Boris Johnson could not outmanoeuvre the British Constitution - Bill Carmichael

What a drama! One thing you can say about British politics is that it is rarely boring.

The events of the last few days have been truly astonishing and will no doubt go down in history, alongside perhaps Margaret Thatcher’s tearful departure from Downing Street.

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Tories call on Boris Johnson to step aside and have caretaker Prime Minister tak...

In fact if you pitched recent events as a script for a new television series the producers would probably reject it as too outrageously improbable.

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There’s a lot to say about Boris Johnson’s tenure as Prime Minister, some of it good and some of it absolutely terrible.

But before we get there, let’s pay tribute to that rather unfashionable and fusty item – the British Constitution.

The events of this week, when a Prime Minister initially refused to quit despite his own ministers lining up against him, stretched our political system to breaking point.

But it survived intact, a testament to the incredible resilience of our ancient constitutional arrangements.

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The comparisons with Donald Trump’s refusal to hand over power peacefully in the United States in January 2021 are instructive – because they are entirely wrong. The contrast with the US is stark. Here in the UK we have a parliamentary system rather than a presidential one.

Apparently, over recent days Johnson argued he should stay in power, despite a tsunami of ministerial resignations, because he had a mandate from the 13.9 million people who voted Conservative in the General Election of 2019.

But that is not how our system works. Johnson was undoubtedly personally popular back in 2019, and he played an instrumental part in that victory.

But even a big election win didn’t give Johnson a personal mandate, unlike the president of the USA. He was called upon by the Queen to form Her Majesty’s government because he was the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons. As long as he could count on the loyalty of more than half of the 650 MPs – 326 to be precise – the Prime Minister and his government were unassailable.

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In fact, voters returned 365 Conservative MPs, giving Johnson a thumping 80-seat majority to put manifesto promises into effect.

But once that support in Parliament begins to drain away, the Prime Minister, be it Johnson or anybody else, has very little power at all.

That is precisely what has happened in the last few days. The 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers was preparing to change its rules so that the Prime Minister would face another vote of no confidence (having survived one just a month ago). It became hugely unlikely he would survive that, but even if he did he would have faced a no confidence motion of the whole House of Commons. In short, without sufficient support in Parliament Johnson was a dead duck. In other words our system worked exactly as it is supposed to.

As for Johnson’s record it is decidedly mixed. I think we should be grateful to him for getting Brexit done and keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10.

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Let’s not forget that the Remainer establishment, Sir Keir Starmer to the fore, plotted to undermine and reverse the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum, the largest democratic vote in British history.

That attack on our liberties failed, largely thanks to Boris Johnson.

Another bright spot was the roll out of the Covid vaccine, which was much more rapid and efficient than neighbouring countries, and demonstrated what we could do as a country once we were set free from EU bureaucracy.

But the biggest plus for me was Johnson’s unwavering support of Ukraine in the face of Russian imperialist aggression, and a farsighted understanding of the threat to European peace posed by Vladimir Putin.

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On the downside was the whole sorry “partygate” saga, which introduced the toxic notion that people in government didn’t think they should obey the rules they imposed on everybody else.

Then there were the serial misjudgments – usually motivated by misguided loyalty – such as backing Owen Paterson, who broke lobbying rules, and recently Chris Pincher, accused of being a sex pest.

But the biggest failure for me is the whole “levelling up” agenda. Of course there is a case that the Government has been blown off course by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

But instead of low taxes, high growth and “levelling up” we have seen the highest tax burden since the 1940s, sluggish growth and the cancellation of the eastern leg of HS2 and the downgrading of Northern Powerhouse rail.

The biggest tragedy of the last three years is that having forged a new electoral bargain with northern working class voters, Boris Johnson failed to deliver on his promises.

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