19th June 2023
In December 2019, Boris Johnson had the greatest prize that our constitutional arrangements could bestow.
He had led his party to a substantial majority at a general election; his party had the mandate for its proposals in its manifesto; he had the command of his cabinet and his party; and he had even stripped out of his parliamentary party many more moderate Tories.
The opposition was in disarray, and the official opposition had had one of its worst election results in its history.
Few, if any, prime ministers have even been in such a strong position.
He had the prospect of at least one parliamentary term, perhaps more.
Yet now, less than one parliamentary term later, Johnson is not only out of government, he is out of parliament.
There is no comparable downfall in our parliamentary and political history.
Perhaps this story can be understood in purely personal terms: that Johnson was the author of his own downfall.
But.
Just as every politician gains power in a particular constitutional context, every politician who loses power also does so in a particular context.
Had some things been different, had certain events and processes take another course, Johnson could well still be prime minister.
Johnson may well have willed himself into power, but he certainly did not intend to lose power.
A sequence of events meant that it became outside of his control as to whether he could continue to be prime minister, and a further sequence of events meant that it became outside of his control as to whether he would “beat” the privileges committee.
The constitution of the United Kingdom regurgitated Johnson from our body politic and spat him out.
(And the the constitution of the United Kingdom then also regurgitated Elizabeth Truss from our body politic and spat that prime minister out too, though not as far.)
Had our constitutional arrangements been more rigid – more fixed, perhaps codified – it may well be that it could have been harder to get rid of Boris Johnson from government and then from parliament.
For, to repeat, after the last general election, Boris Johnson had the very greatest prize that our constitutional arrangements could bestow, and it is difficult to see how that prize could have ever been formally wrestled away from him by any codified procedure.
Our constitutional arrangements certainly could be a lot better in so many ways – but on the specific question of the ejection of Johnson: could our constitutional arrangements actually have been better?
And if that question seems to you to have a complacent premise, there is then the far more worrying, far less complacent question: what does it say about our constitutional arrangements that such a figure was ever able to get the greatest prize our constitutional arrangements could bestow in the first place?
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Excellent post. At the end, you ask “what does it say about our constitutional arrangements that such a figure was ever able to get the greatest prize our constitutional arrangements could bestow in the first place?” I answer as follows: it says nothing, because the idea that it is possible to keep bad leaders and bad policies out of power by rules that prejudge the issue is false. Any attempt to do so will necessarily be conditioned on the knowledge existing at the time, which will be in error to an unknown degree, at that time. What is required is the smoothest way to remove from power bad leaders and bad policies, when it becomes clear to enough people that they are indeed bad.
But there were plenty of indications Johnson wasn’t fit to hold public office before he became MP, weren’t there? The debacles, poor stewardship of public money and “helpfulness” towards “friends” were all evident in the shenanigans over the garden bridge, “bendy buses”. rule-bending over inclusion of his “IT trainer”, etc.
So why weren’t those failings enough (or sufficiently quickly acted on) to block Johnson from being selected by his party as MP, minister and then PM?
The serious personality flaws of Boris Johnson were well known for many years before he became prime minister. They were not hidden away – they were part of that confected clownish character called “Boris”. He also has a number of positive aspects – including charm, and a way with words and ability to communicate directly – and by and large his lazy, venal, profligate, reflexively disingenuous personality did not seem to harm his period as mayor of London. He was not so lucky as prime minister – perhaps because there was less space to hide behind and take the credit for the successes of his more competent juniors (perhaps because the juniors were not as competent).
His period of premiership began when he was judged by Conservative MPs and party members to be an electoral asset – correctly as it turned out in 2019. He got Brexit done. And his power ended when it became clear he had become an electoral liability.
I would contend that it was not the British constitution that spat Johnson out (nor May or Truss) but rather the Conservative party.
The good chap theory of government has been tested to destruction by Thatcher, Blair, and Johnson. The current Priveleges Committee is a sticking plaster – shown by the failure of the Tory front bench to support it.
