repeatedly claimed that Downing Street’s rules to contain the pandemic had not been violated, the committee may recommend Johnson’s suspension or removal from parliament. The House of Commons, in which the Conservatives have a majority of 71 seats, would make the final decision.
The Conservative Party has experienced serious divisions throughout its history over Hitler’s corn protectionism or appeasement, but the crisis that led to this latest crisis dates back to the late 1960s. Those who favored joining the European Economic Community in pursuit of its economic growth, as well as those associated with classical liberalism promoted by the economists of the Mont Pellerin Society and their humanism, could share the two ideas, but cracks appeared.
Margaret Thatcher purged her ‘wet’ ministers who were skeptical of monetarism. The European question played an important role in his overthrow. His successor, John Mayor, called four of his ministers – Eurosceptics and ‘Thatcherites’ – ‘bastards’ in a television studio when he thought he was not being recorded. His government suffered from continuous uprisings in its seats.
The dissent in 2012 of a group of 53 deputies who supported an opportunist opposition motion to cut the Union budget scared David Cameron and encouraged him to hold a referendum, with the ambition to end the split. to end. His successor, Theresa May, fell because her ‘Brexit’ was rejected. Boris Johnson became the first Conservative leader since 1964 not to fall over the European issue.
Euroscepticism won the battle, though it is dissatisfied with the implementation of ‘Brexit’. Monetarism is no longer a buzzword, but Liz Truss and her minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, had a plan, off to a bad start, that echoed classical liberalism. He was injured by the string of nonsense that followed, but is promoted by political study groups with notable influence among the “Tories.”
Johnson, with an eclectic personality, wants to unite the party. His version of ‘Brexit’ is unfinished in Northern Ireland and voices wanting a return to the single market have grown, but he has the armor that he has led the EU’s march. No one realistically proposes to reverse it. The Labor opposition is pleased with a proposal to avoid entanglement on the Northern Ireland border.
On the economic front, the former prime minister is inclined to waste public money on major projects and has reiterated in press conferences that he does not like the austerity policies implemented by Cameron and his minister, George Osborne. However, he chaired a government that, at Sunak’s initiative, raised the tax burden to levels unknown for seven decades.
The choice of Liz Truss as Johnson’s replacement is largely due to the spread from within the expelled “Prime Minister” circle of the idea that he had been the victim of a Sunak conspiracy. The former economy minister, who is now the favorite in the new election process, then won the vote of the deputies and lost that of the party members, as he had to defend himself against the ongoing accusation of disloyalty.
In his defense, Sunak said he resigned as minister because Johnson’s behavior had shaken his confidence in him as a leader and because of disagreements over recent months over economic issues. The tax increases violated the election manifesto, but Johnson had to accept them as necessary compensation for extraordinary expenses during the pandemic.
One of the former prime minister’s first decisions in the event that he returns to Downing Street would be about the continuity of his neighbour, Jeremy Hunt. The interim economy minister is planning more taxes and austerity. Johnson and Hunt went to different elite schools (Eton and Charterhouse) and that creates barriers. Hunt lost to Johnson to replace Theresa May and has never wanted to serve as her minister. British governments usually fall through disagreements between 10 and 11 Downing Street and that relationship has no good ‘karma’.
Sunak, for his part, would have a reassuring effect on the markets, having already warned in the summer that Truss’ promised tax abolition could lead to instability. His professional world is finance and Hunt, although he has business experience, has never headed an economics ministry. Sunak as Prime Minister and Hunt as Finance Minister have little feng shui. They are placed upside down.
The Conservative Party needs a time of rest, according to several commentators. But MP Jesse Norman has said the election of the former prime minister would be “an absolute catastrophe”. And in the current campaign, Johnson’s July slogan echoes to his co-religionists: “Vote for everyone except Sunak.”
Source: La Verdad
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