Front Burner - Boris Johnson survives ‘partygate,’ for now

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

On Monday evening, the U.K. Conservative Party held a vote to determine whether it should oust its leader, Boris Johnson. More than 40 per cent of his own MPs voted against him. This, after a damning report from senior civil servant Sue Gray, which added to a long list of revelations about the so-called ‘partygate’ scandal. The report details several parties with dozens of participants, excess drinking and physical altercations at 10 Downing Street — all during the height of COVID-19 restrictions in Britain. Today, CBC foreign correspondent Chris Brown brings us up to speed on Johnson’s scandals, and what this vote means for his leadership moving forward.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Despite all the festivities, like the hologram of the Queen in a golden carriage and the 400 drones flown in the shape of a corgi, it's been a rough stretch for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. On Friday, as crowds gathered at St Paul's Cathedral in London to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee, Mr Johnson was greeted like this.

The Prime Minister just arriving with his wife. It's quite booing in the crowd though. And you can hear it, there is really quite a lot of booing actually. A substantial amount. Didn't see that, there is really quite a lot of booing, actually. Wow. A substantial amount. I didn't see that coming. It's quite a moment. Then, on Sunday, word came down that enough of his own Conservative Party wanted him gone that it would have to be put to a vote.

On Monday, he survived that vote, but not by any impressive margin, despite how he tried to spin it to a skeptical press. I think it's a convincing result, a decisive result. What it means is that as a government, we can move on and focus on the stuff that I think really matters to people. Sorry, I think it's a decisive result. And your allies wanted her to go straight away. How is this different? How can you possibly continue?

More than 40% of Conservative MPs cast a ballot to oust him. This less than three short years after his 2019 landslide victory. Today, my colleague Chris Brown is here to explain how Johnson has stumbled from his previous heights, but still manages to hang on. Hey Chris, thank you very much for making the time. Great to be here. Thanks, Jamie. So the last time we talked about Boris Johnson, it was back in January with our colleague Margaret Evans.

And at the time, Partygate was already in full swing. On the 20th of May 2020, at the height of lockdown, there was a bring your own booze party in the Downing Street garden. 30 to 40 people drank, including the Prime Minister, to make the most of the lovely weather. This is a scandal about Boris Johnson and his staff partying while the country was in Covid lockdown. On Monday night, Boris Johnson wins this vote of no confidence.

And tell me a bit about the reaction to that win in the UK right now. I think my favorite headline since then has been actually pretty, it's almost cliche, but it's quite true. It's dead man walking. And that was in The Times. And, you know, it's very difficult to see this as anything. What's the word? Pyrrhic?

I have trouble saying it, but it's a victory that doesn't really feel like a victory because he did win 211 votes to 148. But it's going to be very difficult for him to continue on, not just as leader of his party, but just as the leader of the UK with very, very difficult decisions to make. as the leader of the UK with very, very difficult decisions to make, knowing that so many of his own people, the people closest to him, the people who he helped get elected, actually don't want him as their leader anymore. It feels like it's going to be kind of awkward now, right? For all of these people that voted against him. What do they do now? Well, he has tried to say in the time since the vote

that, look, we have to put it all past us. He did initially come out and say, look, this is a very decisive victory, which was really an eyeball roller. But his message has been, we've got important work to do. He's already scheduled a couple of big speeches. There's going to be one on housing. There's going to be perhaps an announcement of tax cuts.

So all of this, I think, is his way to try to change the channel to put it back on to governing. But as I say, there's a lot of people within his party that simply aren't going to let him do that. My right honourable friend well knows the rules apply to him as much to all of us. And the rules of this house are clear that anybody who comes here and deliberately lies and misleads this house should leave their position. Let's get back to those guys in a minute. But first, if we can back up a little bit and talk a little bit more about how we got here. So since we talked about Partygate the last time, there have been some pretty significant developments.

The police even got involved. And how did that go? What happened? It didn't go well, not at all, not for Boris Johnson. They looked at a total of 12 incidents at No. 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's residence, but also an office and hundreds and hundreds of people work there. So it does double duty. This is where the whole party gate term came from, because there were some pretty wild parties at number 10 Downing Street over the course of the COVID-19 lockdown. And we're talking garden parties, going away parties, quiz parties,

Christmas party, you name it. So the police looked at 12 of them, and they handed out fines to some 83 people. Some people, in fact, got more than one fine. And Boris Johnson and his wife, Carrie, they got fines too, 50-pound fines, which they paid right away. So it wasn't insignificant at all. And just talking about quiz parties for a second, maybe an interesting fact here, that 50 pound fine, that was the first time ever a sitting British PM has been fined for breaking the law. Well, and what made it worse, too, was that when this first happened, it was the Daily Mirror, I believe, that broke the story, that had reports about, well, there were parties at the number 10,

and Johnson came out and said, I can absolutely assure you that there were no parties, nothing like that ever happened at all. And then within hours, there was video, not only video of the parties, but video of his communications people joking about how are we going to explain this. Would the Prime Minister condone a heavy prison? What's the answer? I don't know. It wasn't the party, it was cheese and wine. Is cheese and wine all right?

