Fibbing may yet bring down Boris Johnson

By Alper Ali Riza

The victory of Helen Morgan over the Conservative candidate Neil Shastri-Hurst in the North Shropshire mid-term election on Friday is a shot across the bows of Boris Johnson and his government but not much to write home about, as I do sometimes about British politics.

It is yet another false dawn for the Liberal Democrats and not necessarily bad news for the Conservatives come the general election.

The truth is that the Liberal Democrats have had many such mid-term triumphs going as far back to the famous victory of Eric Lubbock in Orpington in 1962. Orpington man as he was known lost his seat in the 1970 general election but inherited an earldom in 1971 and, as Lord Avebury, became an indomitable champion of immigrants and refugees and an inveterate human rights campaigner until his death in 2016.

A great guy, but his election in the Orpington by-election did not usher in a Liberal revival even though it too was hailed as a new dawn for the Liberal party.

The best the Liberals achieved electorally after they were displaced by the Labour Party last century was under the leadership of Nick Clegg in 2010 when they won 57 seats. They collaborated in a moderate Conservative-led coalition government until 2015 when they were virtually wiped out in the lower house of parliament. Nick Clegg lost his seat and repaired to California where he became a Vice President with Facebook and the LibDems returned to the doldrums where they remain as the protest dumping ground between elections – they won 11 seats in the 2019 general election and added two seats in by-elections.

An interesting truth about British politics is that whereas traditional working class Labour Party supporters are persuaded by false consciousness to vote Conservative, they are rarely persuaded to vote Liberal Democrat – too politically correct for their taste. By contrast, traditional Conservative voters cannot bring themselves to vote Labour but are prepared to vote Liberal Democrat when they want to register a protest vote. They usually revert to type in general elections.

The reason why the voters of North Shropshire reversed a huge Conservative majority in a seat they have held since 1832, is very simple: they sense there is something rotten in the state of Britain under Boris Johnson.

The last straw was the perception that Christmas parties were being held at Number 10 Downing Street, the British prime minister’s official residence, when Boris Johnson cancelled Christmas for the rest of Britain last year, which the British find intolerably unfair.

Number 10 appears a modest residence compared with the White House or the Elysee Palace but it is deeper and wider behind the black door, than the Georgian town house exterior suggests – the prime minister’s flat is actually above Number 11 next door. So it is possible for Downing Street staffers to party and the prime minister not to know.

To most people, however, it is not credible that his chief spokeswoman and her team were partying in Downing Street and he was not invited – many believe he attended. For his loyal and gullible supporters all this is just tittle tattle, but for those of a skeptical disposition the prime minister not only knew about Christmas parties under his own roof, more crucially, he lied to parliament that he did not know –  a resigning offence under the ministerial code.

My take is that there is a lot of hypocrisy about partying over the lead-up Christmas last year. Lots of people defied the government and partied regardless and, apparently, so did the top civil servant appointed to investigate the matter who stepped down on Friday after being called out.

The rationale behind cancelling Christmas last year was to contain the spread of Covid. The staffers headed by Johnson’s chief spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, were in a work bubble; they were in close proximity all day not unlike like many family bubbles across Britain. So for them it was not quite ‘one rule for us’ and another for hoi polloi.

Banned Christmas parties were those that pierced the veil of protective bubbles. If Downing Street staffers were working in close proximity all day, I am at a loss to understand what difference it would have made if they had a glass or two after work to celebrate Christmas.

What I think got to people, however, was a video of Allegra Stratton and her team mocking social distancing and the cancellation of Christmas parties inflicted on the rest of the country.

The video might yet bring down Boris Johnson. It is an own goal that reminded me of the Nixon tapes that brought him down. US President Richard Nixon had installed a bugging system of all his conversations in the White House. In the end it provided proof positive that he was involved in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the involvement of his closest advisers in the break-in at of the Democratic HQ at the Watergate building and forced him to resign.

The Allegra Stratton video was also an own goal and although it does not prove directly that Boris Johnson knew about Christmas parties, I don’t buy the line that Allegra Stratton did not inform Johnson of the existence of the video before he told parliament there were no Christmas parties – which is why she was thrown to the wolves and resigned in tears. As always, it’s the cover-up stupid!

Johnson got Brexit done and won an eighty-seat majority for the Conservatives but the shine has now faded. He is clearly not a very well organised prime minister, but is he still an electoral asset? That is the question. Margaret Thatcher was well organised and won three elections for the Conservatives, but they booted her out when they thought she became an electoral liability.

The North Shropshire defeat does not prove Boris Johnson is an electoral liability. His strength was not that he got Conservative voters to vote Conservative but that he persuaded staunch working class Labour supporters in the north of England to vote Conservative.

That being his strength, the Conservative win from Labour on a 16 per cent swing in Hartlepool on May 6, 2021 and the populism it represents is far more important and will keep him in power until the next election in 2024 unless, of course, he is forced to resign for fibbing to Parliament.

Alper Ali Riza is a queen’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge