Or will he attempt to ride it out? He’s catching a tremendous amount of blowback over some Covid-restriction-violating parties he attended and his lying about the whole situation.
Do you think he’ll resign over this? It’s hard to tell.
Did Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, London Breed, et. al, resign? No. Like Mr. Johnson, they’re all politicians.
David Cameron resigned just a few years ago…
Over Brexit. It’s nothing like “Covid-restriction-violating parties”, such as a birthday cake in the office. 
These are very different situations. For one thing, the British actually seem to care, and there is currently an investigation by the Met into the matter. More importantly, in American government it is very difficult to force people out of office. Johnson, on the other hand, remains as PM only if the majority of the Conservative party approves of his leadership, and if they lose confidence in him he can be forced out and replaced via a leadership challenge. He would almost certainly resign if it was clear that he would lose.
So really, the question is how does the Conservative party feel about him right now? Well, Johnson’s poor approval rating has already caused the Conservative party to lose a special election in North Shropshire, a seat the Tories have held for nearly two centuries. The covid stories, election loss, and the sense that there’s blood in the water have prompted leaks and pushback from Conservative MP’s, including reports of blackmail and racism and calls for a leadership challenge. There has also been pushback from some of the parties biggest donors, who have threatened to withhold support unless Johnson resigns.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s by no means a sure thing, but it also wouldn’t be particularly surprising. It just depends on whether or not there is a strong contender who could gain the support of the majority of the party.
They were vast fools to ever allow Boris to represent them anyway. He’s…not as bad as Trump? But pretty much? I have no idea if he is worse, equal, or less bad, but he certainly is their version of Trump.
I think that this is the main thing. It’s like a seesaw, if it tips the other way even a little bit, bang! it hits bottom.
All hanging fire on the official investigation report, which may be published as early as this afternoon. It will presumably try to be as factual as possible, leaving judgment to the reader.
But even if he tries to say it leaves enough room for doubt, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more stories still to be dripped out.
But if he goes, will his successor stick with the £800 a roll wallpaper?
Not sure why the rolly eyes. This isn’t about a birthday cake, it’s about the government lying to the public and breaking the law on social gathering multiple times whilst ordinary people weren’t even allowed to visit dying relatives in care homes or have any attendees at funerals. The country is fucking furious, it’s been reflected for weeks now in the polls, and the Conservative MPs in Parliament are getting very twitchy. The Tories have a reputation for eating their own - they got rid of Thatcher with barely a backward glance - if they think they’ll lose their seats at the next General Election because of this fiasco, Boris is done for.
Just read any of the Tory press that has been defending him for years - The Telegraph, The Mail, The Times - they’re all just sitting on the sidelines with a popcorn bucket right now. And that probably tells you more than anything else about what’s going to happen.
Boris is much more about ‘Getting Brexit Done’ than being ‘our Trump’, that’s why the fools voted for him. Don’t let the blond floppy hair distract you. Sure, he’s populist, but people aren’t worshipping at the fountain of Boris in the way they do Trump - they just like him because he cracks jokes and looks cute. If he’s going to lose the Tories an election, he’s gone.
This. It’s not about the cake; it’s about the fact that Johnson and his staff broke the law over and over again - laws that they wrote and that literally tens of thousands of people who aren’t part of the government were charged with and fined for. And they did this in the full sight of the police, who did nothing. The police even sent drones out to catch people walking in the Peak District, for Christ’s sake, and yet multiple parties held in the presence of uniformed officers, with the police in possession of a list of people present, somehow failed to garner the slightest interest from law enforcement.
But it’s okay if a conservative does it…
Yeah, I admit that I personally can’t get worked up over this; I kinda expected that the government wouldn’t follow the lockdown rules themselves. On a scale of political sleaze, it doesn’t rank that high for me. And there is something surreal about the various news reports talking about specifics of what beverages were available as if they are describing a war crime.
This might be because I spent most of the pandemic out of the UK though, virtually everyone I meet here is absolutely furious about this.
And of course I can recognize that lying to parliament, and the country, repeatedly, is a big deal.
In the UK it is still the case that once the media and senior figures have started calling for a politician to resign, they are usually out of office, one way or another, within a few weeks. Boris is clearly pulling out all the stops to cling on (including possibly breaking the law, again), but I’d still say he has at most a 30% chance of surviving this.
Not a war crime. But still an literal crime. Lots of literal crimes. We should be worked up about this - both about their commission and the corruption at the top of the Metropolitan Police.
If we let this slide, what will they do next?
I’m not saying to let anything slide. The law should apply to everyone equally plus Johnson lied, plus the whip is now using intimidation tactics. All should be punished.
I was just admitting that, yeah, at an emotional level, I don’t care.
If it’s OK for people to express their outrage, it should be OK for me to express my lack of outrage.
No, that’s fine. I’ve just heard a lot of “Who cares? Move on!” comments lately.
Not sure at all why Nancy Pelosi should have considered resigning. But I bet Boris does. Unlike the GOP, the party in power has a conscience and is able to feel shame. The optics were so bad- the Queen in solitary mourning for her husband and at #10 it’s party on, dude!
Ok, and I agree.
