Andrew Marr: Boris Johnson and the saga of the great tussle for survival
25 April 2022, 15:32 | Updated: 25 April 2022, 15:56
It’s turning into one of the great, “if not now, when?” sagas of all time.
LBC listeners and viewers, MPs of all stripes and, frankly, LBC presenters too are all slightly nuts wondering when, if ever, Boris Johnson’s prime ministership finally ends.
Full disclosure: I thought he was toast just before the Ukraine war started. Then he recovered on the back of that.
Next, I thought he was a second slice of black and smoking bread when the police fines arrived. Then more recently I concluded that he was probably safe after all. Tory MPs were no longer coming out and calling for him to go. There was a distinct lack of smoke in the kitchen.
And now, at the end of last week, a Tory revolt, and a damning denunciation by the Tory Brexiteer MP Steve Baker, raises the question yet again.
Johnson, undergoing his ritual humiliation by journalists during his trip to India, kept shrugging and rolling his eyes. And there, at least, I think we can all be with him.
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In trying to make incredibly difficult judgement calls, journalists must use every source of information available. So I look at the polling in detail, and I talk to MPs about their inboxes, and conclude that voters are not ready to “move on” from the illegal parties and lying. Too many remember personal stories about sacrifices during the lockdowns and can’t forgive or forget.
Thinking of that, I spent many hours hanging around a glass extension to the Commons called Portcullis House. There, under avenues of potted fig trees and amid the aroma of coffee, hacks, politicians and special advisors mingle and gossip.
I am constantly trying to gauge the mood of the Tory party about its leader – aiming off for well-known Johnson critics; listening for a slight change in tone from people who used to fully back him, watching who is talking to whom.
On my 6 pm LBC show I’ve had vociferous Johnson backers, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, to whom I told the story of my father’s funeral – not an easy thing to do, and it didn’t impress him much.
And I’ve had equally forthright anti-Johnson Tory voices, such as the former deputy prime minister David Lidington, last week.
Every day I’m trying to bring listeners the latest and most accurate information about the Prime Minister’s position that I can. I am sure the road ahead for him is dangerous and unpredictable. It may be a short road.
But the truth is that we are, all of us, watching an irresistible force – despair and anger about aspects of his rule, both in the Tory party and the wider public – meeting an irresistible object, Boris Johnson’s utter determination to keep going.
For politics is also an animal business and Johnson is a big and bloody-minded beast, a kind of hairy, obstinate, and endlessly energetic mastodon. It seems there is simply nobody else in the party big enough to push him over – no prowling Michael Heseltine figure, as he was the last days of Margaret Thatcher.
Yet it is also true that much of the party has fallen out of love with the mastodon. And so, on the great tussle goes, day after day, week after week.
Because you know what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? No. And I don’t either.
