The end of Boris Johnson
...is probably not nigh
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero,” said Tyler Durden, the sociopathic antagonist of Fight Club.
Usually one grows out of quoting from Chuck Palahniuk’s tale of misanthropy by the age of 15. But one should not let self-conscious edginess distract from an accurate observation – least of all if you are in the pseudo-prediction game of Westminster punditry.
Earlier this week the Byline Times’ Adam Bienkov tweeted that, “Boris Johnson is addicted to lying but the truth is finally starting to catch up with him.” Apparently “recent U-turns are starting to endanger his position” and “Tory MPs say they are rapidly losing faith in him.”
There have been other reports that backbench Tories have submitted letters of no confidence to the party’s chair. With enough a leadership election follows.
Variations on this story both have been run for as long as Boris Johnson has been in politics. But so far whenever the truth of his lying, shagging or general malpractice catches up on him, nothing much seems to happen.
See the Jennifer Arcuri affair, Dominic Cummings repeatedly calling him an out-of-control trolley, or the time Johnson vaguely agreed to give his friend a journalist’s address so the latter could be beaten up. Even in the worst cases, Johnson is sacked and then returns a few months later, like a recurring hemorrhoid.
Yet this record does not deter his critics from running stories claiming that this time really is it. “Johnson is commencing his descent,” wrote the former Conservative MP Matthew Parris earlier this month. “It may prove fast or slow, and the time he has left may be years or only months; but it’s now only a matter of time.”
This is a classic non-prediction prediction. Yes, Boris Johnson has only years left to serve as prime minister. Of the post-war premiers only Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have managed a decade, and only Sir Robert Walpole made it to 20 years, back in the 18th century. The time limit is inherent in the job.
It is equally obvious to note that Johnson’s approval is waning. While prime ministers’ ratings rise and fall, the broad trajectory is always downwards. “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure,” as the Tory MP Enoch Powell correctly observed.
So the interesting question is not the decline, nor the inevitable end, but how much time he has to go. And at 855 days (2 years and 4 months) in office at time of writing, one shouldn’t be hasty to suggest it’ll be soon; the post-war average for prime ministers is 2066 days, or almost 5 years and 8 months.
Were Johnson to leave office today, he’d only have outlasted two post-war prime ministers: Anthony Eden and Alec Douglas-Home. Ahead of him would be such flubs as Theresa May and Gordon Brown, who faced trickier parliamentary circumstances.
Back in May 2020 I noted that in a third of potential cases, sitting prime ministers leave office without fighting the next general election. Should a bookie say there’s only 25% chance of Johnson stepping down before the next election, I’d take the bet, because general trends are a better starting point to prediction than the details.
And in the meantime, ignore the noise. Little of what captures enthusiasts’ attention on a given week is noticed by the wider public, and less of that is remembered by anyone a month later – however much it excites a critical faction.
One thing I’m bad at predicting is when this newsletter will next come out. So like a British train franchise, regular service is suspended until further notice.