The “Partygate” scandal, the revelation that Boris Johnson turned Downing Street into little more than a nightclub during confinement, has left the British Prime Minister very touched. But it’s not quite sunk yet, and while the country awaits the official report on the case he commissioned from Sue Gray, Britain’s Second Permanent Secretary of the Civil Service, Johnson is preparing a counter-attack plan to survive the most delicate moment of his tenure, and that he would have baptized as “Operation to save the Big Dog”, as revealed by various media.
Right now, the prime minister’s situation is very delicate and does not depend on himself, but on his own deputies: if 54 sign (confidentially) a motion of confidence against him, the ‘tory’ parliamentary group will vote in a ballot box and by simple majority to remain in office. If there were more no’s than yes’s, his stage at the head of the Government would come to an end. But the 54 signatures have not yet been submitted, since the person in charge of receiving and announcing it, Graham Brady, president of the ‘1922 Committee’ that regulates the election of conservative leaders, would have already done so if that were the case. Which means Johnson still has time to launch a response.
The dates that are being considered as keys to the survival of the premier are the presentation of Gray’s report -yet to be determined-, especially if he considers Johnson guilty of the parties, and the municipal elections in May. This last date is especially delicate if the results agree with recent polls, which point to a historic collapse in the support of the ‘Tories’, with half of their voters in 2019 going to abstain or to rival parties.
Operation “Big Dog” wants to try to stop these two possible blows with two movements. On the one hand, a deep cleaning of workers and officials in Downing Street, starting with Johnson’s personal secretary, Martin Reynolds, who sent the invitation to 100 employees of the government complex for one of the parties whose leak unleashed the worst of the crisis.
On the other hand, Johnson has taken out of the drawer a long list of electoral promises that he had ignored until now, and that are intended to please the most ‘Brexite’ conservative wing that propelled him to Downing Street. For example, he plans to ban Army ships from rescuing migrants they come across in the English Channel, eliminate the universal tax with which the BBC is financed, invest more money in the National Health Service or raise the restrictions against the covid next January 28.
The leaks don’t stop
The risk for Johnson is that the knowledge that he wants his employees to take the blame will unleash an even bigger wave of leaks. Of course, it does not seem to be getting better: another party held while the Queen went alone to the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip of Edinburgh, has been leaked, strictly respecting the measures against the pandemic while, a few meters away, dozens of people were drinking bottles of wine that had been sneaked into Downing Street in a briefcase into the wee hours of the morning, prompting Johnson to apologize to Buckingham Palace.
And the list goes on: on Friday, the Daily Mirror revealed – with photos – that Johnson’s team had bought a fridge to store bottles of wine at the government residence, and that “every Friday” they had a few drinks. The Times revealed that Johnson’s wife, Carrie, had organized one of them at the prime minister’s second official residence, Checkers, and that Johnson went there in violation of strict confinement restrictions. And the very leak of Johnson’s plan to hold office indicates that there is an atmosphere of ‘every man for himself’ in the heart of London.
With a general election originally scheduled for May 2024, Johnson has plenty of time to turn the tables, or at least hold on to his seat if his MPs are afraid to throw him out right now, and pray that things improve in the time that remains and that this scandal is forgotten. The danger that flies over the heads of the ‘Tories’, however, is that everything ends like John Major’s mandate: the famous ‘Black Wednesday’ in which George Soros sank the pound in 1993 occurred barely a year after his victory electoral. But that catastrophe marked him as incompetent and unleashed a thousand internal battles between the deputies who asked to trust him and those who wanted to replace him as soon as possible. When elections came around four years later, they lost half their seats in the biggest defeat in a century. Current polls point to a similar scenario: a prime minister who has incinerated the confidence of his own voters and a party on the brink of a nervous breakdown. It all depends on how Johnson manages to play his cards.
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