It was a business meeting. I'm joking. This is recorded. So it wasn't just the parties. It was as much his denial of the parties and his efforts to try to obfuscate and say it didn't really mean a whole lot, when of course it meant a great deal. That is when Sue Gray, she is one of the top civil servants here in Britain, that's when she got involved. Johnson finally relented and said, look, we better have an investigation over this. So Sue Gray took several months and she went through and she looked at even more parties than what the police did.

She looked at a total of 16 of them. And what she found was even more damning. I mean, we're talking parties that went on till like 4 a.m. in the morning, drunken staff vomiting all over the place, fighting with each other, you know, spilling red wine on the furniture, breaking children's playground equipment and so forth. One of the parties even happened the night before Prince Philip's funeral. That went on until 4 a.m. in the morning. Prince Philip's funeral. That went on until 4 a.m. in the morning. And of course, everybody remembers the scene the next day of the Queen sitting alone all by herself, grieving her husband because of these very onerous lockdown rules that did not, it appears, apply to the staff of number 10. And in the report, what does Gray say about what Johnson knew or didn't know about these parties?

Well, she blamed a failure of leadership, a failure of judgment, both in number 10, and she also blamed, you know, simply a lack of oversight and lack of management. Now, Johnson latched on to that. He said, well, yes, I accept that mistakes were made, but we've cleaned it up. We've fixed it. And Sue Gray did have a line in her report that said, well, some of this has been fixed. So this was his wiggle room, if you will, to say, yes, yes, yes, mistakes were made, but we've cleaned up our act. But the problem is, is that very few people actually believe Johnson can change at all and that what's what the problem is is isn't so much bad management at number 10 but it's the guy at the very top of

the food chain him I take full responsibility for everything that took place on my watch I Mr Speaker I I am humbled and I have learned a lesson. Is the matter of Partygate done in terms of like investigations and stuff? Are there any other inquiries into this scandal still to come? I guess, are there any other details that we might find out about what happened? Well, because Johnson, frankly, didn't tell the truth, some would say right out that he lied about the parties. There is going to be an inquiry by a small group of MPs called the Commons Privilege Committee. It's a couple of government MPs, but also a couple of opposition MPs. And that will come out in a few months from now. It'll be very interesting

to see what they rule. People who are still upset and want Johnson out and do not accept the results of this leadership vote are clinging to the thought that, well, maybe this privilege committee, maybe that's the way we get rid of him now. We'll have to wait and see. Okay. So let's come back now, since we've gone through memory lane and gone through the highlights, or I guess lowlights, of how we got here, the Partygate scandal. Let's loop back to the non-confidence vote. So more than 40% of his own MPs, his own team, voted against him. And I guess, just, can you put that into context for me?

How does this compare to previous British leaders' non-confidence votes? Well, the Conservative Party in particular is pretty ruthless to their leaders. And it doesn't matter whether they're in opposition or whether they actually form the government. If they mess up or if they start losing the confidence of their party or if their own MPs don't think the next election they can win, they're going to turn on you. And they've done that to Margaret Thatcher, they've done it to John Major, they've done it to Ian Duncan Smith, who was an opposition leader, they've done it to Theresa May, and now they've done it to Boris Johnson. And what's really interesting is when

you look at the numbers, the most recent British Prime Minister to go through that was Theresa May, The numbers, the most recent British prime minister to go through that was Theresa May. And she actually got a better result than Boris Johnson did. She had a higher percentage, but she ended up having to leave office, quit within six months anyway. So she was gone. And then before that, John Major, he also got a much larger share of support during a no confidence vote. But he was doomed. That undermined his authority. And he was tossed out in the next general election in favor of Tony Blair. So these kind of votes you can win but still lose.

And that seems to be the legacy of them for the Conservatives. Right. I mean, Johnson's team is painting this as a win, but it's a massive, it's a massive blow to him. Of course, it is a massive blow. You're going into this, all of the cabinet members supported Johnson. So that's 40 or 50 of them. They kind of had to vote for him. But that leaves a huge chunk of your party, of the backbench, that really is very, very unhappy with you. So, you know, they've got a pretty sizable majority, an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons. It's not like what Theresa May had when she had to maneuver with only a couple.

