Matthew Flinders

UK Election: Rishi Sunak’s Move to Weaponise Information Turns into a Self-Inflicted Wound

The ‘Farage effect’ for the prime minister appears to have been to convince him that, with the opinion polls stubbornly sticking to a large Labour lead, a large dose of populist politics was the only thing that might save the day.

Could it be that British politics is slipping into some post-satire phase of confusion and condemnation?

The second full week of the 2024 election campaign was definitely beyond satire – and will probably be remembered for three things.

First and foremost, this was the week Rishi Sunak went populist. His claim that Labour’s tax plans would cost households £2,000 in tax was a form of fake news. There was never any intention to be truthful about this figure, it was merely a device for forging a simple mental association between the words “tax” and “Labour”.

It was intended to mislead, while at the same time making it possible for Sunak to deflect any blame onto anonymous Treasury officials, whom he claimed had come up with the figures. He perhaps did not bank on them calling him out.

When information is weaponised in this way, it is the repetition of the argument, rather than the credibility of the case, that matters.

This was targeted manipulation of public concerns on specific topics. “Labour is lying. Labour will cost you.”

And this is the key issue. Sunak “won” the debate only in the sense that he created a furore that revolved around “Labour+tax”. The aim was never to tell the truth: it was an attempt to tap into longstanding cultural concerns about Labour’s fiscal credibility.

Post-event analyses, truth-checkers, counterclaims, sleaze busters, bean counters and even accusations of lying risked only falling into the trap that the prime minister had sought to lay by perpetuating a debate over Labour’s tax policies.

Boris Johnson used humour to play with the truth, but this was the week that Sunak adopted a low-blow strategy.

Misfiring in every direction

This was the week that will also undoubtedly be remembered for the re-entry of the most populist celebrity politician the United Kingdom has ever known – Nigel Farage.

Sunak’s shift in style is no doubt related to this development. The “Farage effect” for the prime minister appears to have been to convince him that, with the opinion polls stubbornly sticking to a large Labour lead, a large dose of populist politics was the only thing that might save the day.

It didn’t. In weaponising information, Sunak seems to have achieved the political equivalent of a self-inflicted injury. His reputation as a prime minister appears diminished rather than bolstered. Farage’s Reform party, meanwhile, is apparently increasing in popularity to the extent that some commentators have even identified July 4 as an “extinction event” for the Conservatives.

The truth of the matter, however, is that no one “won” the television debate. British democracy lost.

Which brings us to the third defining moment of the week and the point at which Sunak really did pay the price for playing fast and loose with the truth – having to leave the D-day commemoration events early to conduct a TV interview about his election debate behaviour.

Never has a self-inflicted political injury looked quite so bad. Could the leader of the Conservative party have played into Nigel Farage’s hands any better if they’d tried? Given that Farage spent much of his “emergency” announcement speech two days previously ruing lost respect for D-day, the answer is “probably not”.

Also read: Britain’s Election Gets Nasty as Right-Wing Rival Says Sunak ‘Doesn’t Understand Our Culture’

So far, this election campaign has done nothing to shift the popular view of politics. Sunak’s screeching and shouting in the debate, plus Starmer’s refusal to provide any short, sharp, simple answers to the question of policy probably served to simply confirm the public’s increasingly embedded belief that politicians are simply not to be trusted.

The problem for British politics is that it is exactly this anti-political sentiment that persuasive populist politicians are so good at inflaming and funnelling for their own advantage.

The 2024 general election campaign was looking decidedly dull and lifeless until Farage entered the race. He clearly recognised the advantage of highlighting this state of affairs, claiming on his first day of campaigning that he would be “gingering things up”.

While a touch of colour might make things interesting for British politics, let’s hope it doesn’t come at the cost of what’s good for the health of British democracy.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

UK Parliament Releases Scathing Report on Boris Johnson’s Conduct

The committee’s total ire is revealed in a final recommendation that Johnson should not be entitled to a former member’s pass to enter the parliamentary estate.

