I don’t think there are many people, even amongst his supporters, who would argue that the predictions of a new dignified Donald Trump have come to pass. He continues to openly lie. He continues to say whatever he thinks is in his best interest today. He has increased his use of openly racist campaign tactics whenever he thinks there are votes to be won. He has cancelled every green scheme he can find in the middle of one of the biggest climate disasters the mid-West has ever experienced, record fire deaths in California and increasingly fierce hurricane seasons. He boasts every bit as strongly as he bullies. Even the British PM who welcomed him to a fabulous state visit, with all the trimmings of vote winning publicity shots, got openly slagged off a couple of weeks later. His treatment of her and of the then British Ambassador proved every word that the Ambassador privately wrote to be true. If he has changed then it is to get worse not better.
It is, of course, not impossible for people to learn adapt and improve when they become leaders. Occasionally people blossom in the role. Yet when they have deep rooted personality problems all that happens when you give a person added authority is that those flaws get worse and get more exposed.
All of which leads to the obvious question as to whether Boris Johnson is about to grow into his new role and prove to be the brilliant new Prime Minister that the country needs at this time of crisis. Or whether we’ve just ended up being led by a Bozo with such dreadful character flaws that he is more likely to flounder around in confusion, embarrass the whole country and then crash and burn.
It won’t be any great surprise to discover that I am very much in the camp of those who think we are about to get the worst Prime Minister since before the Second World War. Despite strong competition for the title.
There are two prime reasons why I think this. The first is an unavoidable policy problem that he has foisted on himself in order to win power. He has promised the country that he will renegotiate the deal with the EU before October. The other members of the EU have promised that there won’t be any renegotiation. The only way around that is to add to the previously negotiated deal some extra agreements which clarify areas that were previously woolly in ways that can be sold to the British Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers. Achieving that is not impossible. Achieving that before the October deadline is.
That takes us to his linked promise that if he can’t negotiate a better deal in time then he will simply exit without a deal. This is a lot easier for him to do than many people realise. The EU has said that if nothing happens, we leave without a deal. All Prime Minister Johnson has to do is nothing at all. It doesn’t matter how many resolutions the British Parliament passes forbidding no deal if we haven’t done something different before the deadline then we leave. The only ways out of the situation are to revoke article 50, to call an election or to call a second referendum. Those are the only circumstances in which the EU would yet again extend a deadline when 6 months has been frittered away on a change of leader of the same party that agreed the last deal.
That leaves Boris Johnson facing down a desperately short timescale until he runs into the utter impractability of delivering on his promises. At the moment the opinion polls show that around 30% of the country are gung ho for crashing out without a deal and are convinced it will make Britain great again. It will be fascinating to see how much of that enthusiasm survives project reality. I have long argued that the day after we left under any negotiated deal would be unspectacular and that many will wonder what all the fuss was about and that it would only be later that the pain struck home. That is not the situation with a no deal Brexit. There the pain begins on day one and it is a gift that keeps on giving. It begins with queues at ports, bankrupt farmers, huge damage to manufacturing industry and problems over supplies of important products like medicines. It then just keeps getting worse as we are rapidly driven into the hands of the trade deal with the US and the vassal state status that is increasingly obviously the real intent of the leaders of Brexit.
Yet incredibly that isn’t the worst of the two problems Johnson faces. His bigger problem is his own personal style. He doesn’t have the patience to go into policy detail or the care with words to explain things to others with the necessary discipline of a national leader. That is why he condemned a British woman to spend 3 years in jail by using words that told the Iranians that he thought she was a spy. He doesn’t have the balanced good temper in a crisis to handle events that unexpectedly come his way and mess up his plans. That is why he was recorded by neighbours having such a violent row with his latest and youngest girlfriend as she shouted at him that he had no concern for others. He is expected to be the first British PM to go through a divorce at the same time as taking up the reigns of office. He is incapable of quick thinking on his feet and of answering difficult questions which is why he was regularly subjected to ridicule on Have I Got News for You. A nice smile and a bit of bluster may be quite useful tools if you want to win the votes of 50% of the membership of the Conservative Party. They are not much use if you have to deal with several national crises at the same time as your personal life is in turmoil.
So Johnson has to deal with the twin evils of bad policy commitments and a flawed personality. At the same time as battling with very difficult Parliamentary arithmetic. With every by-election his ability to conjure up a majority comes under fresh pressure. He commences by being utterly in hock to the DUP who will want fresh bribes and additional commitments in return for the votes of MPs that were elected by a couple of hundreds thousands fewer voters than the Green Party achieved. Even with their backing if he loses this week’s by election then he only needs two defectors and the Queen is faced with the impossible dilemma of deciding whether he can command a majority in the House and has the right to be PM at all. Given the number of Conservative MPs who hate him to the core and think he is leading us to disaster the odds on a national coalition government must be almost as high as the odds of Boris Johnson seeing out the next 3 years as PM.
We can expect calls this week to get behind him and give him a chance to govern. You only deserve that sort of chance if you have won a popular election or are following policies that were put to the electorate and supported by them. The majority of the UK people voted to leave in a referendum where they were promised it would all be quick, easy and painless and they’d get lots of lovely new money for the NHS. There is no mandate for a bad deal or a no deal crash out. Slightly more people voted Conservative than anything else at the last election but there was no suggestion that the party would be leading the country into a hard and painful Brexit without any clear thought about how to deal with the mess. There is no mandate for shambolic chaos created by a popular charlatan.
So my view is that Johnson has no right to lead the country into this mess. He has no ability to lead in difficult times. He has the wrong policies. The wrong personality. Together with some very dodgy friends.
Personally, I refuse to describe him as the leader of my country. He is the leader of a narrow faction of one party. And a very poor one at that. We need a General Election and a strong progressive alliance to get back to the tolerant practical policies that this country used to be renowned for. We don’t need to copy Ukraine and have our country led by a comedian.