I heard a tory politician on the radio (unfortunately I didn’t catch the name) saying words to that effect and it probably made me more angry than the original transgression.
The underlying issue is that ordinary people have put up with a lot of inconvenience and made a lot of sacrifices obeying rules that are casually flouted by the big shots. It’s like the disdain sensible people feel for anti-vaxxers, magnified by the feeling (stronger in the UK than in the US, I think) that national leaders ought to set a good example.
Yes, ‘ought to set a good example’
It is a cultural thing.
Politicians in the UK are supposed to show high levels of integrity. MPs are addressed as 'The Right Honourable MP for (constituency). It is an honour system.
The worst sin is to tell an untruth when addressing Parliament. It is all recorded and published, so the choose their words very carefully indeed.
When they get caught out, it is a resigning matter.
Boris Johnson is a maverick politician who has carefully cultivated an amusing ‘schoolboy’ image, but behind the scenes he is political operator with an appreciation of the inner dynamics of the Conservative party. They voted for him based on a single policy that was tearing the Conservative party apart and that was Brexit. He was the least objectionable of the bunch of candidates.
But, it is becoming quite clear that when it comes to being a Prime Minister and being responsible for direction of the country, he does not have what it takes. He has made mistake after mistake, to the exasperation of the party and the country.
The ‘Party gate’ mess should never have happened. He would have had warnings about the dangers of the reaction if it got out. He obviously ignored them, thinking he could bluff and bluster his was out of any accusations and pull strings in the background to ensure his party supported him.
Usually Prime Ministers have a political praetorian guard whose job it is look out for political threats and dangers and mitigate them. Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown kept the confidence of their party, their special advisors kept them briefed about what was going on inside the party. Cameron, the consumate PR man, was doing well until he made a fundamental strategic mistake by using a referendum and make public the Brexit issue which was largely an internal party issue. That disaster led to May having the enviable job of squaring that circle. She failed and was succeeded by Johnson who decided to cut out political opposition to Brexit by sacking many senior members of the party. He made a lot of enemies in the process and his election on the back of ‘Get Brexit Done’ introduced a new and very important faction into Conservative party politics: the many new MPs from previously Labour held constituencies. These are working class areas that have been left behind by the changes in the economy from industry and manufacturing to service based. The Conservatives know that they will lose all these new seats at the next election unless they can be seen to be doing something for these ‘left behind’ areas of the UK. The voted for Brexit and now they want to see the benefit now that the UK cannot point to the EU as the reason why their UK policies are frustrated. There is now no-one to blame except the UK government led by Boris Johnson.
What they are finding is this guy can’t even head off a silly scandal like these office parties. His wife seems to have a fondness of expensive interior decoration paid for by rich party supporters. She also took exception to Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief political strategist who was sacked. All this dirty washing is being leaked constantly to the press and the government and country is being held up to ridicule. Johnson’s ‘schoolboy’ persona is no longer amusing and the grass roots of the Conservative party are busy writing letters of protest to their MPs. Many will fear that they will lose their seat in the next election because of these scandals.
Pretty soon the UK is going to face some huge economic issues paying off the Covid loans and there is a looming energy crisis that is going to affect the energy bills of the poorest parts of the country very hard. What confidence can the electorate have in this party that likes to party. That has shown itself to be led by Boris and his supporters who consider themselve a class apart from the public? They urge and encourage the public to social distance and pass laws to stop parties and behaviour that could spread the virus but ignore these rules in private, at the centre of political power? That charge of political hypocrisy is difficult to live down. That image of the Queen, the widow alone in church, isolated from family and friends was very evocative. So many people had suffered the same kind of isolation in order to prevent the spread of this pandemic. That is duty and integrity. The thought that at the same time Boris and his chums were having a party in full view of the police…All so wrong!
Other countries may be less concerned the public integrity of their politicians. Maybe it is republics with executive presidents. Where the politician, with all their faults, can exploit the respect afforded to the position and go unchallenged by any sort of debate.
Not so in the UK, the political executive is not the head of state, that is the Queen. The Prime Minster is the politician that leads the government and it is a temporary position. They are just passing through. They are easily disposable when they fail to deliver, and it looks like we are at that point with Boris Johnson. They are obliged to fight their corner in debates, which can be fun to watch.
For those interested in watching Boris Johnson defend himself from these charges here is todays Prime Ministers Questions. It was a rowdy affair. These guys have been trained and coached in how to handle these kind of exchanges. Labours leader, Keir Starmer, has a background as a QC, a very senior lawyer and it shows as he tries to nail down Johnson into agreeing he should resign if he has told an untruth when speaking on the record in Parliament. Johnson’s replies are full of diversion and counter charges.
So we await for Sue Gray’s report…then the police investigation. However, they ultimately report to Johnson, so everyone will be looking for signs of redactions and any editing out of compromising detail.
We will see.
The candidate untruths just keep on coming
Boris Johnson authorised the evacuation of animals from Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul, according to emails leaked by a whistleblower.
The PM has previously dismissed as “nonsense” claims he intervened in the evacuation of the Nowzad charity, run by former Royal Marine Pen Farthing.
But an email from an official in minister Zac Goldsmith’s office suggests he was personally involved.
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