The House of Commons committee of privileges has published its long awaited report on the conduct of Boris Johnson and the conclusions are damming. The report said:

If Mr Johnson were still a Member he should be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempts and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process, by:

a) Deliberately misleading the House

b) Deliberately misleading the Committee

c) Breaching confidence

d) Impugning the Committee and thereby undermining the democratic process of the House

e) Being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the Committee.

This is a thunderous report. It is written with the legal precision of a barrister’s pen and yet conveys the committee’s deep disgust at the behaviour of the former prime minister.

The committee’s total ire is revealed in a final recommendation that Johnson should not be entitled to a former member’s pass to enter the parliamentary estate. In the world of Whitehall and Westminster this really is expulsion from the club.

At the core of the committee’s conclusions is a psychological claim about Johnson’s worldview:

His repeated and continuing denials of the facts, for example his refusal to accept that there were insufficient efforts to enforce social distancing at gatherings … The frequency with which he closed his mind to those facts and to what was obvious so that eventually the only conclusion that could be drawn was that he was deliberately closing his mind.

Multiple biographies corroborate this account of his character. Tom Bowers’ The Gambler, Andrew Gimson’s The Rise and Fall of a Troublemaker, and Sonia Purnell’s A Tale of Blond Ambition all tell the tale of a young man who was encouraged and allowed to think that the normal rules of life did not apply to him.

His name is not even Boris, it’s Alex. “Boris” – and all the banter and buffooonery that goes along with it – emerged as an alter-ego character as he progressed through Eton and Oxford and wanted to stand out from the crowd.

Not shy, not retiring

As everyone jumps on the grave of Johnson’s political career and rejoices in what many appear to think is his final downfall it’s worth noting that Johnson has left parliament before and come back later as a rejuvenated figure. His first spell as an MP between 2001-2008 was not a success.

He was viewed by his party as too flippant, a chancer, an upstart celebrity politician who was not to be trusted. As his contemporaries like David Cameron and George Osborne were promoted Johnson’s parliamentary career flatlined to the extent that becoming the mayor of London offered a promising platform.

Johnson’s political career is not over. Rarely have four little words meant so much: “It is very sad to be leaving parliament – at least for now”. The destructive denials, rejections and deep sense of martyrdom with which the former prime minister has attempted to frame the privileges committee’s inquiry speaks to the existence of a powerful and highly populist post-parliamentary strategy.

That is a strategy which continues to promote “repeated and continuing denials” with regard to any facts that simply don’t fit into a populist narrative about the existence of an elite – “the establishment”, “the blob”, “the herd” or “them”, who are out to get “us” (the good, honest but downtrodden folk of the world).

The mind is closed to arguments that seek to moderate such a simple black-and-white world view, and Johnson presents himself as the victim of oppression. He is the ousted leader of a pro-Brexit sentiment. Before you know it Johnson is back in the game as the self-selected leader of “us” against “them”.

Tried and tested strategy

What the committee’s report may well set in train is a new and potentially dangerous post-parliamentary phase in Johnson’s career where a man who declared as a young child that he wanted to be “world king” is now released from the constraints of conventional political office.

The “good chaps theory of government” was never very good at controlling a politician who simply rejected the rules and denied the facts.

The risk, however, is that the furore surrounding the committee’s findings simply pours oil on the populist fire that Johnson wants to inflame. With a bruised ego and a need for attention, combined with undoubted charisma and growing celebrity status, Johnson is almost perfectly positioned to flame and funnel anti-political sentiment in order to boost and bolster his own political position and at some point create an opportunity to return to frontline politics.

Compared to the US, populism has arguably never really taken off in the UK. Johnson won the 2019 election for the Tories on a “populism-lite” strategy and a form of wedge politics that framed a “pro-Remain” elite as thwarting the wishes of a “pro-Leave” public.

