And this time, it’s much worse than all the other times.
On Tuesday evening, after days when Downing Street has been on the ropes for handling allegations of sexual misconduct by a member of the government, two senior cabinet ministers resigned.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he could not continue “in good conscience”. Finance Minister Rishi Sunak also resigned, saying people “rightly expect the government to be carried out properly, competently and seriously.”
The immediate cause of the crisis was the aftermath of the resignation last Thursday of Deputy Director Chris Pincher, amid allegations that he had run into two guests at a private dinner the night before. Although he did not directly admit the allegations, Pincher said in a letter to Johnson that “last night I drank too much” and “I was ashamed of myself and others.” press officers tried to explain why Pincher was never in government in the first place, amid a wave of revelations of his previous conduct. On Tuesday, a former high-ranking official issued a letter effectively accusing Downing Street of not telling the truth when he said the prime minister was unaware of at least one of the historic allegations.
in an effort to draw a line under the swirling controversy, Johnson issued a statement apologizing and saying he had been wrong to re-appoint Pincher to the whip’s office –which, ironically, is responsible of party discipline– earlier this year. But that was overcome in a matter of minutes by the resignation of the two cabinet members.
Details of how Downing Street got into a bear mess. At first, when new reports emerged about Pincher’s historic conduct in light of his resignation, Downing Street initially denied that the prime minister knew anything about the allegations.
When it became clear that this would not apply, Johnson’s team said it was aware of the historic allegations, but that they had been “resolved.” When he realized that one of the previously unreported allegations against Pincher had been confirmed, Johnson’s spokesman explained that “resolved” could mean it had been upheld.
Then, Tuesday morning, Simon McDonald, the former senior Secretary of State, revealed that Johnson had been informed in person about the outcome of an investigation into Pincher’s conduct.
Regardless of any justification Downing Street has tried to provide, Johnson’s trial – and his handling of this latest crisis – is now in serious doubt.
A common theme of the many scandals surrounding him, from “Partygate” when Johnson was fined by police for violating the blocking rules, to his attempts to protect a deputy who had breached the rules of lobby, is how the government has mismanaged the consequences. of the initial problem.
“The biggest threat to this government is its own startling incompetence,” a senior government official said. “Discipline has been completely broken.”
“The team surrounding the prime minister seems to have no idea how bad it is going,” they added. “No one is good at giving interviews. We can’t stay with a single line. We’ve completely lost control.”
A government minister told CNN that they believe a key issue is that Johnson sets the tone for the behavior.
“It’s hard for someone with a personal life as colorful as theirs to reprimand people for behaving inappropriately,” they said.
The growing sense of chaos – and the view that the government has lost control of another story – does nothing for conservatives who think Johnson has become the party’s biggest electoral diversion.
Both the prime minister’s personal approval ratings and party poll numbers have plummeted since the Partygate scandal erupted. Confidence in Johnson as a leader seems to be breaking with both the public and his own MPs. Conservative lawmakers tried – and failed – to overthrow him last month.
But Conservative MPs are beginning to lose hope that even if Johnson is ousted from power, it will not be possible to undo the damage he has done to the party before the next elections scheduled for 2024.
Even more troubling for those who have lost faith in the prime minister, he seems determined to continue fighting.
This alarms Conservative MPs, especially those with marginal seats who have almost lost hope of retaining them. Few of them think Johnson has real control over how bad things have gone, and they see no way to make the Prime Minister make sense.
The government’s mismanagement of Pincher’s resignation makes the scandal now personally linked to Johnson. It was he who chose to appoint Pincher to a top-level position in government, despite knowing how serious the charges against him were, and even though he was aware that a complaint against him had been accepted.
For years, Johnson’s main selling point has been his ability to connect with voters in person. His brand of optimistic populism was, as Conservative MPs thought, the force of nature that had caused the majority of the British population to vote for Brexit in 2016 and had given the Conservatives a parliamentary majority of 80 in 2019.
But as the Johnson administration moves from crisis to crisis, its MPs now fear they are learning in the hardest way what happens when a populist loses its popularity.