Former Conservative leader William Hague summed it up very well: ‘While Johnson has survived the night, the damage done to his premiership is severe. Words have been said that cannot be retracted, reports published that cannot be erased, and votes have been cast that show a greater level of rejection than any leader has ever endured and survived. Deep inside, he should recognise that, and turn his mind to getting out in a way that spares party and country such agonies and uncertainties.’
There are, of course, people who want Johnson to survive: if only because without him they wouldn’t be on the government payroll, let alone in the cabinet. The sort of mediocrities who, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, “recognise nothing higher than themselves” and who thrive best when political advancement lies in the gift of a leader who likes to be surrounded by groupies rather than intellects. The sort of people, in other words, who will tolerate Johnson’s inanities, indiscretions and weaselling deceits in return for the opportunity to ‘be in the room’ with him.
But people like that can usually be persuaded to shift allegiance if the price is right: the price being the right to stay in the room after the previous object of their undying loyalty has been tossed through the window and onto the dung heap. Johnson’s rivals will be placing their bids right now. Sucking up to them, lathering them in praise and finding lighter and brighter bags for them to carry from room to room.
Johnson knows what these people are like. He knows what his rivals are like. He knows the brutality of politics. He knows that once a coup has begun it is almost impossible to stop unless it is crushed at the outset—which he failed to do on Monday night. He will have heard Frank Sinatra’s My Way being whistled—deliberately off key—in the corridors by assorted cabals and he will know that increasing numbers of former supporters are tired of his way.
Mind you, there are eight MPs who are desperate for Johnson to stay. The DUP. Yet again they threw all their eggs into his basket: yet again tying their fate to his fate. But with his fate looking even gloomier than Abraham Lincoln’s when he entered the Ford Theatre on April 15, 1865 (thank you to the writers of Frasier for that line) the DUP has a problem. It’s a problem the party should have factored into its calculations, but didn’t.
The entire DUP strategy is built around the protocol being either removed altogether, or overhauled enough for Jeffrey Donaldson to give the nod of approval to reboot the assembly. That requires Liz Truss presenting a bill to parliament which passes the DUP’s seven tests and then ensuring the bill goes through both houses reasonably unscathed. A big ask before 9pm on Monday night: and an even bigger one right now, with 148 Conservative MPs owing no loyalty to Johnson and having no particular interest in the DUP’s concerns, either.
The DUP is already warning Conservative MPs not to use the protocol bill as a way of damaging Johnson. But do their warnings really mean anything in the middle of what is now a full-blown civil war on the Conservative benches? Anyway, how keen are most of those MPs to reopen the internal Brexit/EU divisions that have bedevilled the party for fifty years? Brexit was supposed to have been ‘done’ when Johnson secured his electoral victory and parliamentary majority in December 2019 and I’m not persuaded there is a majority keen on kick-starting a huge new row just to get the DUP out of a pickle. Plus, kick-starting a new row sends out the message that the supposed success and closure of 2019 was nothing of the sort.
If the bill doesn’t pass the DUP’s seven tests and/or doesn’t get through parliament, then it creates an entirely new pickle for the DUP. As it stands, if the protocol isn’t sorted then the assembly/executive won’t be rebooted by the DUP. But if the sovereign parliament of the UK refuses to endorse the bill then the DUP finds itself stuck: rejected by parliament and unable (if it sticks to its manifesto) to participate in devolution. What does it do at that point?
Something else worth mentioning, too. There is a section of unionism/loyalism/Orange Order that wants the Good Friday Agreement and its institutions wrecked, because it believes they represent an even greater risk to the union than the protocol itself. And I mention it because it makes Donaldson’s room for manoeuvre even more restricted if he does find himself in a position of having to decide if, in the event that the protocol bill doesn’t pass and the EU doesn’t agree to significant changes, the DUP will really permit what would, almost certainly, be the final collapse of the assembly.