So what replaces it?
We do, I think, need a comprehensive review of how all the elements of power work in the current system. So does decentralisation help? Does PR? Does a reframing of the House of Lords? Does the replacement of the Speaker with something more useful than a chocolate teapot help? Does a secret vote in the Commons help? Does a formal standards system with investigative powers help? Does getting rid of all the spads help?
I agree that a constitution wouldn’t help, on the basis that MP’s can’t manage even the most simple thing like their expenses. So expecting them to deal with something as intellectually demanding as that would be a fiasco.
Having had several recent encounters with corporate customer support, and local authority care portals I can report that the chocolate teapots have escaped parliament and are running amok.
You ask whether PR would help. I say unequivocally “no”. It would lead politicians to owe even more loyalty to their party, and less to real voters (which they currently owe to voters in their constituency). The outcome of failed policies would be that each party in a coalition could blame the others in that coalition. We are much better with FPTP. After each GE, the losing party needs to work out a programme that will convince enough of the electorate to win on FPTP, and then if they fail to use their majority in the HoC wisely they get booted out at the next GE.
That depends on the form of PR. PR is a property of an electoral system which describes its result – it is not an electoral system itself. A closed-list PR system greatly strengthens the powers of political parties at the expense of the electorate, so that would indeed make things worse. STV with multi-member constituencies greatly weakens the power of parties, to the advantage of the electorate, so would greatly help.
What could make a significant difference would be a change to something like STV with multi-member constituencies: if candidates had to compete not only against the other parties, but also a few others from the same party, you wouldn’t have blind party loyalty meaning that the most awful people are guaranteed a seat as soon as the selection committee gives them the nod.
Voters are currently way too fixated on party (and party leader) when choosing their representative.
Q: “on the specific question of the ejection of Johnson: could our constitutional arrangements actually have been better?”
A: “Without the payroll vote all but guaranteeing any government a big block of votes Parliament’s control over the government would be a lot more effective. That is, the process of Boris Johnson being removed from No. 10 started with Johnson having a built-in advantage of about 100 votes, including his own. It would have been better if it hadn’t.”
Except that his downfall started with a revolt in the payroll vote, many of whom refused to work for him further.
Answer to your last question is easy: 13+ million idiots!
The answer to this relatively simple and timeworn. You don’t focus on the type of person who can gain power under your constitutional arrangements, you work on limiting the damage they can wield once they get there. Assume the next 20 PMs will be more Boris Johnsons and work backwards from there.
The problem is the premise of the question. OUR CONSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS SHOULD NOT BESTOW SUCH PRIZES ON ANYONE.
The 225 Tory MPs who abstained not thinking a PM repeatedly lying to the Commons was an important issue to vote on and that only six Johnsonistas in the end voted against the Report (among whom JRM was not of their number), is not exactly an encouraging reflection on the state of British parliamentary democracy.
Brilliant
To think, that in my first year studying law, I was actually marked down by my tutor for an essay identifying the weaknesses in our constitutional arrangements which would allow the appointment of a dishonest, populist prime minister with a formidable majority who would then be able to wreak whatever havoc on Parliament (s)he chose, while failing to deliver any of the promises which secured their election & appointment. The very opposite of a lame duck government if you will, with an unhealthy dose of cronyism, dishonesty, abuse of privilege and blatant disregard/disrespect for all but themself.
The main crux of the essay, among others was that we the public lack the means to promptly evict a rogue PM before they can cause too much damage. I still maintain this position, which has been strengthened by the malevolent & vengeful farce that is Johnson, the embodiment of all that I cautioned against.
I wonder sometimes if my tutor ever regrets arguing that such a situation could never happen, having subsequently lived exactly that scenario and witnessed the loss of almost a quarter million lives (so far) to just one of the despicable rogue’s many areas of inadequacy & incompetence.
Ask, then report back to us.