It was the populist predilection to play fast and free with the facts that worried so many of Johnson’s parliamentary colleagues and eventually led to his ousting from No. 10. The same predilection underlines the privileges committee’s scathing report.

The success of this strategy points to a more populism-heavy approach in the future, not a quiet retirement.

Matthew Flinders is Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Denial, Detachment and the Boris Johnson ‘Partygate’ Saga

Is partygate going to be the issue that brings Johnson down? Probably not.

After months of dodging the issue, it appears that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did in fact break his own emergency laws during COVID restrictions.

The police have fined Johnson, his wife Carrie and – in a new twist to the story – Chancellor Rishi Sunak in relation to the partygate affair, which saw staff socialising in government buildings while the rest of the country was living under severe restrictions on their movements.

A No 10 spokesperson said:

“The prime minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have today received notification that the Metropolitan police intend to issue them with fixed penalty notices.”

In a video statement issued shortly after the announcement from the police, Johnson revealed that he has already paid the fine, which relates to a gathering on his birthday on June 19 2020 in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street. He said he did not think, at the time, that it broke the rules.

A few weeks ago, when the police first announced it was investigating partygate, it really did look like Johnson’s future was hanging in the balance. Since then a number of events, not least Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have shifted the political spotlight away from the prime minister’s predilection for partying.

This fresh scandal is undoubtedly bad news that the prime minister could have done without. It is unprecedented to have the holders of the top two great offices of state – prime minister and chancellor – subject to police-mandated penalties.

It’s not so much the fines that matter in this case, but the principles that have been broken to make the police fines necessary. This story of birthday cakes and Christmas quizzes has become a constitutional matter.

Ever since news first broke of government staff partying during the darkest moments of the pandemic, Johnson has consistently refused to admit that the law was broken. In recent weeks, he has been able to refer to an ongoing police investigation as cover for failing to engage with questions on the matter. He couldn’t possibly comment, he insisted, before the official inquiries reach their conclusion.

The announcement that the prime minister is among dozens of people being fined removes that defensive shield, however. It now seems almost impossible for Johnson to claim that no criminality was committed. He may well be a politician with remarkable skills but surely it’s beyond even his wily ways to somehow convince the public that a police fine is anything other than a very firm signal of criminal guilt.

Never knowingly caught out

It is at this point that the conventions written into the Ministerial Code come into play. This document sets out various expectations about the conduct of government ministers when in office, including – crucially in this case – the expectation that any minister who knowingly misleads parliament will be expected to resign.

Multiple government ministers have fallen foul of this rule over the years but it is yet to take down a prime minister.

Attention during the next hours and days is likely to turn almost exclusively to this point. The key question is whether on all of those occasions when the prime minister has previously denied that any rules were broken he was knowingly misleading parliament.

The prime minister has never spoken in parliament about the June 19 event specifically but has told MPs on several occasions that no rules were broken at other key moments – and often in terms that implied no rules were ever broken.

He has, for example, insisted to parliament that he believed one of the most controversial Downing Street gatherings to be a “work event” – suggesting that if rules were broken, he was an unwitting participant in the breach. Asked about a Christmas party in December 2020, he said “all guidance was followed completely in No. 10”.

Both leave the prime minister on difficult ground. Nor has the Metropolitan Police ruled out issuing further fines in relation to events on dates other than June 19.

The strategy

It is, in practice, highly unlikely that Johnson will admit to having lied. Saying sorry has never been his style, and an admission of treating parliament with such contempt is almost unthinkable.

Denial and detachment are by far the most likely responses.

Denial will come in the form of promoting a sense of confusion around whether the fines relate to rules, laws or regulations. Expect bluff and bluster until the wind has blown out of the issue – and perhaps another surprise trip to Ukraine.

Detachment will mean trying to shift the blame onto someone else. Johnson will continue to claim that he did not knowingly mislead the House and was simply following the essence of the advice that he himself received from officials and advisers. If he isn’t willing to accept blame, there remain plenty of other staff among those being fined who can carry the can.

