21st November 2021
The Sunday press this weekend details how the current prime minister has lost the confidence of his parliamentary party:
Boris Johnson and the pole-axe zone.https://t.co/xnEGToYRSu
— Andrew Rawnsley (@andrewrawnsley) November 21, 2021
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And this news points to the ultimate check and balance of the United Kingdom constitution.
The ultimate check and balance of the United Kingdom constitution is not the electorate, or the courts, or the legislature, or any independent agency.
Still less is it the free press – which tellingly is the only estate of the realm that this government has not sought to abolish, frustrate or circumvent.
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‘You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.’
Humbert Wolfe, 1930
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Nor is the ultimate check and balance some grand constitutional principle, such as the rule of law, or the supremacy of parliament, or representative democracy.
No – the ultimate check and balance to a prime minister in command of a large parliamentary majority, and thereby with almost total political power, is one of the most ancient of human concepts.
Hubris.
It was hubris that brought down Margaret Thatcher, who thought she was politically invincible she could press on with the community charge (poll tax).
And it was hubris that brought down Tony Blair, who thought that he could do as he wished with foreign policy and Iraq.
Neither Thatcher nor Blair – both of whom won three general elections – were defeated by the electorate.
Nor were either of them brought down by any formal constitutional mechanism, such as impeachment or otherwise.
They were brought down because they got carried away with the almost limitless power they had as prime ministers.
Like some old morality tale, prime ministers obtain near complete power and then get brought down because they are unable to restrain themselves.
And this is what is now happening to Johnson, but in an accelerated version.
At least, if Johnson is brought down, that his nemesis was hubris should appeal to his classicist affectations.
The real worry, of course, is how to check and balance prime ministers who do not get carried away.
We should not have to rely on a politician’s own weaknesses to ensure that abuses and misuses of power are avoided.
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I would say that the poll tax was a contributing factor to the end of Mrs Thatcher, but what did for her was the issue of the erm. She replaced Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe as Ministers over this matter and they brought her down.
Another interesting article. If there is one figure who encapsulates the concept of Hubris, it is Boris Johnson. We can only hope and pray that he too will be ‘brought down’ – and the sooner the better.
However, as far as I recall (and I don’t know what went on behind the scenes), I don’t think Tony Blair can be said to have been brought down in the same way. He was not publicly forced out by a vote of no confidence or leadership contest; he decided when he would leave and voluntarily handed over to Gordon Brown – who then lost the election.
Of course, the Hard Left likes to believe that a handful of them gatecrashing the end of a peaceful mass demonstration against the Poll Tax put an end to the tax and then Margaret Thatcher.
It is a cherished myth to which they still cling, limpet like.
Their throwing of scaffolding poles did make great pictures for the mass media, though, and etch themselves into the minds and collective memory of our Riks of today (see Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain).
However, it was sober citizens, sidling up to their local Tory MP for a quiet word at the 19th hole or in the Association bar of what some now style a Blue Wall constituency who put paid to the Poll Tax (and then Thatcher).
The Poll Tax was deeply unpopular with the Conservative Party’s core vote.
Thatcher had lost her electoral mojo.
Some of those same sober citizens, One Nation Conservatives, Remain supporting Tories and small business people in 2021, the Liberal Democrats say handed them their Orpington 1962 style victory in the recent Chesham and Amersham by election.
Orpington pointed the way to Labour’s narrow victory in the 1964 General Election.
To mangle a David Frost quote, would Dull Alec beat Smart Alec next time out?
The One Nation Conservatives do not like Boris Johnson’s character or lack of it; Remain supporting Tories and small business people do not like his Hard Brexit.
Keir Starmer does not seem to hold much appeal for them, either.
I gather Johnson made no visits to Chesham and Amersham during the by election campaign or, if he did they were very low key.
The losing Tory candidate, like Pitt the Even Younger in the Dunny on the Wold by election, roundly attacked the voters of Chesham and Amersham for not taking the chance to elect him their Member of Parliament.
He had deigned to stand in their seat. What more did they want?
The Tory’s defensive talking points for the media, echoed enthusiastically by Labour and propagated by the Commentariat, were that the Conservative Party lost Chesham and Amersham and it was their seat to lose, because of NIMBYism, particularly the furore around changes to planning legislation and the building of HS2.
Labour suffered one of its worst ever by election results in Chesham and Amersham, if not the worst, with only 622 votes cast for its candidate.
Things can only get better may need to be replaced with the only way is up or keep on running, keep on hiding. A little Birmingham reference, there.
May be it was a bit too early for the Tories to further flesh out the lines to take with our old friend, mid term blues (and in the process embarrass Labour)?
Labour on the ground in Chesham and Amersham put out a token leaflet (Starmer has yet to grasp how far a Labour leader’s writ really runs at election time) and are, I have been, told eyeing up Steve Baker FRSA’s (whatever did he do for that?) Wycombe where he admits he has lost the support of affluent, Remain supporting Tories.
His answer?
To campaign against the cost of tackling Man Made Global Warming.
I think Baker (a latter day Sir Talbot Buxomly?) is trying to reclaim for the Tory Party the title of the Stupid Party.
If Johnson goes then Labour’s poll leads will, odds on, evaporate.
Starmer is at his best when enthusiastically prosecuting something or someone at PMQs.
Neil Kinnock was better at PMQs up against Thatcher than Starmer is cross questioning Johnson, but Kinnock still never won a General Election.
A new competent (looking) Tory leader and Prime Minister, cracking down on sleaze and corruption, surely anything will be seen as an improvement on where we are, today, will most likely shoot Starmer’s fox.
