Three years ago, when Boris Johnson contemplated running for the Conservative leadership, many Tory MPs made it clear they did not think him suitable to serve as prime minister and he withdrew. Mr Johnson’s character has not changed since then, but his colleagues have lowered their standards of what the country deserves.
The prospect of employment in Mr Johnson’s cabinet helped some make the journey from sceptic to cheerleader. Michael Gove once said that Mr Johnson “cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.” Now Mr Gove is an obedient player in that team, at the cabinet office. Others who recently disagreed with Mr Johnson on fundamentals of Brexit – Amber Rudd and Matt Hancock, for example – are mysteriously reconciled to rupture without a deal on 31 October. The new prime minister restated his readiness to pursue that course from the steps of Downing Street and willingness to follow him over the cliff is a condition of working in his government. That proviso cost him any prospect of support from some more resolute Tories, such as Philip Hammond, who resigned before he could be sacked. Mr Johnson disposed en masse of ministers who had not sworn fealty well in advance.
The new chancellor, Sajid Javid, is a survivor from Theresa May’s cabinet who will soon discover why his predecessor at the Treasury felt unable to serve Mr Johnson. Hardline Brexiteers caricatured Mr Hammond as a fanatical remainer. In truth, he is an old-fashioned Tory eurosceptic but also a realist who applied lessons learned at the top of government to the challenges of leaving the EU.
The same might yet prove to be true for Mr Johnson, but the omens are not good. In his speech, he promised to take responsibility – a curious emphasis, suggesting sensitivity to the charge that he has evaded doing exactly that since advertising Brexit on false premises in 2016. But doorstep declarations of bold intent are the easiest part of the job. The prime minister will soon discover that the levers of power he has coveted have limited purchase in domestic and international arenas. He has no stable majority in parliament and will need to cultivate continental alliances to amplify Britain’s global voice. Downing Street provides unique insight into the facts regarding the UK’s place in the world, which is why no one who has done the top job backed the leave campaign.
Even if Mr Johnson is about to receive a crash course in strategic reality, he is reliant on a political base that refuses to hear it. He was elected by Tory members who believe his assertions that the hardest imaginable Brexit can be delivered by application of optimistic will alone. He has appointed cabinet ministers whose hostility to the EU overrides any capacity for rational evaluation of risk. The new foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is a pugnacious anti-Brussels ideologue, who succeeded only in making negotiations harder as Mrs May’s Brexit secretary. The new home secretary, Priti Patel, is a fanatical rightwinger, until recently a declared supporter of capital punishment. Her last stint in cabinet ended in dismissal for breach of the ministerial code. This does not look like a cabinet to nurture the unity that Mr Johnson today said was his governing purpose.
His declared ambition to enact a new Brexit deal before 31 October, with no backstop provision for Northern Ireland, is fantasy. His claim that doubters are guilty of denigrating British ingenuity comes from the rhetorical arsenal of populist nationalism.
No one should imagine that Mr Johnson’s word is his bond. It never has been before. But the stakes are much higher now. His modus operandi has been to make contradictory promises, expect others to clear up his mess and hope that charm and bluster will compensate for administrative inadequacy. That method cannot be applied to the job of prime minister, not without terrible consequences for the country.
Anticipation of that hazard is the reason why many Tories who will now pledge loyalty to Mr Johnson previously thought it would be a terrible mistake to put him in the nation’s highest office. They were right the first time.
• This article was amended on 26 July 2019. It was three years ago, in 2016, that Johnson contemplated running for the leadership, not four as an earlier version said.
