Nearly all political careers end in failure, but Boris Johnson is the first British prime minister to be toppled for scandalous behavior. That should worry us.
The three most notable downfalls of 20th-century British leaders were caused by political factors. Neville Chamberlain was undone by his failed appeasement policy. The Suez fiasco forced Anthony Eden to resign in 1957, and Margaret Thatcher fell in 1990 because popular resistance to the poll tax persuaded Conservative lawmakers that they could not win again with her as leader.
True, Harold Macmillan was undone in 1963 by the Profumo sex scandal, but this involved a secretary of state for war and possible breaches of national security. Election defeats following economic failure brought down Edward Heath and James Callaghan in the 1970s. Tony Blair was forced to resign by the Iraq debacle and Gordon Brown’s impatience to succeed him. David Cameron was skewered by Brexit, and Theresa May by her failure to deliver Brexit.
Illustration: Mountain People
No such events explain Johnson’s fall.
David Lloyd George, a much greater leader than Johnson, is his only serious rival in sleaze, but although the sale of seats in the House of Lords, slipshod administrative methods and dishonesty had weakened Lloyd George, the immediate cause of his fall (exactly a century ago) was his mishandling of the Chanak crisis, which brought Britain and Turkey to the brink of war.
The more familiar comparison is with former US president Richard Nixon. Every Johnson misdemeanor is routinely labeled “gate” after the Watergate break-in that ended Nixon.
John Maynard Keynes called Lloyd George a “crook”; Nixon famously denied that he was one. Neither they nor Johnson were crooks in the technical sense (of being convicted of crimes), but Nixon would have been impeached in 1974 had he not resigned, and Johnson was fined ￡50 (US$60) for breaking COVID-19 lockdown rules. Moreover, all three showed contempt for the laws they were elected to uphold, and for the norms of conduct expected from public officials.
We struggle to describe their character flaws: “unprincipled,” “amoral” and “serial liar” seem to capture Johnson. However, they describe more successful political leaders as well. To explain his fall, we need to consider two factors specific to our times.
The first is that we no longer distinguish personal qualities from political qualities. Nowadays, the personal really is political: Personal failings are ipso facto political failings. Gone is the distinction between the private and the public, between subjective feeling and objective reality, and between moral and religious matters, and those that government must address.
Politics has crossed into the realm previously occupied by psychiatry. This was bound to happen once affluence undermined the old class basis of politics. Questions of personal identity arising from race, gender, sexual preference and so on now dominate the spaces vacated by the politics of distribution. Redressing discrimination, not addressing inequality, became the task of politics.
Johnson is both a creature and a victim of identity politics. His rhetoric was about “leveling up” and “our National Health Service,” but in practice, he made his personality the content of his politics.
No previous British leaders would have squandered their moral capital on trivial misdemeanors and attempted cover-ups, because they knew that it had to be kept in reserve for momentous events. However, momentous events are now about oneself, so when a personality is seen as flawed, there is no other story to tell.
Johnson’s personality-as-politics was also the creation of the media. In the past, newspapers, by and large, reported the news; now, focusing on personalities, they create it. This change has given rise to a corrupt relationship: Personalities use the media to promote themselves, and the media expose their frailties to sell copy.
There has always been a large market for sexual and financial gossip, but even in the old “yellow press,” there was a recognized sphere of public events that took priority. Now the gossip stories are the public events.
This development has radically transformed public perceptions about the qualities a political leader should have. Previous generations of political leaders were by no means all prudes. They lied, drank, fornicated and took bribes, but everyone concerned with politics recognized that it was important to protect the public sphere. Leaders’ moral failings were largely shielded from scrutiny, unless they became egregious. Even when the public became aware of them, they were forgiven, provided the leaders delivered the goods politically.
Most of the offenses that led to Johnson’s resignation would never have been reported in the past, but today, the doctrine of personal accountability justifies stripping political leaders naked. Every peccadillo, every lapse from correct expression, becomes a credibility-destroying “disgrace” or “shame.” People’s ability to operate in the public sphere depends on privacy. Once that is gone, their ability to act effectively when they need to vanishes.
The other new factor is that politics is no longer viewed as a vocation so much as a stepping stone to money. Media obsession with what a political career is worth, rather than whether politicians are worthy of their jobs, is bound to affect what politically ambitious people expect to achieve and the public’s view of what to expect from them. Blair is reported to have amassed millions in speaking engagements and consultancies since leaving office.
In keeping with the times, the Times has estimated how much money Johnson could earn from speaking fees and book deals, and how much more he is worth than May.
In his resignation speech, Johnson sought to defend the “best job in the world” in traditional terms, while criticizing the “eccentricity” of being removed in mid-delivery of his promises. However, this defense of his premiership sounded insincere, because his career was not a testimony to his words. The cause of his fall was not just his perceived lack of morality, but also his perceived lack of a political compass.
For Johnson, the personal simply exposed the hollowness of the political.
Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords and professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, was a non-executive director of the private Russian oil company PJSC Russneft from 2016 to last year.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
RSS