LONDON – Seemingly safe from his job despite new revelations of lockdown celebrations in Downing Street, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has moved on Thursday to face another major threat to his political future: the worst pressure on British incomes in a generation.
With policies championed by the opposition Labor Party, the government promised a new and more generous package of aid worth billions of pounds to help all British households, but especially those struggling most to meet skyrocketing gas and gas bills. to pay electricity.
The scale of the intervention underlined the headwinds Mr Johnson continues to face as his Conservative Party lag in the polls, inflation climbs to double digits and the UK economy teeters on the brink of recession.
Critics accused Mr Johnson of rushing his new announcement to divert attention from the ‘Partygate’ scandal that had threatened to end his career for months.
That embarrassing saga reached its climax on Wednesday with the release of a highly anticipated internal report, complete with photos and chock-full of embarrassing details of alcohol-based karaoke parties.
On Thursday, Downing Street apologized for misleading journalists by denying that parties had taken place, and three other conservative lawmakers called on Mr Johnson to stop. In a statement, one of the lawmakers, David Simmonds, said that “while the government and our policies enjoy the public’s trust, the Prime Minister does not”.
His colleague John Baron said Mr Johnson’s denial that he misled Parliament about what he knew about the Downing Street parties was “just not credible”, and Stephen Hammond, another Conservative lawmaker, released a statement saying : “I’ve consistently said all along I can’t and won’t defend the indefensible.”
While the number of lawmakers now publicly demanding Mr Johnson’s resignation is about 20, a total of 54 would have to write letters to a senior colleague to trigger a no-confidence vote against Mr Johnson.
And while many Conservative lawmakers on Wednesday seemed reluctant to back Johnson publicly in parliament over the ‘Partygate’ scandal, they don’t seem to want to fire him so far either.
“Ultimately, the number of MPs who are unwilling to defend him is irrelevant, what matters is the number who want to convict him – and there just aren’t enough,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary- University of London.
Part of their caution is the lack of an obvious successor, especially given that the popularity of a leading contender, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Treasury, has waned in recent months following an outcry over his tax regimes. woman.
But Mr. Johnson has also created a political brand that is difficult to replicate.
In the 2019 general election, he won many voters in the ‘red wall’ areas of the north and center of England – regions that had traditionally supported Labor – with his populist pro-Brexit campaigns.
In government, Mr Johnson has talked loudly about divisive issues such as immigration, for example, outlining plans to send asylum seekers, including those arriving on small boats from France, to Rwanda to process their claims. But he also increased government spending and taxes against the ideological line of the Conservative Party, which prides itself on fiscal discipline.
If lawmakers are looking to maintain that mix of policies and maintain the coalition of voters they gathered in the 2019 general election, their options are limited. “It’s hard to see who else could be about it other than Boris Johnson,” Professor Bale said.
Still, that may not be enough to protect the prime minister from the next election, which should be held by the end of 2024, but could take place next year.
The “Partygate” saga is not over yet as a committee of lawmakers is investigating whether Mr Johnson deliberately misled Parliament about what he knew about breaking down the lockdown rallies in Downing Street. Lying to the House of Commons is considered a dismissal issue in Britain.
The news of the Downing Street parties enraged many Britons who followed rules that sometimes prevented them from visiting dying relatives, and it has taken a heavy toll on Mr Johnson’s personal assessments, especially those who put their trust in him. follow.
As Britons feel the effects of higher inflation and rising interest rates, Conservatives are following Labor in opinion polls and lost about 500 seats in local councils in local elections earlier this month.
Thursday’s cost-of-living announcement was intended to reclaim some of that aid, but also represents a turnaround by the government as it raises money through a windfall on energy companies’ profits.
That policy was rejected by ministers for months and while Mr Sunak’s plan is called by another name – “a temporary targeted tax on energy profits” – it differed only in detail from Labor proposals that Conservative lawmakers were recently forced to vote against.
Recognizing the problems ahead, Mr Sunak said there is “a collective responsibility to help those who pay the highest price for the high inflation we face.”
But next month, things could get worse for the government as elections are held in two parts of the country where conservative lawmakers have been forced to step down in disgrace. Labor hopes to win in Wakefield, a seat in the north of England where Imran Ahmad Khan was elected to the Conservatives in 2019. He has since been convicted of assaulting a teenage boy.
The Conservatives have a much larger majority in the other area, Tiverton and Honiton in southern England, where their legislator, Neil Parish, resigned after admitting to watching pornography in parliament. Here the centrist Liberal Democrats are well placed to make a profit.
If this election, which goes against the Conservatives and Labour, consolidates the polls’ lead, Mr Johnson lawmakers could calculate that their own prospects for reelection are bleak. And if defeat threatens the next election, more people will want to roll the dice and remove their scandal-prone leader.
“The only statistic that really counts,” said Professor Bale, “is the conservative poll.”
