LONDON — Less than three weeks after he introduced his resignation, and with rumors already swirling that he plans a comeback, Britain’s scandal-scarred prime minister, Boris Johnson, acquired the kind of self-care recommendation finest allotted by a member of the family.
“If you ask me,” Rachel Johnson, the prime minister’s sister, said recently on LBC Radio, the place she hosts a chat present, “I would like to see my brother rest and write and paint and just regroup and just, you know, see what happens.”
Not a lot probability of that.
Still serving as caretaker prime minister, Mr. Johnson has hardly retreated to the background. He just lately posed in a fighter jet, then at a navy base where he hurled a hand grenade, used a machine gun and held a rocket launcher throughout a coaching train with Ukrainian troops.
And at his remaining look in Parliament as prime minister, Mr. Johnson’s verdict on his three tumultuous years in Downing Street was “mission largely accomplished — for now,” earlier than he signed off with phrases from a “Terminator” film: “Hasta la vista, baby.”
Yet as a devotee of the Terminator franchise, Mr. Johnson is aware of about sequels.
“He’s not the kind of person who gives up and goes away to live a quiet life in some nice house in the country and does good work for the local church,” stated Andrew Gimson, who’s quickly to publish a second quantity of his biography of Mr. Johnson.
“You don’t really get to the top unless you are already quite unnaturally competitive, so it would be very astonishing if he just subsided into private life.”
The Fall of Boris Johnson, Explained
Turmoil at Downing Street. Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson stated he would step down lower than three years after a landslide election victory, following a sequence of scandals which have ensnared his authorities. Here’s what led to this:
While a return to Downing Street could also be unlikely, Mr. Johnson, together with his outsize political profile, is aware of methods to hold his title within the headlines. That is probably not excellent news for his successor.
Writing in The Times of London, William Hague, a former Conservative chief, warned of the potential for Mr. Johnson to articulate “a bundle of resentment, denial, attention-seeking and attempted vindication that will be a permanent nightmare for the new prime minister.”
Downing Street is just not saying something publicly about Mr. Johnson’s future although his allies reject Mr. Hague’s feedback. They count on Mr. Johnson to stay in Parliament and to talk out over any dilution of his sturdy dedication to Ukraine, any important shift over Brexit or a reversal of his nonetheless cloudy plan to “level up” the prosperity of uncared for areas.
Despite the scandals that led to his resignation, he retains a robust coterie of supporters within the right-wing media and amongst his occasion members who will elect the brand new chief. Backers of Ms. Truss have tried to take advantage of this loyalty, and have accused Mr. Sunak — whose resignation began the unraveling of Mr. Johnson’s job safety — of betraying the prime minister. One cupboard minister, Nadine Dorries, just lately retweeted a picture of Mr. Sunak within the pose of Brutus about to stab Julius Caesar within the again.
And a seemingly doomed marketing campaign to maintain Mr. Johnson in Downing Street through a petition, signed by 1000’s of Conservative Party members, helps validate his concept — superior when he introduced his resignation — that his lawmakers acted irrationally in forcing out the person who introduced them victory in 2019.
“As we have seen at Westminster the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves,” Mr. Johnson stated in his resignation speech, suggesting that his Conservative colleagues in Parliament have been merely succumbing to the political survival intuition of following the group.
Mr. Johnson expressed little or no regret or self-reflection on the largely self-inflicted wounds that led to his downfall.
Robert Ford, a professor of political science on the University of Manchester, stated that the prime minister could consider in his coronary heart that it’s attainable for him to some day return to Downing Street as a result of he has defied the chances earlier than.
“All his political life he has believed he is someone special, that he can achieve things others can’t and is someone to whom the normal rules don’t apply,” he stated, noting Mr. Johnson’s quite a few comebacks from earlier reverses.
Professor Ford stated that comparisons to former President Donald J. Trump are inexact as a result of Mr. Johnson in the end accepted the method that ousted him.
“But where the Trump analogy applies is: first, in Boris Johnson rejecting the idea that anything that happened this year is his fault; and second in his very intense desire to have the spotlight back on him,” Professor Ford stated.
Any remaining political ambitions apart, Mr. Johnson is just not wanting choices to make a dwelling. He has a biography of William Shakespeare to finish, the prospect of profitable appearances on the worldwide lecture circuit and even, doubtlessly, the lure of journalism. (He is a former columnist for The Daily Telegraph).
If he’s to stay a power in politics, the primary process for Mr. Johnson will likely be to carry on to his seat in Parliament.
The Political Situation in Britain
After getting ensnared in numerous scandals, Boris Johnson stated he would step down as prime minister of Britain, clearing the best way for a brand new management race contained in the Conservative Party.
A committee is investigating whether or not he misled lawmakers over lockdown-breaking events in Downing Street and, if it goes badly for Mr. Johnson, he might must battle an election to maintain his seat later this 12 months.
Nor is it sure he would maintain his seat on the subsequent normal election until fortunes enhance for his Conservatives, so there may be hypothesis that he would possibly seek for a safer district.
As for an eventual return to Downing Street, Mr. Gimson stated that Mr. Johnson’s “greatest chance of coming back is if the nation is in a desperate predicament and he is thought to be the only figure big enough and bold enough to deal with it.”
Some earlier prime ministers have made comebacks, together with Winston Churchill, Mr. Johnson’s political hero.
But Mr. Johnson’s process can be more durable as a result of — in contrast to Churchill — he has misplaced the management of the Conservative Party, and must received it again earlier than any second try at Downing Street. It appears unlikely that Conservative lawmakers would wish to threat a repetition of his chaotic administration.
In any occasion, stated Professor Ford, with a prepared platform within the right-wing media, Mr. Johnson is extra more likely to relish troublemaking than enjoying the supportive elder statesman.
“He doesn’t accept personal responsibility for his ouster, and he doesn’t think he should have gone,” Professor Ford stated. “He does think that he has a mandate from the people and a special electoral appeal that his colleagues cannot replicate.”
And the query stays: deep down, does Mr. Johnson — who has an extended historical past of being written off solely to disprove his doubters — acknowledge that this time it’s actually throughout?
“I doubt it,” stated Mr. Gimson, his biographer, “I think he’s accepted that he’s out in the short term. But that’s the short term, and he’s an optimist by nature.”
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