Boris Johnson and ‘Partygate’: he who lives by the Brexit sword, dies by the Brexit sword – The Conversation AU

Boris Johnsons time as the United Kingdoms prime minister is under immediate threat. Johnson, who likes a classical analogy, will know that civil servant Sue Grays imminent report into the Partygate scandal is the bureaucratic equivalent of the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

Johnson has been gravely damaged by the revelations of recent weeks that he attended gatherings and parties his own government had banned during the COVID lockdown of 2020, while some Britons loved ones died alone.

Significantly, pressure on Johnson is mounting from within his own party. During an acrimonious prime ministers questions on Wednesday, David Davis, a former Tory minister and arch-Brexiteer, told Johnson in the name of God, go!

Yet, for all the public anger about Johnsons lack of leadership during the pandemic and inability to grasp the need for full contrition about Partygate, his weakened position actually has a lot more to do with the aftershocks of Brexit in three major ways.

The first is the extent to which Brexit contributed to Johnsons election victory in December 2019.

The commanding majority he secured in that election a major political achievement enabled Britain to withdraw from the European Union. Much of this success was attributed to a swing in support from so-called Red Wall constituencies in the north and Midlands parts of England, which had a history of voting Labour and switched their allegiance to the Conservatives.

Read more: Boris Johnson polling is now so bad that it makes sense for Conservative MPs to get rid of him

The twin sources of this historic switch were believed to be a desire to complete Brexit and a hostility towards Labours left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The problem for Johnson is the perception, among the new cohort of Conservative MPs elected in the Red Wall constituencies, that their newfound support among voters may be fragile.

With Brexit now done and Corbyn no longer Labour leader, many are asking themselves whether these voters will now revert back to Labour. The fear of an embarrassingly short parliamentary career may be convincing many to consider giving Johnson the push.

The second Brexit-related weakness concerns Johnsons style of leadership itself and the part this played in the Conservatives 2019 election win.

This style has been described by political scientists Chris Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti as technopopulism. That is to say Johnson is a leader who both appears to reject normal politics, while at the same time professing an unorthodox competence to get things like Brexit done.

This was a major part of his appeal to Conservatives who elected him party leader in 2019 and voters who made him prime minister later that year.

Yet, this now leaves him vulnerable. Theres a big question many Conservatives may be asking themselves: was the 2019 election Johnsons victory, or the partys more broadly?

If they feel it was Johnsons victory, they could decide to eject him before he permanently contaminates the Conservative brand ahead of local elections in May and a general election two years from now.

Johnsons populist nod and wink that I am with them but not of them could now come back to bite as Conservative politicians decide whether to amputate the Johnsonian rot to save the Conservative body.

Read more: Boris Johnson's big election victory: academics on what it means for the UK and Brexit

In doing so, they will be in tune with public opinion. Johnsons chaotic leadership style was always linked with a sense of self-advancement. If this was visible to some during Brexit, it became even more evident during the pandemic.

During 2020, the Conservative leadership invoked the second world war Spirit of the Blitz to make it through the darkest days of the pandemic.

From the perspective of 2022 and the Partygate scandal, another wartime analogy looks more apt lions led by donkeys. This is a popular memory of the first world war in which stoical British soldiers were led to their deaths by incompetent commanders.

Lastly, Johnsons position has been weakened because, despite the rhetoric, Brexit is only half-done.

Johnson is a famous over-promiser. He told parliament in 2017 that Brexit meant Britain could have its cake and eat it. The reality is the Brexit cake is half-baked (in both senses of the word).

For one, the status of Northern Ireland as a full part of the UK is still in the balance because the EU-UK border question has yet to be resolved.

Read more: State of Stormont: can Northern Ireland trust in Truss?

Second, it is hard to see what material benefit Brexit has brought the UK. Admittedly, the pandemic has clouded the ability to make firm judgements about the UK economy. However, it is hard to imagine, amid all the shortages of food and truck drivers, that a free-trade agreement with Australia is giving UK citizens much more than they had when Britain was part of the EU.

This means true believers in Brexit might like someone like Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as PM to fully realise what they perceive as the real benefits of the decision to leave the EU.

Truss, currently in Australia for the annual Australia-UK ministerial meetings, is probably considering her position, along with other potential contenders to replace Johnson: Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary Priti Patel, Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi and former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was defeated by Johnson in the 2019 Conservative leadership contest.

Former Conservative MP Enoch Powell, hero of the Conservative right and a vociferous critic of the UKs entry into the European Economic Community in the 1970s, once said all political lives end in failure.

Johnsons downfall would be a case of the revolution eating itself. The irony is the man who promised to get Brexit done, may well get done in by Brexit.

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Boris Johnson and 'Partygate': he who lives by the Brexit sword, dies by the Brexit sword - The Conversation AU