The Case Against Boris Johnson

The 2019 UK General Election is a dismal prospect for people who might consider themselves politically moderate. The Conservative Party under Boris Johnson has drifted to the right, apparently seeing an opportunity to gain support from disaffected voters in favour of Brexit. The Labour Party would normally be expected to take advantage of a series of mediocre Conservative governments, but took a deliberate step to the left with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader and has since been struggling with in-fighting and poor strategy. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats, the usual recourse of the moderate voter, made a big strategic error in declaring their intent to revoke Article 50, and I was a bit bemused by their pledge to target a budget surplus given the state of public services after a decade of austerity.

Given this disappointing set of options, what's the best thing to do? The only conclusion that I have drawn is that I do not want Boris Johnson to be returned as Prime Minister with a majority. The rest of this post argues that case.

Was this person ever really a good idea?

Integrity

It is clear from the public record that Boris Johnson does not hold personal principles strongly. His articles for and against leaving the EU are often cited, but there's plenty more: advocating Turkey joining the EU, claiming we'd never leave the Single Market, lying in front of Heathrow bulldozers. Michael Heseltine has called him the most flexible politician of modern times. While I disagreed with Theresa May, I believed her to have principles.

Johnson's main target seems to be personal progress. This combines badly with a lack of principle, because it allows him to focus solely on electoral strategy without any apparent consideration for the benefit of the country. An example might be the deal he agreed with the EU: the goal was achieved mostly by concessions.

He is also comfortable lying in public.

Tactics

Johnson has been happy to adopt the same tactics as used by the Leave campaign in the EU Referendum, evident from the influence that Dominic Cummings has in government. In particular, there is no concern about deceit and explicit lying.

It appears that the leave campaign consider the infamous bus to have been a great success, having a bigger effect than if it had been uncontroversial. This type of behaviour has been prominent in the Conservative election campaign: for example, the CCHQ Twitter account masquerading as a neutral fact checker. It's easy to argue that politicians have always lied, and that's true, but there used to be consequences when those lies were exposed. If politicians are now happy to lie and there's no way to hold them to account then the entire political process is undermined.

Those Conservative MPs who have what I might consider basic honesty (Sarah Wollaston, Dominic Grieve, David Gauke) have not been able to swallow this behaviour and have left. Those remaining are now learning this trade: (Michael Gove accusing Channel 4 of a left-wing agenda, Dominic Raab unmoved by Twitter shenanigans, Sajid Javid absolutely fine with letterbox quote).

In order to try to pursue the Brexit side of the argument, Johnson (or Cummings, it's not easy to tell) was happy to purge the Conservative party of moderates. Loyalty was apparently prioritised over competence in selection of his cabinet: Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and Jacob Rees-Mogg being examples. And we've already forgotten the childish attempt to bully parliament by proroguing it ahead of the Brexit deadline.

Populism

The lack of any shame in lying or misleading the public is something that I find very offensive. To a casual observer, it seems to have been borrowed from the Republican Party's defence of Donald Trump. Based on a calculation that disagreeing with Trump will cost them politically, Repubicans have shown that they prepared to resort to utter hypocrisy. There is also room for a big disconnect between trying to get people to vote for you and actually trying to help those people. The strategy of refusing to interact with news organisations that are not sufficiently sympathetic is also worrying. I find these aspects of US politics alarming and I do not welcome a move in that direction.

Character

Everyone knows that Johnson has a long history of writing provocative articles, both about the EU and in more general terms. Right now he's being asked a few questions about one or other of these articles that have resurfaced, and his stock response is that the quotes are taken out of context. This is a typically disingenuous response, hoping to deflect with a plausible explanation and move on.

That's not really the point, as far as I'm concerned. There are a lot of unpleasant and lazy tropes and he refuses to take any responsibility or show any remorse. There's the picaninnies and watermelon smiles, irresponsible single mothers but also the drunk, criminal and feckless working class, tank-topped bum-boys and too many others to list.

The defence that he doesn't intend to cause offence should always be dismissed, because it implies it is the responsibility of the insulted not to be offended. In other contexts he might say that he is just trying to be provocative and he doesn't really mean it, but even to overhear these kinds of opinions and justifications in a pub would make me very uncomfortable. A privileged person using those sorts of arguments about fundamentally offensive statements is an unsavoury prospect.

What to do?

Does any of this matter? For me all of these things are important. I value reasoned debate where it is at least plausible for someone who is paying attention to arrive at a sensible conclusion. I think that someone who values the truth so little and doesn't appear to have personal principles is unlikely to work in the interests of others. I strongly believe that choosing to devalue truth as a fundamental part of politics is irresponsible.

There's a good chance that Boris Johnson achieves his ambition of five years as prime minister, and when this happens it will effectively justify his tactics and validate his easy dismissals of any personal fault in his past.

My concerns about the inner workings of the Labour Party or the strategic mis-steps of the Liberal Democrats do not approach my fundamental disagreements with all of the above. And I'm not interested in 'getting Brexit done'. And no other party is going to get a majority. And I am worried about the future of the NHS. So the only apparent course of action is to hope quietly for a hung parliament.