Johnson slipped in on a single divisive issue, which he convinced some voters he could solve while, as a bonus for his party, slaying the Ukip dragon. That this populist would become a demagogue was clear enough, but many folk just wanted the issue solved and then to go away (!). So analyse who voted him in- the man on the Clapham Rovers terraces? Many folk are not news & politics fans and so vote for what feels right on the day, without analysing pages of conflicting news reports, never mind polls or economics stats.
There may not be such a single issue election again for a while, but now is the time to learn lessons and reflect on how to filter demagogues out of the running next time.
But I also talked to, and read about, quite a number of people, Jewish and otherwise, who normally voted Labour but who reluctantly voted Tory in 2019 because they were so appalled by Corbyn. (They all rejected voting LibDem as being a wasted vote, although I did.)
Our system remains remarkably efficient at ejecting leaders who have outlived their usefulness.
Some have speculated that had he been elected Corbyn would have been ousted even more quickly, which is probably a reassuring thought if you’re not a Corbynite.
Quote – ‘what does it say about our constitutional arrangements that such a figure was ever able to get the greatest prize our constitutional arrangements could bestow in the first place?’
I think that the problem lies in (1) candidate selection, (2) media power, (3) voter apathy – (it won’t change no matter who I vote for).
Perhaps if those matters were addressed a lot of problems would be avoided. Altering constitutional arrangements is a popular sport in some quarters but it really does come down to getting better candidates to begin with.
Quite. When was the last time the conservatives elected a leader whom you could (at that time) be bothered to have a drink with.
Even if he were paying.
“he”?
3 of the last 7 Tory PMs would have another pronoun…
Both the ingestion and expulsion of Johnson and Truss were driven by the rules of the Tory party, relying on its parliamentary and local memberships to make judgements that determined the outcome for our whole nation. This process doesn’t show any evidence of being good for anyone else, much less a good solution for the long term health of the UK. In other words, the process was poor, but we got lucky as the elected members of the party threw out both of them, but only after they had done great harm.
Could one make a plausible case that the rise of Johnson is a direct result of the decline of the authority of the monarchy? Interwar practice, which I think extended into the late queen’s reign, was to take soundings about the person most suitable to being prime minister. That was, of course, usually the leader of the largest party in the commons who would be elected by the party’s MPs whereas now the prime minister is the person that the party’s members in the country elect as party leader, and the monarch accepts as ‘his’ prime minister without demur.
This is several practical consequences including a hiatus whilst hustings and canvassing of the party outside Westminster takes place. But it also means that the opinion of the parliamentary party can be disregarded. MPs who have to work with a leader and already have experience of working with him/her are of little consequence compared to the small groups of party activists who pay a subscription to the party. I am not sure that many people who encountered Johnson on his rise will be too surprised about his fall: his lack of veracity is well-documented. The same probably applies to Corbyn: not leader material, not PM material. Nice man though who pursued lost causes throughout his political life. The men in suits would have blocked Johnson as a prime minister: already too damaged, his faults too well known.
And so one form of transparency – election by party members – throws up an unsuspected problem and, as we saw last year, we have a situation in which the party membership creates and the parliamentary party destroys leaders, perhaps to the annoyance of the former. And then after the madness of last autumn, the PM is the man who lost a leadership election.
This may be seen as evidence of the flexibility of the British constitution and its ability to adapt. It may also be worth seeing it as a dimension of the continued decline of the monarchy as a constitutional force and the evolution of a self-regulating ‘democratic’ system.
Remarkable but also, perhaps, inevitable. When your game is deception and you treat people so badly, life eventually catches up. The list is long.
Is it not the case that one of the fundamental problems with this country (and perhaps more specifically England) is the lack of a shared set of values? Greed is shared by many and enjoyed by a few, but otherwise we are somewhat akin to a sailless, rudderless ship of fools. It’s not so much the constitutional arrangements per se, but rather an anthropological moment of emptiness.
Back in 2016 it was widely believed that Johnson’s faults were well known. Was it our constitution which nevertheless allowed him to cost the country so much over seven years?
