In his classic
Homage to Wilson and Callaghan (published in the
London Review of Books in October 1991), the Australian academic, Ross McKibbin memorably argued that, after over a decade of Conservative Government, British politicos were now in a position 'analogous to Edwardian Britain, where it was political death to question the wisdom of free trade despite ubiquitous evidence of the destructive consequences of this'.
The crucial difference in the final decade of the 20th century, McKibbin noted, was that 'unlike the Edwardians, we are without a government able to construct a coherent compensating policy,' instead possessing a paralysed administration which 'stands helplessly by hoping that what is all too likely to happen does not'.
Thirty years on from the publication of this stinging rebuke of his administration – released as he grappled with the first NATO summit after the conclusion of the Cold War and the aftermath of the Handsworth Riots at home – Sir John Major appeared on the
Today programme to pan Boris Johnson's steering of the Ship of State in 2021. After a little over two years at the helm, the deliberately-tousle-haired former Mayor of London appears ever more out of his depth, overseeing a stagnant and rudderless administration, mired in seemingly perpetual allegations of persistent misconduct.
As David Mellor, the former chief secretary to the Treasury turned opera and classical music critic, told Sky News on Sunday, the government is 'a shambles, and that's only on good days,' with the majority of Conservative MPs acting 'like kids at a party wanting to keep daddy happy'.
As such, 250 MPs chose to support an attempt by Andrea Leadsom and Jacob Rees-Mogg to overturn Owen Paterson's suspension from parliament, despite him having approached 14 ministers and officials on behalf of Randox and Lynn's Foods (who paid him more than £9,000 a month as a 'consultant'), committing what the House of Commons Committee on Standards called an 'egregious' breach of parliament's lobbying rules.
In his contempt for any sort of restraint on his political libido, the Prime Minister increasingly vindicates the opinion of his Etonian housemaster who once remarked that Johnson's guiding principle was that he was 'an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else'. The one consolation in this case was that, as Ian Hislop highlighted on
Have I Got News For You, it was 'so bloody blatant that even they didn't get away with it'.
This exceptionalism was on full display to most of the international community at COP26 in Glasgow last week. At one world leaders' event on clean technology innovation and deployment – where the PM should have focused on promoting the five Glasgow 'breakthroughs' (covering the power, road transport, steel and agriculture sectors as well as hydrogen production) – he began by wishing delegates a 'good evening' (despite it being three in the afternoon…) before riffing inconsequentially about microwaves and lauding the importance of 'guilt-free' sustainable aviation, despite it not being one of the breakthroughs.
Hundreds of civil servants and policy experts have undoubtedly worked tirelessly to make COP26 and the UK's COP presidency for the year ahead a success, ensuring that the international community makes real progress on reversing the climate disaster. However, the Prime Minister approached the most important international event of his Premiership with all the diligence and finesse of an entitled, overblown sixth former, improvising at a debating society social.
It is no great revelation that the man at the top possesses all the sensitivity of a 1970's club comic asking his audience 'how many gays it takes to change a lightbulb?' Indeed, that is the basis of his appeal. A certain section of Conservative voters view the government's disregard for the sanctity and esteem of parliament, and its habit of reacting 'not with understanding, not with trying to placate what has gone wrong,' as Sir John noted, 'profoundly un-Conservative'.
Alastair Campbell highlighted on 7 November that, such is the standard of contemporary politics, Major's sharp and clinical assessment of Johnson's Government was 'like listening to a grown-up reading out markings on the homework of a bottom of the class child'.
After a week in which the government disregarded any pretence of respecting the system for maintaining standards in public life, Google calculated that web searches for 'sleaze' reached a five-year high, with the most damning assessment coming from Lord Evans (the former director general of the Security Service and current chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life). As Evans told the Institute for Government's Conference on Ethical Standards in Government, it is 'hard to see how yesterday's actions in any way meet' the 'Seven Principles of Public Life' which Lord Nolan established in 1995.
The exact wording of the Nolan principles has been amended in the quarter of a century since they were ingrained into British public life, but the seven fundamental values remain the same: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. In his conduct of the Premiership since July 2019, it is evident that the current incumbent of Number 10 subscribes to none of these. As Lord Evans highlights, whilst 'ethical standards have always been used as a party-political weapon,' today 'party political gain is seen too often as a higher priority than adhering to the rules and norms that uphold ethical standards'.
While I typically subscribe to Peter Riddell's maxim that politicians are generally likeable 'in spite of themselves' with most possessing 'a genuine commitment to public service… helping their constituents and the public', I struggle to find a single redeeming feature of this Prime Minister and am utterly exhausted by having a government that, as Andrew Rawnsley wrote in
The Observer, 'chafes against any restraints on the abuse of its power'.
Where Lord Nolan was once said to have made 'a profound mark on national life by substantially cleansing the Augean stable of corrupt politics', Boris Johnson has – if not irreparably, then at least for a generation – polluted public life, embedding cronyism, promoting the worse-than-useless, and teaching a generation of parliamentarians that the expedient should always triumph over the common weal.
Tom Chidwick is a contemporary historian, who splits his time between London and Edinburgh. He is currently writing a history of the 1979 referendum on the creation of a Scottish Assembly
