Boris johnson is not up to the job | thearticle

Only in office does the mettle of a prime minister become truly known. Boris Johnson entered Downing Street principally because to his party he embodied the will to implement Brexit, and to

the public he faced a Labour leader of record-breaking unpopularity and awesome incompetence. Neither factor testified to his own suitability for the highest office of state, while the

wholly unforeseen coronavirus crisis has swiftly demonstrated his weaknesses. Like his two immediate predecessors, Johnson is likely to leave office unsung and unlamented, defeated by a

weight of events beyond his ability to substantially affect let alone control. Scrutinising the record of the most consequential of postwar prime ministers reveals no consistent pattern of

personality or promise. Clement Attlee was an unexpected and uncharismatic prime minister whose colleagues sought to depose him even in the wake of an electoral landslide. Yet the

architecture of Britain’s welfare state and security alliances was radically changed by his government. Margaret Thatcher struggled as leader of the opposition and in the early years of her

premiership, yet emerged as a commanding figure owing to her leadership in the just and necessary campaign to defeat Argentine aggression in the South Atlantic. Tony Blair faced a fractious

Tory government but the scale of his landslide victory in 1997 was unprecedented in Labour history, as were his subsequent two election wins. When he left office, he may not have been a

popular figure but contemporary polling indicates he was a respected one. None of the five Tory leaders he faced appeared in any way a plausible contender for office against him. Blair’s

successor, Gordon Brown, lacked the same ease in high office; any politically informed journalist could have forecast, and many did, that his volatile temperament would be a poor fit for

cabinet government. Yet in leaving office, he had real policy achievements in managing the financial crisis. Rescuing the banking system, taking public stakes in big institutions, and

helping coordinate a huge monetary and fiscal stimulus across the advanced industrial economies was the right course, without which a reprise of the Great Depression would have been

probable. David Cameron and Theresa May are not even in Brown’s league, let alone in the top tier. Cameron bequeathed a legacy of pure failure, as abject as Anthony Eden’s but far more

consequential. The Suez invasion was a national humiliation that ruptured Britain’s relations with its most important ally. The Brexit referendum was entirely unnecessary, called to bind up

divisions within the Conservative Party, and ended up rupturing Britain’s relations with all its allies simultaneously. Mrs May, apparently a safe and experienced candidate, showed herself

unable to manage relations with party or parliament, let alone with European leaders. The strains of office were too much for a wooden and pedestrian prime minister who threw away a

parliamentary majority and singlehandedly alighted on a maximalist version of Brexit — leaving the single market and the customs union — for which she had no popular mandate and which is

bound to constrain Britain’s economic prospects for many years to come. Johnson owes his position to a belief within his party that he is ideologically committed to Brexit and determined on

making it happen. There are no grounds for believing that he has any real idea what trade-offs are necessary in Brexit negotiations to limit the self-harm of the operation. He managed a

thumping election victory for the single overwhelming reason of Jeremy Corbyn. All the polling evidence suggests that voters saw in Corbyn a figure who had no idea about the mechanics of

government or the details of policy, and was indulgent of anti-Semitism and indifferent to Britain’s security. It’s worth viewing again Andrew Neil’s interview with Corbyn during the

election campaign. It was a disaster for Corbyn on many grounds but none more so than his ignorance of the economy. While urging an ambitious programme of increased public spending, Corbyn

showed he didn’t understand that governments borrow by gilt issuance. It was such a disgraceful performance, indeed, that it allowed Johnson to get away with declining to go on the programme

himself. Whatever the damage to Johnson, it could not be greater than the exposure of Corbyn’s unfitness for office. Hence we are where we are, five months later. Even when news of a novel

virus from China broke in January, Johnson spent much of the next month campaigning (as opposed to doing anything) on Brexit and flooding in the north of England. As European governments

acknowledged the scale of the public-health crisis, Britain lagged in implementing a necessary lockdown. Even after the COBRA meeting on 12 March, Johnson showed no sense of urgency. It was,

rather, a message of resigned acceptance that “families are going to lose loved ones before their time”. There was no question of shutting down large social or sporting gatherings. The

prime minister did not even urge the elderly, who were most at risk, to self-isolate at home. The notion that the government considered a callous strategy of allowing the vulnerable to die

while the rest of the populace developed “herd immunity” is a caricature. The aim of the health authorities was always to devise a strategy whereby those most at risk were able to get

medical support. But the function of government is to lead, and this government allowed trust in the public authorities to erode. Only on 23 March did Johnson announce that people should

stay at home, with necessary exceptions, and that public gatherings (save only funerals) would be prohibited. It is not a competition, but Britain fares badly in coping with Covid-19 in

comparison with other advanced industrial economies. It did not have enough beds, intensive care units, ventilators or testing kits. Care homes are now warning that in parts of the country

the system is in a state of collapse. In a crisis like this, a country needs leadership and a sense of direction. It has a prime minister whose act of making it up as he goes along is not an

act at all but a reliable depiction of what he’s like. Faced for the first time with a Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who is on top of issues and willing to ask probing questions, Johnson

blusters. He is not up to the job and it shows, but the damage is done.