British Prime Minister Johnson 'survived the night' but is it now the twilight of his premiership?

Victory in a vote of confidence of his MPs, even by a narrower margin than expected, means that in theory Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson is safe in office for a year. In practice he might not have time to push through any of his plans, including legislation to override the Northern Ireland protocol that he agreed with the EU, writes Political Editor Nick Powell.

“I think it’s an extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result,” claimed Johnson after Conservative MPs voted to keep him in office -for now. A former journalist, however undistinguished, might have been expected to be more sparing with the adjectives.

He was of course spouting the Downing Street ‘line to take’, using up all the alternatives supplied to his ministers so that they didn’t sound too robotic. But no amount of political spin could make a win by 211 votes to 148 ‘decisive’. 41% of his MPs had turned against him, his predecessor Theresa May had found that there was no way back after 37% lost confidence in her.

The former Conservative Foreign Secretary William Hague said the Prime Minister had “survived the night” but “the damage done to his premiership is severe”. He suggested that Boris Johnson should “turn his mind to getting out in a way that spares party and country…agony and uncertainties”.

Johnson shows no sign of doing any such thing, pledging instead to “focus on delivery -and that is exactly what we’re going to do”. In amongst vague talk of ‘levelling up’ the UK’s extremely unequal society and exploiting undefined ‘Brexit opportunities’, there are some specifics.

They range from the absurd, by bringing back pounds and ounces as an alternative to kilos and grammes, to the downright dangerous by threatening to ignore an international treaty that Johnson personally agreed with the EU and overriding the Northern Ireland protocol.

Half the British population has probably forgotten that there are sixteen ounces in a pound -or are too young to have ever known. Too few seem to remember how bad political violence in Northern Ireland used to be, leading the Prime Minister to think that ending the protocol is an excellent way of ramping up a battle with the EU, which he hopes will remobilize the Brexit vote to his advantage.

Whether the process of overriding the protocol is ever completed is by no means certain. The legislation is likely to be delayed in the House of Lords, perhaps by as long as a year. The question is whether the Prime Minister really has that amount of time left.

The Conservative party rule that protects him from another vote of confidence for a year is easily changed - and there’s a long history of ruthlessly disposing of leaders seen as vote-losers. The loss of two by-elections later this month might be enough.

Labour should win one of them. It was notable that the party’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, effectively endorsed Johnson’s claim of a decisive victory. He claimed that “Conservative MPs have made their choice…they have ignored the British public”.

It quite suits Labour to still have a Prime Minister they can call “utterly unfit for the great office he holds” and accuse of heading a government that believes “breaking the law is no impediment to making the law”. That’s not a reference to playing fast and loose with international law and peace in Northern Ireland. Rather it refers to the drinks parties held in Downing Street when such gatherings were banned under COVID restrictions.

In the end it could be that, as so often with political scandals, it’s the cover-up that does the real damage. Johnson is about to face an inquiry into whether he lied to parliament when he denied knowing about any illegal parties. If found guilty, convention dictates that he should resign.

If he ignores convention, as he well might, then he could be suspended from the House of Commons. But by that point he would surely have faced another vote of (no) confidence from his MPs, this time with a truly decisive result - and not one to his liking.

Share this article: