In a reversal of his recently known ways, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have spoken more honestly than intended when he said on Monday that he “wouldn’t want to damage leadership candidates’ chances by offering my support”. Johnson could hardly have meant that any endorsement by him of any candidate could mean the kiss of death.
An extraordinary gap opens up in Westminster over what is said publicly, and what is done privately, as the world has doubtless seen over recent weeks and months. Johnson is hardly expected to remain an inactive spectator to the leadership contest in the run-up to announcement of the new Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister on September 5.
From the candidates announced so far, Johnson is likely to offer discreet but forceful backing to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who has firmly backed him through his past tumultuous months, almost the only cabinet minister to do so. He is likely driven less by a passion to see her as the next PM than by determination to keep Rishi Sunak out. Of that, we have indication from Boris Johnson’s own office.
The day Sunak announced his candidature, Johnson’s office released a statement to the media on the understanding that it should be attributed to a “Downing Street source” that Sunak had been “treacherous”. The Financial Times quoted a senior minister in Johnson’s cabinet as also calling Sunak “treacherous”, with an expletive added.
His office let out word that Boris Johnson picked Sunak up from nowhere to take the front benches of the government as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain’s Finance Minister). The office said Johnson had backed Sunak all through his term as Chancellor, only to then be stabbed in the back.
Policy and Principle
For Rishi Sunak, his resignation came over honestly held differences over principles and policy, besides all the anger over ‘Partygate’ and then the dispute over former deputy party whip Chris Pincher who was removed from his post after admitting to groping two men drunkenly at a club.
The bigger difficulty for Johnson proved not just the misjudgement in appointing this MP to take charge of party discipline, but the lies in denying that he had known of his past sexual intrusions.
Sunak’s resignation letter went beyond all that. He said the public expect the government to be run “properly, competently and seriously”. It was serious public accusation to suggest that this was not the way Johnson was running the government, an accusation no doubt in line with the perceptions of most people in the party and the country. But not an accusation Johnson would take kindly to.
Beyond that Sunak flagged differences with the PM over policy, chiefly by way of his reluctance to go for heavy tax cuts as Johnson wanted. “Our approaches are fundamentally too different,” Sunak wrote in his resignation letter. And once he resigned, he did not of course have to go through with a planned joint article with Boris Johnson on the way forward for the economy.
Sunak’s campaign video posted on social media took accusations aimed at Johnson from criticism to mockery. The country, he said, does not need comforting fairy tales of the kind Johnson was offering. Not a particularly gentle way of saying that he thought Johnson is living in cuckoo land. Again, a widely shared, and sincerely held view in much of the Conservative Party and much of the country as well. But as Boris Johnson’s team saw it, this added insult to treachery.
Retaliation
An unanswered question, among many, is the extent of support Boris Johnson could still get. He had won the no-confidence vote held on June 7 by 211 votes to 148 against. Much of that support fell following the Pincher revelations. But it still is unlikely to have disappeared altogether or even dwindled to something insignificant. A Boris-led whispering campaign against Rishi Sunak is the biggest threat to his bid.
That bid remains strong. More MPs have voiced support for Sunak than for any other candidate. The bookmakers have him as a clear favourite. That support for him should stand out more by the first round, when those with less than 20 MPs supporting their candidature fall off the race.
Once the serious race begins, and that should be fairly soon, the knives will be out. And that will be the time when Sunak will need to triumph over rival candidates, and operating behind them, Boris Johnson himself.
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