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Boris Johnson Drops Out
To audible gasps, Boris Johnson has abandoned his bid to be prime minister. He dropped out after Justice Secretary Michael Gove, Johnson’s ally in the Brexit campaign, betrayed him by announcing that he would be running to succeed Cameron. Why did Gove stab him in the back? Not clear yet, but perhaps he’s channeling the ambient sense that Boris is just too much of a clown:
Some in Westminster think Cameron’s decision to announce his resignation last Friday was, in part, designed to finally checkmate his rival. “He who wields the knife never wears the crown,” has become a mantra of U.K. politics ever since Michael Heseltine’s failed attempt to succeed Margaret Thatcher after helping to oust her. By quitting Number 10, MPs wonder if the prime minister has thrust the knife into his rival’s hands.
“We need a grown up not a comedian,” one Conservative MP from a Midlands marginal seat said, echoing concerns among many of his colleagues. “We need a safe pair of hands. Boris is like chewing gum, he goes stale quickly and we can’t afford that.”
Home Secretary Theresa May and Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb have thrown their names into the ring. So have Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox.
My money’s on May. She’s the most grown-up of the lot, and probably the only one with the gravitas to steady the ship of state and handle the exit negotiations with Brussels. That said, significantly, she backed the Remain campaign. Will that work against her, or will it be seen as a positive qualification for repairing the party and national divisions after the referendum?
Here’s her announcement:
She will probably win, but no one envies her, since no one can deliver what the people want.
Meanwhile, Angela Eagle will challenge Jeremy Corbyn for leadership of Labour this afternoon. Corbyn just lost a no-confidence vote 172-40. That’s not a lot of confidence.
Published in General
Yes he was. And Farage was loudly calling him out on it.
I guess I’d hope for Gove to win it, because despite May’s statements, I just don’t know if I trust her. She was Remain “because she wanted to support Cameron”. Well, your country is bigger than any one man. Doesn’t exactly strike me as another Thatcher.
I haven’t been following the palace intrigue gossip surrounding inner-Tory personality conflicts, but from 30,000 feet this mess seems completely predictable:
The British electorate put a (mostly) pro-Remain party in power through the normal political process, then held a non-binding referendum telling those same politicians to do something against their will. Who would’ve thought that could lead to a chaos with no obvious pro-Leaver willing to garner clear support to become PM?
The absence of an obvious PM is a reflection of the genuine divide in the electorate. If the citizenry truly wants leave, they should hold new Parliamentary elections and elect a slate of candidate who are pro-Leave to the core.
I agree although I don’t know enough about either of them to be sure. She was after all “remain” and there is a move afoot to walk back Brexit. Both Tony Blair and John Kerry are quite vocal about it.
Without knowing the specifics of this case, let’s keep in mind that politicians can send fairly clear messages without stating any “facts”.
Remember how, in 2011, we all expected Mitch Daniels to run for president until he also gave a speech ruling himself out? He had also never made any “explicit” declaration of his intent to become president. But in American politics, there is a certain dance that politicians do when they’re seriously considering running, and Daniels was making every move – and he and the rest of us knew it.
Given my own experience with Canadian parliamentary and party politics I doubt this was a betrayal in any sense of the word.
I am pretty sure both Gove and Johnson did a caucus count and have determined that Gove had a better chance of succession than Boris did. If anything I bet Gove is going to beat the heck out of May in the caucus count. This will prove to the backbenchers that they have the ability to win.
This is all about keeping a Remainder out of the seat and their allies probably told them Gove is the one they wanted.
Bob,
Really Bob, don’t you understand that such an interpretation, though completely logical, won’t fit the desired narrative. Also, it’s got that game of thrones lurid intrigue thing going for it. Though imagining Michael Gove stabbing anybody, even Boris, in the back is really beyond credible belief. But imagination is what it’s all about I guess.
There’s no business like show business.
Regards,
Jim
Gove says (and make of it what you will):
Meanwhile, May, who has been running as Cameron’s successor for a long time, already has 62 declared MP supporters. Gove has 11.
Early days. But…
No, I don’t remember that at all. I never saw Daniels as a serious candidate, though I’d wished he were.
And the dance tune in Great Britain is vastly different from ours, driven by a completely different mechanism of government for a nation not much larger than the Metroplex (OK, I exaggerate, but not by much).
Eric Hines
Surely the idea of the ruthlessness characteristic of the British officer class is not that “unimaginable,” Jim.
Claire,
All this is about is that now we know where Boris gets his delight in hyperbole. I think they prompted the father and he took the bait. Not criket Claire.