That is the very point of the last part of my post.
“There is no comparable downfall in our parliamentary and political history.”
– James VII/II – ?
If we are looking at kings, then yes him – and, more recently, Edward VIII.
But I don’t think the loss of a sovereign is, to echo the word I used, “comparable”.
unlike Edward, James overtly wielded the power of the executive, as a PM does today.
The root failure was in the electoral regulation. The Brexit campaign was demonstrably dishonest, and Vote Leave broke the law. Social media advertising was totally unregulated, and was exploited by Vote Leave with utter lies, including a ‘fake’ Maastricht Treaty. The referendum was approved as advisory, but the Government announced it would honour the outcome in Parliament. The Electoral Commission fined Vote leave, but did not declare the referendum invalid because of the initial ‘advisory’ claim. It subsequently, and pointlessly acknowledged that this was wrong. Foreign money and unscrupulous actors hijacked the UK politic, and Johnson rode into power on the back of this hostile movement.
“Had our constitutional arrangements been more rigid – more fixed, perhaps codified – it may well be that it could have been harder to get rid of Boris Johnson from government and then from parliament.”
I’m curious about this point. I recall previous blogs on matters constitutional, in particular pertaining to a codified constitution, that what matters isn’t that a constitution is codified but, rather, what its contents are. Surely, if a constitution and its aligned procedures are drawn up carefully (especially as regards behaviour in public office), what difference should it being codified or not make?
While flexibility is always a good thing (cannot that also be built in – after all, legislation can grant a degree of discretion to the courts, with sentencing guidelines perhaps being a good example?), the experience of the last few years of the British version of it has unequivocally demonstrated the ‘good chap’ is far more damaging to a democracy.
I know you’ve written on this before, as I mentioned, but I’d love a blog wholly dedicated to the intrincasies and complexities of a ‘new’ constitution for Britain, taking into account what you said above and also related matters such as how PR would play into this. Maybe too much for one blog, but a series?! If only to put back the “boring” into matters constitutional.
The brilliant book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” by Acemoglu and Robinson, has lessons for us here. The book reminds us it is rational for politicians to try to accumulate power to themselves, and preserve themselves in power. It is unsurprising that the winners of power battles are often the ruthless and unscrupulous. So there is a natural process for power to concentrate, as those with most resources at their command are best able to exercise and preserve their power.
But the countries that have escaped widespread poverty in the last 3 centuries or so, have the common factor that there are multiple sources of and checks on power in the economy, and limitation of the power of vested interests. A major factor in Britain’s early rise was the limitation of the power of kings, so industrial wealth could arise without them being able to squash these growing sources of oppositional power, in contract to what happened in Russia and China, among others.
More recently Britain has been falling behind our continental neighbours, as they have more effectively curtailed the power of elites and vested interests, and distributed power more widely.
The recent process in Britain has been in the opposite direction, as we have fallen victim to Westminster’s right-sizism: Westminster has consistently found that the nation is just the right size for most effective administration. So it has concentrated power and control of resource to itself, while limiting the influence of both local authorities and supra-national bodies.
It is that concentration of power in Westminster that provides greater attraction to the ruthless and unscrupulous. If being prime minister had reduced power, and often usefully exercisable only in cooperation with other authorities, prospective World Kings would look elsewhere for roles that better supplied the needs of their narcissistic megalomania.
So the best defence against Johnsonism is thus the same kind of greater distribution of power, and limitation of the power of elites and vested interests, that is needed for growth in national wealth and poverty reduction.
Unfortunately those who have power are reluctant to redistribute it. It is often vicious accident of history – like the Glorious Revolution in Britain that substantially kicked this process off, and great wars that impoverished elites – that has resulted in this persistent distribution of power. I have no great hope of useful developments in the near term, for Westminster is unlikely to cooperate in limiting its power, nor that of the politicians’ backers, who provide funding in return for preservation of their vested interests.