And Labour, still gun shy of any association with Labour’s winning team, will regret not doing more to heed the words of Lord Mandelson, “One thing is clear to me – it’s that Tory sleaze is not going to win the next election for Labour.
It will loosen and crumble a lot of support for the Tories and people will reach the conclusion that they are out for themselves and that they suit themselves and they fill the pockets of their own cronies and supporters, that’s true.
But that doesn’t mean to say that Labour’s just got to sit back and wait for the election to fall into their laps.
That’s not how you win elections.”
Labour’s only hope, for now, seems to lie in the Tories shooting themselves in the head by electing a new leader too closely associated with Johnson to escape the gravitational pull of his battered legacy.
It is surely not for nothing, though, that Michael Gove routinely mimics Macavity and casts off former allies and acquaintances?
“I know thee not, Cummings: fall to thy prayers;
Reply not to me with a fool-born blog post, rewriting history:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement.”
With due apologies to that well known Midlander, William Shakespeare.
You pay to become an FRSA. It’s a bit like becoming a member of the House of Lords.
Or an Oxbridge/TCD MA
While it was Tory MPs who ended Thatcher’s premiership, had there not been demonstrations, unrest and eventually riots about it the Poll Tax would not have been an issue for them. They all supported it until public opinion turned on them.
Hubris has indeed seen the undoing of Thatcher, Blair etc and will be the undoing of Johnson & eventually his brexit crew. However in all cases there is little in this virtual constitution to prevent or even undo the damage they wreak along way & with the current crop the damage shows no sign of abating. Politics in Britain has been broken for many years and if there is to be no written constitution, accountability can only come through a truly, proportionally representative ballot box.
Well said, Peter !
The hubris on the part of an out of control PM needs a nemesis to check them. That nemesis tends to be fear. The fear among their MPs that their hubris will translate into electoral defeat for some or all of them at some point.
A PM can be out of control in terms of say running roughshod over our liberties or being immeasurably cruel to the poorest, weakest and least popular in society. Unfortunately, they may well remain popular with party and enough of the electorate (say 40%) who enjoy such authoritarianism. Then, despite hubris, most MPs will stick with them (and to hell with principles).
In those circumstances, the only check will come from the people when they express sufficient revulsion at the excesses and persuade their MPs that the risk of losing is real.
“At least, if Johnson is brought down, that his nemesis was hubris should appeal to his classicist affectations.”
Priceless!
Quite.
Is this not what medieval fools were for? Of course as BJ plays his own fool, he is sorely missing some contrarian advice & commentary. and getting sorer it seems.
Your point stands though; in business I first show ideas to peers who are invited them to knock them down. Those notions that remain standing are usually altered and always stronger. The lack of peer review in N°10 land is dangerous, despite the blazing example of the ERG who were all aggressive-allergic to any testing of their game plan and now have the country locked into their triumphant-paranoid moonscape.
Great point !
Is it too much to hope Johnson exits the political stage pursued by The Furies?
Indeed and not hard to see why. We don’t really have a free press. We have an independent press free to support its owners politics, which suits a right of centre Government. A Labour Government in similar disarray would be being shredded by the press on a daily basis. The Government is trying to load the dice even more in their favour by placing its favoured candidate as Chair of OFCOM.
The ultimate check is the opinion polls. They drive the MPs who respond when the opportunity arises by ditching the leader.
Consistent low polling for both the PM and his party will lead enough of them to look elsewhere and as Rawnsley says the options at the moment are limited and the internal tribes too diverse. A few more blunders and U turns and the option of Hunt or Gove will begin to look very attractive and once that starts someone will pop out from the woodwork and surprise us all, a John Major figure perhaps.
How relevant is the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975? Isn’t the power of the Crown the nuclear deterrent to step in and protect the people?
It is supposed to protect the people but the Queen did as she was told when Johnson wanted to prorogue Parliament. In that case the protection came from Supreme Court, which I think is a more reliable legal guardian of citizens rights.
The Queen didn’t protect the Australian people’s democratic rights from the high handed actions of the Governor-General either.
The Crown has very little, if any power: their power to dissolve parliament was taken away by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, although they have promised to repeal that act altogether which would mean the power is restored.
I’ve written a few times to Her Majesty, she’s never replied, not even the standard disclaimer which her website promises…
An excellent blog today, thank you.
Optimists like me hope that Johnson will meet his nemesis sooner rather than later, and the Conservatives’ reputation for ruthlessness in getting rid of failing leaders should help. Perhaps the more problematic issue is who he will be replaced by. The choice only seems to be someone marginally better (Hunt or Sunak or Gove) or someone even worse (Raab or Truss?). Anyone significantly better, like Stewart, Grieve or Gauke, has already been driven out.
Our so called constitution is founded on what a friend of mine calls the “Good Chaps” theory of government, but what if the governing party is bereft of Good Chaps?
The thing about Good Chaps is that they can be trusted.
Our constitution can rely on that trust because abuse of that trust is a criminal offence under Common Law.
We are forever hearing that our constitution is broken, but how many of those we hear it from have tried reporting this crime to their local police?
I’ll wager less than 1%, but I was pleased to find amongst the correspondence between the police and the PCC, a note saying that this was “Not the first example of this kind of thing.”
Interesting article David. However, the missing ingredient is the voters of Uxbridge. In 2019, the Prime Minister had a majority of 7210 over his nearest (labour) rival. A switch by 3610 voters to the second most popular candidate would end his premiership even if the Conservatives won the next election.
Such a move would start an interesting ‘bun fight’ for the top job unless a ‘stalking horse’ appears between now and then
Is this a roundabout way of saying that the biggest check on a Conservative PM’s power is the 1922 committee?