Keep Cummings and Carry On: How Johnson’s Bet Could Backfire
Keep Cummings and Carry On: How Johnson’s Bet Could Backfire
(Bloomberg) -- An hour into his grilling on a video call with Parliament’s most senior interrogators, Prime Minister Boris Johnson broke into a fit of coughing.
It was a brief reminder that he had been through worse times in recent weeks, surviving a severe bout of Covid-19 that had put him in intensive care.
Yet the current row over claims that his closest aide flouted the government’s own lockdown orders may still do more harm to his long-term prospects than any of the colorful episodes that have peppered his career so far.
Over the course of 100 minutes of Zoom evidence to the Commons Liaison Committee on Wednesday afternoon, the premier faced repeated hostile questioning about the behavior of his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.
The aide has admitted to driving 260 miles to his parents’ home in search of help with childcare during the peak of the pandemic, at a time when the government was instructing Britons to “stay at home.” The issue has enraged the public, and some 40 of Johnson’s own Tory MPs have broken ranks to condemn Cummings for hypocrisy and demand he be fired. One minister even quit the government in protest.
Some of the sharpest questions Johnson faced Wednesday came from his own Conservative colleagues, many of whom have been deluged with hundreds of messages of outrage from their own constituents and local party members.
Will the government conduct an investigation into whether Cummings himself broke rules? No, said Johnson. Will the prime minister apologize to a nation of voters who are furious at the perceived double standards and hypocrisy? Johnson was sorry, but not for that.
Pain and Heartbreak
“I am sorry for the pain, as I’ve said, the anguish and the heartbreak of so many people in this country,” Johnson said. “What we need to do now as politicians, as leaders, if we possibly can, is to set aside this row -- because I’m afraid a lot of the allegations turned out to be totally false -- and to move on.”
The prime minister has made his choice. Cummings is going nowhere. Wednesday was the third time in four days that Johnson has come out in public to defend Cummings. The adviser himself has only appeared once, in a highly unusual press conference surrounded by flowers in Johnson’s garden.
The premier’s gamble is that it will be possible to tough it out, stubbornly refuse to give in to the clamor for blood, and the story will eventually go away. It’s a tactic he has used before. A year ago, he refused to comment when asked about a domestic argument with his fiancee that his neighbors reported to police just as he launched his bid for the party leadership. The storm blew over.
He has brushed aside accusations that the pro-Brexit campaign he led sold the public lies, notably about Turkey’s accession to the European Union and the amount of money that the taxpayer contributes to the bloc each week.
Johnson also refused to engage with the controversy over what the tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri described as her “very special relationship” with him while he was London Mayor. Nor would he say directly in a TV interview before last year’s election how many children he had.
Still Winning
None of these things made much difference to Johnson’s fortunes. Media commentators and politicians in London were unimpressed. But Johnson won the Brexit referendum in 2016, the Tory leadership in 2019 and then the election -- handsomely -- last December.
The fear among Conservatives is that this time might be different. While the next election isn’t due for four years, the Cummings row has cut through to the public in a way few issues do. Britain now has the second-highest virus death toll worldwide and Johnson’s much-criticized handling of the pandemic has left him vulnerable to a reckoning from voters in the years ahead.
The danger for Johnson will come if tens of millions of people who have spent two frightening months locked away in their homes feel personally wronged by his aide’s alleged hypocrisy -- and outraged by his own endorsement of it. Polls show Johnson’s approval ratings sank by 20 points in four days after the story broke. Surveys indicate the majority of people think Cummings should lose his job. The Conservative Party’s own ratings have also been hit, and Tory MPs are increasingly worried.
So far, every time Johnson tries to draw a line under this episode, another Conservative goes public to say he’s getting it wrong. More senior figures are waiting to weigh in, if the negative headlines keep coming and Johnson keeps refusing to act.
If that continues, the party leader will be in danger of appearing seriously out of touch, not just with voters but also with his own MPs. Such a loss of authority may make governing far harder when the emergency is over and the painful job of rebuilding the economy begins.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.