The name of the game is for her to sail above it, and take no notice until she’s actually asked to do something - if BJ were to ask for a snap general election, for example. If that were on the cards, then I think the respective private secretaries would be dealing with it as much as possible: “Has the PM considered the implications of fighting an election against his own party? Can he give a good reason I can give to HM as to why an alternative government can’t be assembled from within the current Parliament?” And so on and back and forth, rather than have the Palace put up a “Do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends” sign.
I don’t know if he’ll have his regular audience with her (on Tuesday, I believe), and one can only guess at what’s said, but my guess would be a lot of Sgt Wilson -style “Are you sure that’s wise?”.
Dominic Raab is deputy PM. But it’s not like being Vice President in the US, he has a separate Cabinet job as well. And DPM is not an always-occupied role, and doesn’t carry automatic right of succession or anything.
This is simply glorious. Jonathan Pie (character played by comedian Tom Walker, purporting to be a political reporter) gives his opinion of Boris
Johnson (video):
The Wikipedia article on Deputy PM lays it out nicely.
Short answer: there is no automatic right of succession to the position. The Deputy PM would be an obvious choice, provided the Deputy PM doesn’t intend to enter the leadership contest.
The current holder is Dominic Raab, and media speculation is that he doesn’t plan on entering the race, so likely has a good chance on being chosen as PM (assuming the Tories are able to put a sack over Boris’ head and hustle him out of No 10, over his objection that he can stay on as caretaker himself).
One nasty little bind that’s going to affect the thinking of senior Tories is exactly the question of who gets to be interim PM.
Obviously, anybody who runs for leadership from the position of interim PM is at a massive advantage relative to other candidates. They get to make the speeches, announce decisions, speak to the nation as PM while campaigning to… be PM. It’s a massive boost. So will all the other wannabes let a rival get that chance? Would Raab have to miss his chance to stand? Or if he wants to stand would he recuse himself from interim PM? What neutral could be found that every wing of the party would be happy with?
I’m having a difficult time imagining how that works… Let’s say there’s a big war on, something that might require rapid decision-making from a clear leader. And let’s suppose that, as happens sometimes in war, a bomb lands on wherever the PM is, killing him. Is the nation really without a Head of Government for as long as it takes the party to get together to pick a new leader? That seems imprudent.
In Canada, the issue has come up in some of the provinces, where the premier has resigned on short notice, triggering a leadership race. The practice has been that the party agrees on a caretaker premier who will not contest the leadership, and holds office only the party has selected the new leader. “Elder statesman of the party”; “safe pair of hands”, etc.
Even if the PM is killed, the other ministers continue to hold authority and can carry on. There’s always appointments of “acting minister for…”, so that if someone is not available, someone else has legal authority to act. If the PM is killed, the Deputy PM still holds all the legal authority they previously held, unaffected by the death of the PM.
And what is incredible and shows how utterly broken the UK press is, is that Johnson’s lot has been claiming we are at war. When we are not.
There is a narrative of us being at war alongside Ukraine. If that’s the role, then the UK is ALWAYS at war, barely been 15 minutes in the last 50 odd years when it’s not being supporting some sort of side in a foreign war.
Really? I haven’t seen that specific narrative. Not the claim that we are actually at war. It is certainly the case that we have been very closely aligned with Ukraine and that we’ve rhetorically and materially been very helpful.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Johnson supporters point to the conflict as a reason for not changing the leader, I would be surprised if a “we are at war” position was common in the press. I’ve not seen that myself.
UK Prime Ministers tend get interested in international politics when things are going badly at home. The attraction of a world stage is seductive. The problem is it can blow up in your face. That is what happened to Blair.
Supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion is a no-brainer. It is quite clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The UK is also geographically remote from the conflict. Countries close to the Russian border have a far greater threat and are understandably cautious about poking the Russian bear. They depend on Russian gas, the UK hardly at all. So Johnson could afford to be hawkish about Russia and lend lots of support to Ukraine. The Russians gave retaliated by putting POWs that are British and caught supporting Ukraine on trial.
Supporting Ukraine also helped Johnson hide the fact that there have been some very close ties between the Conservative party and Russia Oligarchs. He made one a Lord. London has been awash with Russian money and the government has been slow to identify and freeze assets.
Johnson wants to be remembered for his stalwart support of Ukraine against Russia. You know….like his hero Churchill and his opposition to the Nazis.
He wants to be regarded as a heroic leader. Maybe celebrated with a statue or two in the clasical style ,dressed in toga perhaps?
He is also looking for respect for his leadership of he nation in the face of the Covid pandemic. Despite the huge sums wasted on buying protective equipment from dodgy companies set up by businessmen with friends in the party.
Johnson is a narcissistic, vain idiot who exasperated his own party with incompetent leadership until their patience finally broke. He could not even lie consistently.
The Conservatives should evict him as soon as possible and elect a competent replacement who can repair the damage done to the party. They look like a bunch of fools. The political system in the UK can work quite quickly in situations like this.
The latest (though I’m sure old news in ten minutes’ time) is that BoJo wants to remain in office until the fall so that he can continue to have use of Chequers, the PM’s official country house. Apparently invitations have already been sent out for his postponed wedding party later this month and he doesn’t want to cancel it.
Between that and the 150,000 pounds he was trying to squeeze out of a donor to build a treehouse (yes, you heard that right), he truly is a man of the people, no?
29 more days and he’s outlasted Theresa May, 15 days further on he’s outlasted James Callaghan. This seems a MUCH more likely reason why he wants to stay.
But I’d say it’s probably to try and push the NIP bill through, and perhaps even try and save his skin in some way. Dissolve parliament and declare Martial Law is completely within his vain psychopathic nature, and yet again people even here will probably think his image of a decent bloke will think that beyond him, the man who’s lied to the queen, dissolve parliament before, paid 127K to his lover, tried to get his other lover 100K job for a blowjob, deported people to Rwanda, partied with Putin’s pals, pretty much holidayed on donors coin and lobbed 10 billion quid to his mates via covid. This man is corrupt, self serving, and a criminal. There is no provisions in UK law to stop him being prosecuted for crimes after the fact.
Indeed…he most definitely doesn’t want to have a shorter tenure than May, whom he helped sabotage and whose period as PM is largely viewed as a failure. I’m boiling over with Schadenfreude though, hoping that he’s ceremoniously shown the door before that benchmark.