The single most significant outcome of Boris Johnson's resignation has been the media-driven proposal that the Conservative Party leadershp contest be cut short by dropping the membership vote and relying solely on the say of MPs. The same MPs who recently backed him, however reluctantly, in a confidence vote. Though it is coded as a demand that Johnson should "go now", as if his continued presence was an unconscionable risk to the polity and an affront to civic virtue, this is clearly nothing more than an anti-democratic manoeuvre, hence it has been supported as strongly by Keir Starmer and Ed Davey as by John Major. Johnson's claim of a personal mandate has been contemptuously dismissed, but more in order to stymie the implicitly populist idea that people vote for Prime Ministers rather than to highlight his egotism. While the fussy constitutionalists of the liberal media insist that the only personal mandate is that of the constituency MP, and one strong enough to allow the individual to switch party without the need for a by-election, the reality is that Johnson's appeal was undoubtedly necessary to get the Tories over the line in 2019.
Despite being a serial liar, he was trusted by a majority of the electorate to "get Brexit done", whatever that might mean, and you can't say that he didn't deliver on his promise with the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act of 2020. That might be a comically flawed peiece of legislation that already looks in danger of unravelling because of its inherent contradictions and occlusions, but it is what people voted for and they did so through its embodiment in the comically flawed character of Johnson. Those who imagine that this marks the nadir of our co-habitation with the EU, and that we can now look forward to a steadily improving relationship that culminates in at least our accession to the customs union at some future point, are likely to be disappointed. If Keir Starmer has made one thing clear, it is that membership of the EU comes a long way down his list of priorities, and there is little chance of a future Conservative Party leader campaigning to reverse Brexit for the rest of this decade.
In their heart of hearts, liberal commentators know this, but their bitterness is not really directed at the flotsam and jetsam of history like Johnson, which will inevitably bob away on the waves, but at the damn fool electorate of 2016 who wilfully sank the ship of state. As we head into the dog days of summer, we are witnessing what may prove to be the final chapter in a slow coup d'etat that commenced in the aftermath of the 2017 general election, with Jeremy Corbyn as the initial focus of its anti-populist ire, but whose roots go back to the momentous EU referendum of the previous year: the only time in recent memory when the electorate failed to behave responsibly in the eyes of the politico-media caste. The PLP in particular has an obvious vested interest in a return to the old days of party leaders being elected exclusively within the walls of Westminster, and not simply because there may shortly be a vacancy for Labour leader if the Durham Constabulary decide Starmer's beer and curry deserves a fixed penalty notice.
Against the backdrop of rigged PPC selections and partisan trigger ballots against the left, marginalising the membership is clearly the order of the day and the return to an MP-only selectorate would cap the reactionary movement. Whether they can pull it off is another matter. Despite doing their level best to abolish the membership through expulsions and a return to the deliberately rebarbative constituency practices of old, it is difficult to envisage the party turning its back so decisvely on democracy without suffering at the polls, however much support it may garner from a press obsessed with "grown-ups". As the strike ballots that have marked the early summer should indicate, the wider labour movement is very much committed to democracy (as an interesting aside, consider the continuing resonance of a near-forty-year-old strike ballot in James Graham's recent Sherwood). Starmer's insistence that the Labour Party does not support or encourage industrial action is not simply an attempt to get conservative voters on-side. It is consistent with his over-riding belief in cartel politics and his contempt for popular activism.
There might appear to be a contradiction in the press demands for greater competence and virtue among MPs and ministers, given that all the evidence since the financial crisis of 2008 and the expenses scandal of 2009 suggests that the political system continues to promote the incompetent and venal, something that has been exhaustively revealed by that same press, but we must never underestimate the media's firm belief that a change in personnel is all that is needed to restore harmony: a belief common to political commentary since the days of Plato, and probably before that. There is little self-reflection on its own role in the promotion of the patently unqualified and dodgy. Indeed, what future historians may note about Johnson's career was how willing the media was to overlook his obvious failings simply because he was an effective weapon that could be wielded against the left: first Ken Livingstone in London and then Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster. Jonathan Freedland describes this as being "lucky in his opponent", but luck had nothing to do with it. Johnson was, and remains, a creature of the press.
Perhaps the most insulting comment on the last 24 hours came from another centrist drone at the Guardian when Gaby Hinsliff insisted that "the Conservative party owes this country an apology", as if the Tories were a surly teenager who had been rude at the table. To read her, you'd think that the press had played absolutely no role in the elevation of "a lightweight and a liar". Predictably, she is part of the claque demanding immediate change at Number 10: "Convention may dictate that a prime minister who loses a vote of confidence carries on running the country, for the sake of continuity, until a successor is chosen. But doing so requires sensitivity, diplomacy and the ability to put people’s needs above your own. Who imagines Johnson capable of that? He’d rather take his enemies down with him, leaving nothing but scorched earth." Here we see both an appeal to virtue as justification for ignoring the conventions that liberals otherwise idolise, and a blindness to all the acts of centrist self-sabotage that marred the EU referendum and fuelled the campaign against Corbyn. Instead we are to be terrified of a domestic Götterdämmerung that probably won't go beyond chucking cake at expensive wallpaper.
Her solution is for a quick decision among MPs that implicitly ignores the party membership: "At the very least, the Conservative party must now organise the swiftest succession possible, coalescing quickly around a successor rather than plodding through an endless summer of hustings while a vacuum develops at the top". This requires her to big up the party's elite - "The cabinet emerging from Thursday morning’s surreal reshuffle looks slightly more grownup than expected" - but also to suggest that differences be put aside in the paramount interest of sensible government: "Brexiter Tories must keep stressing that ditching Johnson was not some factional coup but a decision that united leavers and remainers". Like Hinsliff, Freedland is happy to rhetorically yoke Johnson to Trump, despite the lack of real similarity in either policy or manner (Trump is closer to Bolsonaro; Johnson to Berlusconi). For all the wibble about "toxic spells" and "nightmares", what comes across is not simply relief at the political passing of one individual bad guy, but the fervent belief that this marks the end of the "populist" interlude.
I suspect the press campaign to ignore the party membership and restore exclusive leadership election rights to MPs will fail, not least because it is difficult to put the genie of democracy back in the bottle once released. But that campaign will never concede defeat, particularly if a Labour leadership election is in the offing. It is amusing to witness senior Tories, defending the right of the party membership to have the decisive say in the election of a new leader, being upbraided by the liberal press for not immediately declaring a state of exception. But it's worth stepping back for a moment and asking how we came to such a pass. The inability of contemporary liberals to see how illiberal they have become in a whole range of areas, from democracy to trans rights, really needs an explanation beyond the charge of rank hypocrisy or innate Toryism. I don't have a simple answer for this (though I do have a long and convoluted one), but what I do know is that their language over the last 48 hours (indeed over the last few years) has worrying echoes of that used by "the party of order" in advance of more violent coups d-etat elsewhere, and it is this, rather than the hyperbolic claims that "Johnson will leave scorched earth", that we should be attuned to.
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