Politics

Westminster hums with speculation over this question: would Prime Minister Boris Johnson call a snap election?

The temptation of an autumn ballot will be great but the risks could be even greater

June 21, 2019
Photo: Han Yan/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images
Photo: Han Yan/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

Boris Johnson is known to be a gambler when it comes to the fate of the country. He piled his political chips on the Leave campaign in 2016 and spun the wheel. His ministerial record and his private life are punctuated with wanton disregard for everyone besides himself. The man who is almost certain to be Britain's next prime minister has a maverick reputation, but his adventurousness is the slippery, devious kind that outsources real danger to others. When it comes to his own fortune, Johnson is cautious, even cowardly.

His campaign method, practised in two London mayoral races, is the opposite of the free-wheeling improvisatory style that first won audiences for the character crafted as “Boris.” Under the tutelage of Australian pollster and strategist Lynton Crosby, Johnson has learned to stay out of the limelight except when it flatters him and to keep his mouth shut if there is no obligation to speak. He is not marching on Downing Street, he is sidling up to it. The goal is to reach the destination having made as few public commitments as possible. For Johnson a “gaffe” qualifies as any statement that might be used to hold him to account.

But once he acquires that power, he must decide almost immediately whether to gamble it all on a double or quits bet: a general election in pursuit of a majority in parliament. Conversations with MPs have left me in no doubt that this move is under consideration by Johnson and his team, although they cannot admit it in public. The Tory party collectively recoils from a national poll for obvious reasons. They were savaged by Nigel Farage's Brexit Party in the recent European parliamentary poll. The memory of June 2017, when Theresa May threw away what looked like an unassailable lead over Jeremy Corbyn's Labour, is still raw. Johnson might be a much better campaigner than May but no one imagines that the Conservative machine is battle-ready and no one is in a hurry to test it before Britain has left the EU. Only a masochist party willingly goes into a general election on 20 points, which is all that one recent opinion poll gives the Tories.

And yet Westminster is humming with speculation about an autumn ballot. Why? There is always the possibility it happens by accident. The fixed-term parliaments act makes it harder to call a snap election or to engineer one by voting down a dysfunctional government, but the levers are still there. If Johnson lurches too aggressively towards a no-deal Brexit it is feasible that a handful of MPs will renounce the Tory whip and, without the confidence of the Commons, his administration falls.

That is just one of the messy scenarios arising from the fact that Prime Minister Johnson would face the same three-tiered fence that tripped May: the existing Brexit deal is unpopular; no better deal is available; there is no stable majority in parliament for anything else. The last of those features is the most movable part and so the temptation is obviously to move it. The arguments for going to the country quickly are roughly as follows:

First, a new leader normally gets some kind of honeymoon poll bounce. It isn't a cast iron law of politics but it is a trend. It is also in the nature of honeymoons that they wane. Given Brexit problems down the track, it is almost certain that the new prime minister will be unpopular within months. So cash in popularity while it is there.

Second, Corbyn will not be the opponent forever. Labour might one day change its leader. Johnson's supporters claim he has unique charms that extend well beyond the normal range of Tory leaders. That is debatable. He is also uniquely repellent to some voters. But there is little doubt that the prospect of Corbyn in Downing Street is a mobilising factor for wavering Conservatives. Even floating liberals recoil from the idea. The Labour leader's personal polling is abysmal. May bungled her campaign against him but she was handicapped by the widespread notion that victory was in the bag, so a vote for the opposition felt safely remote from the proposition of an actual Corbyn government. That wouldn't be the case now.

It is also possible—and Tory strategists claim to have evidence to support this hypothesis—that Johnson could win back enough Brexit Party voters that Farage's campaign does more damage to Labour in its heartland seats than to Conservatives. Whether that could or should involve some kind of semi-formal pact is a separate subject of fevered debate in Westminster corridors.

Third, the legitimacy question will toxify everything without an election. May's threadbare, hand-me-down mandate will sit very uncomfortably on the shoulders of a man who is appointed by Tory members alone. The manner of Johnson's accession would be constitutionally unprecedented and democratically dubious. That makes it harder to deploy “the will of the people” as justification for any particular Brexit model, least of all a rock-hard one. Johnson isn't likely to be overly concerned with constitutional propriety but the appeal of having his own mandate—and being able to conflate the popular will with his own personality—must be immense. That is also a reason to think he will not veer towards another referendum to break the Brexit impasse. Not only is it a deeply unpopular idea in his party but it doesn't solve the structural problem of a hung parliament that would endure beyond any plebiscite and so bedevil the implementation of anything agreed by it.

Militating against all of those arguments is terror of defeat. Johnson has not machinated his whole life to become the shortest-serving prime minister ever. Those MPs who doubt he will go for an early poll cite the psychological hyper-caution that afflicts everyone who gets their feet under the desk in No 10. It is a lot easier to think of reasons to stay in the job once you have it than to think of reasons to risk losing it all.

But it is also a lot harder to do the job effectively if the public don't think you have properly earned it. That will be Johnson's dilemma on day one. He will have the thing he has always craved, but on painfully constrained terms. He will feel like a child who gets the toy but not the batteries to make it work. When it comes to Brexit, Johnson is a master of boastful bluster. His pitch is that sheer will and national self-belief can overcome every obstacle. If only people wanted it more, and were prepared to go for it with sufficient gusto, the dark clouds would dissipate and brilliant blue skies appear. His pitch to the Tory membership is much the same: they are not meant to interrogate practical ways in which he will deliver them from polling doldrums and parliamentary deadlock. They just need to believe in Boris. And apparently they do. But does he? Deep down, does he think any of it will work? Will he put his own money where his mouth is, once it is his own place in Downing Street and in history on the gaming table?