Regards,
Jim
For someone only peripherally interested in British politics, I have had rather positive impression of Michale Gove. He appeared to have done excellent job as the Education Minister, and the positive comments about his performance from the London Calling hosts have had their sway. I was genuinely surprised by Claire’s choice of words used to describe the situation; this is why I asked in #3 why his announcement was a betrayal. Perhaps there was gentleman’s agreement that I was not aware of, which would explain Claire’s rather harsh words. “Expected”? Before I had a chance, Bob Thomson asked for the meaning of the “expected,” and from Claire’s response I have learned that Mr. Gove has not broken any oaths, he has not reneged on some agreement that was widely known, he has just done something that others “expected” him not to do. Why then the words that could be perceived as character assassination? If this was done to stimulate conversation, congratulations! It worked! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked! Still, this was reminiscent of a “linguistic kill shot” that I could see no reason to have fired at this site…
Heseltine, a great old Tory grandee, on Boris.
From the cite:
Conservative grandee and former leadership contender Lord Heseltine has launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson, accusing him of creating the “greatest constitutional crisis in modern times”.
Lord Heseltine, a former deputy prime minister, told the BBC the former London mayor had “ripped the (Conservative) party apart.”
Never mind the constitutional crisis creeping on silent cat feet in the form of loss of British sovereignty to a remote and anti-democratic governance on the continent.
Ripped the Conservative Party apart, is it? I’ve seen no evidence of that. Certainly there’s contention over the the way forward, but that’s healthy. Unless dissent and debate are Bad. On the other hand, if the Conservatives’ party is this fragile, maybe it needs to be ripped out and replaced with sterner stuff.
And from the audio: Knocked billions off the value of the nation’s savings? He’s actually serious, too. No, there’s no loss of value unless and until folks sell into their panic, or the panic Hezeltine is actively sowing. On the contrary, investing has just gotten cheaper. Never mind that the FTSE 100 and FTSE All-Share both are already fully recovered from their panicky Friday sell-off and are above their 1 Jun levels, and so maybe those savings aren’t in such peril, after all, even now.
Out of this creative destruction can come great prosperity and freedom, if the Brits play their cards right.
Can’t let things drift? Already, a week after the referendum, let things drift? Is he keeping up at all? Yet he’s not making his mind up on whom to back, yet–he’s happy to let himself drift.
Heseltine sounds like he’s just bitter over being a former leadership contender rather than being still contendable.
Eric Hines
I love it when people get it so very wrong.
After all, the FTSE is now higher than it was before the vote – it is the highest in 10 months.
Tell me again why Brexit was bad for Britain?
Claire, did you highlight this because Lord Heseltine got it so wrong?
Claire,
This is more interesting. It’s all about class. For Mr. Haseltine, Cameron and Boris are of the acceptable class. Gove and Farage are of the unacceptable class. If you notice Haseltine had very little negative to say about Gove. Instead, he was furious with Boris for quitting. One must not take anything that the unacceptable class says or does too seriously.
I am not British. As an American, the class thing is a foreign language to me. However, it would seem unfortunate if 500 million people will be left governed under an anti-democratic bureaucratic autocracy because of this. I will wait and see. I have never enjoyed The West Wing, House of Cards, or Game of Thrones. I have always found reality dramatic enough.
If Gove has calculated wrong then Boris should not have quit and should have known not to quit. If Gove has calculated correctly then it wouldn’t matter what Boris did. There’s no danger of a spoiler here. We must wait to see the next episode.
Regards,
Jim
Heseltine is a EUnuch. He was all in on the so-called “European Idea”, and quite willing for Brussels to call more and more of the shots in British matters. No wonder then that he hates Boris. The Guardian is using Heseltine in much the same way the NYT/WaPo liked to use John McCain; as a beating stick against his own party in order to make the party look “extreme”.
Because United States of Europe. *Sniff*.
Lord Heseltine is a cretin. He wouldn’t know politics if he stabbed his boss in the back.
The Conservative Party can’t have an anti-Brexit PM after Cameron. What’s the point of that anyway?
I generally agree. They need to absorb the UKIP Thaterites who kept the fire burning for a quarter century back into the party. The one-issue globalist conservative-types need to join the Liberal Party or form their own pro-Brussels party.
Brexit might have passed by only 52% of the vote, but the Conservatives were about 60% pro-Brexit, I think.
Claire would have had to write a book to adequately explain all the background.
But to clarify this one — Gove was actively campaigning for Boris as of last night . And then announced he was running instead at 9am. Reportedly Boris had 5 minute’s warning.
I think I’d prefer Gove to Johnson, but it’s hard to argue “backstabbing” is an exaggeration. Even if one is sympathetic to Gove’s rationale. I somewhat am, and yet the whole thing made me a bit sick.
Especially if one is to believe this piece in the Sun. We must remember that Boris and Gove — and Gove’s wife — are journalists.