THE AGENDA Politics
Matthew Goodwin
With Brexit promises unfulfi lled and taxes rising sharply, Boris Johnson’s leadership is unravelling before our eyes
Labour Party drawing level and then pulling ahead. At the time of writing, were an election held tomorrow it would be likely to leave Labour as the largest party, albeit one short of an overall majority. In the Conservative Party, meanwhile, there is a growing chorus of despair and disillusionment among MPs and activists, from Red Wall MPs who tell me privately that Boris has lost his Midas touch to the older and more established ‘true blue’ Tories who feel increasingly frustrated with the prime minister’s ‘big state, high tax’ conservatism, a fundamental break from the conservatism they remember from the 1980s. And in the wider country, amid rumours of a fresh election coming as early as 2023, there is growing evidence that Johnson is losing support on two fl anks simultaneously.
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On one side stand the economic liberals who argue that the prime minister is failing to reap the Brexit dividend. Despite promises of a new Global Britain and leading the country to the sunlit uplands, they point to Britain’s declining service exports to the European Union, the absence of a new raft of bold and ambitious trade deals (outside of rolled-over EU agreements) and a failure to slash regulation (such as the ongoing cap on bankers’ bonuses). Speaking for this group, Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, recently remarked that the ‘idea of Brexit exerting its own gravitational pull – dragging taxes down and pushing trade up – is starting to look like a fantasy’. On the other side stand the cultural conservatives who are also losing faith in Johnson, but for different reasons. They feel increasingly alienated by what they see as his failure to turn ‘levelling-up’ from a soundbite into a serious policy, to push back against the radical ‘woke’ cultural left and, more importantly, to curtail illegal immigration or, as some might say, ‘take back control’. Throw in a spring and summer of high migration numbers and a lack of action on levelling-up, and it is not hard to see how many voters in the Red Wall decide to stay at home rather than cast a vote. The growing discord in both camps has also been fuelled by the government’s evolving economic strategy, which was thrown into full light by Rishi Sunak’s spending review at the end of last year and will guide us through the remainder of 2022 and into the next
e are now more than two years into Boris Johnson’s premiership and it is clearly coming unstuck. In the polls, the Conservative Party fi nished 2021 in a precarious state, with Sir Keir Starmer and the
general election. It was a watershed moment which some economists such as Paul Johnson compare to similar moments in the past – such as 1979, when Geoffrey Howe cut direct taxes, increased VAT and set out a new monetarist agenda, or 2010, when George Osborne commenced austerity. Only this time it was a watershed moment for very different reasons, and not ones that most conservatives would applaud. Taxes are to be raised by £40 billion. The tax burden is set to surpass 36 per cent of national income. Spending on the National Health Service is about to hit unprecedented proportions. And, far from being rolled back, the state looks set to get bigger and bigger, absorbing not only the cost of Covid-19 but also the desires of a prime minister who appears perfectly comfortable spending his way through the 2020s. Far from marking a return to fi scal conservatism, Sunak and
Boris Johnson
appears to have lost his connection with the very groups who propelled him into power in the fi rst place
Johnson appear to be presiding over a return to centre-left economics which is alienating more than a few of their core voters. Such is the sheer scale of this disillusionment that one conservative commentator, Allister Heath, recently warned that Number 10 is now at risk of losing the unique opportunity that the realignment of British politics ushered in: ‘Its twin pathologies, a No 10 operation that doesn’t have the bandwidth, executive experience or strategic nous to push through change, combined with an all- consuming, short-termist, neo-Blairite political calculus, mean that a once-in-a- generation realignment in British politics – crystallised by Brexit, the smashing of the
Red Wall and the rise of the boho-left – is being squandered.’ It is hard to disagree. As we make our way into 2022, Johnson appears to have lost his connection with the very groups who propelled him into power in the fi rst place. And by losing these voters he could easily end up opening the door to a Labour-led coalition at the next election, one that will be even more focused on raising taxes on the wealthy, pursuing redistribution and overseeing more radical cultural changes along the way. Boris Johnson ultimately won power by building a strong
connection with a broad and relatively diverse coalition of voters who felt ignored and neglected but shared a belief that Brexit was the right way forward and could be a success. Whether he can remain in power will now depend on whether or not he can return to his conservative roots and deliver on that original promise. S Matthew Goodwin is professor of politics and associate fellow at Chatham House
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