Boris Johnson, like many Conservative leaders before him, is now the hostage to his party’s ungovernable tendency
At the start of the pandemic, Boris Johnson had the parliamentary majority and the personal authority to dictate a response. Now he has neither. Tuesday’s huge backbench Tory rebellion demonstrated that a large section of the party has lost the will to impose the social restrictions that are necessary to curb the spread of Covid. That insurrection was partly ideological, reflecting a paranoid libertarian view of public health measures as the gateway to tyranny. But partly it expressed a loss of patience with the whole manner of Mr Johnson’s government – the dishonesty that draws MPs into complicity with venal practice, which in turn makes them unpopular with their constituents.
The danger now is a vicious cycle: a disgruntled party makes life impossible for Downing Street, leading to ever more dysfunctional government, which feeds public discontent that is then fed back to MPs. That is traditionally a death spiral for Tory leaders, although Mr Johnson’s resilience should never be underestimated. In any case, the coming months are sure to be marked by internecine Tory squabbles that distract ministers from the task of managing a health emergency. It is hard to conceive of a worse time for the ruling party to beat such an unruly retreat from responsibility.