Is partygate going to be the issue that brings Johnson down? At the end of the day, ousting the prime minister would require a large number of Tory backbenchers to rebel and support a vote of no confidence in him. While there is embarrassment and frustration within his party, there does not appear to be an appetite for total capitulation. Not yet.

Bar all the noise and shouting, the partygate moment has probably passed.

Matthew Flinders is founding director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Boris Johnson Could Be More in Control Than He Seems

The humiliation of asking for a Brexit extension could be a price worth paying to get an election.

“Statecraft” is not a term that springs to mind when I think about Boris Johnson. So when I heard him speaking in Dublin recently, expounding his theory that dropping out of the EU without a deal would be “a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible”, my political antennae started to twitch with more than a little vigour. Why inject this specific term into the debate at this specific moment?

Put very simply, the notion of “statecraft” relates to the skillful management of the affairs of the state. It is therefore indelibly linked to the maintenance of political power through legitimate and illegitimate means.

From an intellectual and historical perspective Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) provides one of the earliest treatise on effective statecraft. From a very different perspective, Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution (1867) remains pertinent today due to the manner in which it lifted the lid on the inter-woven and essentially statecraft-related relationships through which the country was governed. More recently, political scientist Jim Bulpitt’s “statecraft thesis” explored how leaders seek to win elections by demonstrating a necessary degree of governing competence in office.

Also read: ‘Traitors, Betrayal, Surrender’: British Politics Word War Fuels Division

All of this is why I sat up when Johnson spoke about the “failure of statecraft” just as he was about to prorogue parliament. It made me wonder if, despite the semblance of chaos, there is a more refined approach to statecraft going on right under our noses.

Cat-and-mouse

Johnson is in a pickle (not for the first time). He has set himself up as the no nonsense strong leader who would rather be “dead in a ditch” than go back to Brussels and ask for another Brexit extension. The prickly problem is that parliament has underlined that the UK is a parliamentary state in both theory and practice by working around his prorogation to rapidly produce legislation to force him to seek a Brexit extension rather than allow a no-deal departure on October 31. And if a prime minister cannot control the House of Commons they really can’t control much at all.

What we have witnessed in recent weeks is the most amazing game of constitutional cat-and-mouse. The legislature and executive have been locked into an unedifying process of outflank and counterflank. Constitutional niceties have been cast out.

The “failure of statecraft” thesis propounded by Johnson is part of this game. Confounded by Westminster, the prime minister’s latest move is to try to discredit the whole system.

Johnson’s statecraft

It is, of course, possible to argue that democratic politics is working. The divisions and tensions at Westminster are simply reflecting the existence of deep divides across the country. By inflaming the narrative that politics is not working, Johnson seeks to not only place the blame for having to request an extension onto “them” (the elite, the establishment, opponents and critics, and so on) but also to frame himself as the political saviour of an ailing system that urgently requires a strong leader. In this context, nostalgia for a golden past possesses an ironic position at the heart of a vision of the future.

But is it really possibly to identify a Borisonian statecraft or is it closer to the truth to see Johnson as little more than a crafty politician?

The answer is that it is far too soon to tell. But it isn’t too soon to suggest that underneath that often bumbling and buffoon-like exterior there is in fact an incredibly ambitious and strategically calculating politician.

Also read: Boris Johnson’s Spokesman Denies Allegations of PM Groping Journalist

In the current context of anti-political sentiment there is a wave of anger, frustration and outrage just waiting to be funnelled as fuel by those who are happy to engage in populist pitchfork politics. If Johnson has a vision of successful statecraft then it is unquestionably tied to a populist strategy that does indeed seek to fuel and funnel frustration. The “failure of statecraft” narrative is simply part of this ploy.

If this is correct then one might also legitimately ask if the strategy seems to be working. This is where Johnson may well be being far more crafty than many people appear to realise. A focus on the day-to-day – if not hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute – constitutional games risks not being able to see the wood for the trees. The main objective for Johnson is securing a general election, and being forced to eat humble pie and request an extension may well be a price worth paying.

Unless the opposition parties come together in a strategic alliance, which is highly unlikely, the “Remain” vote in that election is likely to be shared across a number of parties. The “Leave” vote, by contrast, will be concentrated behind the Tories, with Johnson soaking up disaffection and securing a majority. “What about the Brexit Party?” you may well ask. Johnson could well do a deal with Farage, and at the same time gain even greater control over the influx of new Tory MPs.

Populism as a mode of statecraft may actually work very well for Johnson. It’s democracy that will carry the cost.

Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson: The Jester Takes the Throne

Parliamentarians and party members have held their noses and voted in a man deeply unsuited to lead. Now the British public must live with their choice.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, to paraphrase Shakespeare. Heavy because power brings with it responsibilities that are not to be taken lightly – jaunty laughter, bluff and bluster will quickly fall upon the rocks of political reality.

Britain is doomed. It has allowed the court jester to take the throne.

Too harsh? I think not. Too partisan? Not at all.

The tragedy of this tale is that the idea of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, walking into Number 10 also fills me with a sense of doom and gloom.

There is a common assumption that, one way or another, Boris Johnson’s promotion will lead to an early general election, in which case the great British public will enjoy a simple choice – chaos with a blond bouffant, or disaster in cycling clips. Just mark your ballot with a grubby little pencil that’s tied to an even grubbier piece of string.

Why do I sense that large numbers of people won’t bother to engage with such a dismal decision?

Heavy are the heads of the party members who voted for the jester. Heavy because it is they who must take some responsibility. Charisma, celebrity stardust and Churchillian quips are not enough, and when all goes wrong (note “when” not “if”) it will be to the Conservative party that the nation turns and asks: “What have you done?”

Also read: Boris Johnson Set to Be UK’s New Prime Minister

Can there ever have been a man more ill-suited to high public office? Take this insider verdict, for example: “That he’s a habitual liar, a cheat, a conspirator with a criminal pal to have an offending journalist’s ribs broken, a cruel betrayer of the women he seduces, a politician who connived in a bid for a court order to suppress mention of a daughter he fathered, a do-nothing mayor of London and the worst foreign secretary in living memory.”

Too harsh? I think not. Too partisan? Not at all. This is, in fact, the view of a former Conservative MP – Matthew Parris.

Heavy are the heads that held their tongues and lined up behind the jester. “Ministerial-itis” – as Gerald Kaufman famously explained – is a particularly dangerous disease. The desire for advancement among backbenchers can corrupt even the most sensible member.

Faustian pact

The ministerial ladder has always been smothered in grease – and it has generally been the prime minister doing the smothering. Ministerial wannabees suggest that the extra risk that comes with Johnson was “priced in” to their decision to support him. Wake up, you fools, from your sleepy slumber! Bargaining with Boris is a Faustian pact you can only ever lose.

Heavy are the heads that held the jester’s hand and led him to the throne. You held him back, shut his mouth and tamed his hair. You knew that the biggest threat to Boris was Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and you saved him from himself. He waved a kipper as you sold a kipper; and it’s the British public who will now pay the price.

Democratic politics really is the slow boring of hard wood. It is dull and exhausting, based on delegation and compromise. It is slow and steady, it’s about listening more than talking, it’s about emotional intelligence and a moral compass, and founded on trust, not humour. It’s not a joke, no laughing matter. It demands the conscientious absorption of detail. Can you spot the problem?

The truth is that the jester has ridden on many backs on his way to the throne. But the ride is now over. He’s achieved his ambition. From now on he will live or die on the basis of his own political skill and cunning.

The only good thing about prime minister Johnson is that he has nowhere to hide. The ice is very thin beneath the throne and leadership can be a very lonely business.

Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.