So a few defections is unlikely to hurt in terms of passing legislation. But it's just a constant barrage of attacks. There's such a sizable group of them that want him gone. They're just going to keep coming at him. As I said, from the Privileges Committee, there's also a sense that even though the rules say he can't be challenged again for another year through a vote of no confidence, some MPs want to rewrite the rules to give them the chance to do it again even sooner.

So that's another thing he's going to have to keep looking over his shoulder about. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. We've talked about how PartyGate precipitated all of this,

but I guess my question is, is that really the only thing that has turned some of his party against him? Because in 2019, he did win a landslide. So I guess, are Downing Street ragers really the only thing on his own MP's minds here? You know, Boris Johnson is a very unconventional politician. People like him. He has charisma. When he was the mayor of London, he was very, very popular. And he came in and he was able to sell to his party and sell to Britons as well that he could make Brexit work. That was his slogan.

And he managed to win the biggest majority. He clearly has a political gift. The downside of that is, is that his detractors say, not only doesn't he stand for anything at all, he'll kind of flip and flop and blow in the wind and take whatever kind of position he needs to in order to win. So he's got a lot of support, it would seem, but it's very, very shallow. And and not only that they say his moral compass is absolutely like he doesn't have one you know he he i talked i talked about how he denied all of the parties and so forth well his even even people who like him will admit that he makes stuff up he lies and so this is also a big problem for a lot of conservative MPs. They just feel that this kind of bon vivant,

kind of, you know, man of the people kind of shtick is done. And people now see through Boris Johnson that you really can't believe anything he tells you. Right. I mean, he ran on Brexit, but now that it's done, you know, I guess what does he even stand for? And without an issue or sort of consistent ideological stance, like who is even his base anymore? It's a great question. And this is something they're going to have to figure out. I mean, he said he would vanquish Jeremy Corbyn, the labor leader who we ran against in the last election. He did that, said he would take Britain out of the EU, get a deal. He did that. But now he's faced with a whole bunch of different problems.

Inflation is going nuts here. The economy is in a rough state. People are upset about housing prices and so forth. So they want to see him do more. But at the same time, there's also a lot of conservatives that would be much more to the right of the party that are absolutely against any more extra spending. So he's got to juggle various warring factions within his party without really having his own constituency to kind of draw on. And his popularity in the polls has been rock bottom. The conservatives have lost a bunch of elections. They lost some by-elections in areas that were solidly Conservative for like 100 years and they also lost some city councils.

Again, solidly Conservative since before the Second World War. He's got a couple of more by-elections coming up. And so clearly there's a sense within the party that the tide is going out on Boris Johnson. And yet, he still managed to get enough votes to hang on to his job for now. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, because I would be interested in your perspective, of course, because now you're based in London, but before that, our listeners will remember you were in Moscow. Europe is feeling the repercussions of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war there. But what role has Boris Johnson taken in that conflict? Well, I think cynically,

some people would say he's really tried to show himself to be a global statesman. Perhaps, again, cynically, as a way to deflect from his own problems at home, see they love me everywhere else. And Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, made statements after the leadership vote saying he was very glad that Johnson was sticking around. Because Johnson came to Kiev at a rough time. He came, the city had just been sort of relieved, I guess, of the pressure of the Russian invasion. And he walked outside, walked the Zelensky through the deserted city. He waved at people and he sent Ukraine exactly what they were asking, which is a lot of lethal weapons to try to hold the Russian invaders back.

But it doesn't seem to have really helped him a whole lot here. And, you know, remember just the other day at the Queen's Jubilee, when the world was watching, he went into St. Paul's Cathedral, and he was perhaps the only person in the whole Jubilee who got really booed quite loudly. Yeah, talking about those boos, I guess, do you think he could come back from it? I mean, you talked about how he's really skilled politician, but just final question, is there a scenario in which he could win back, the public at large, at this point? Well, of course, there's lots of scenarios, and he wouldn't have the support of as many MPs as he did get, the 59%, rather, if they didn't believe, I think, that he could win. The next general election here is in another two years or

so. There's still by-elections and so forth. So that's an eternity in politics, two years, and lots can turn around. The Labour Party lost a lot of its key ridings up in northern England to the Conservatives. That was a massive win for Boris Johnson. They're still analyzing why exactly they turned. A lot of support for Brexit up there, and Johnson tapped into them. So what's going to be the future of all those Labour turncoats? Can he still keep them? So there's many, many dynamics. And so absolutely, Boris Johnson can turn it around. But to go back to the dead man walking thing, which I started off at, it is going to be exceptionally difficult because I believe in the next few months with more by-elections, more economic trouble and so forth, and the possibility of rule changes that could lead to yet another confidence vote, he's going to be fending off fights from behind his back almost constantly. All right, Chris, thank you. Thank you very much. Jamie, thank you. All right, that is all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.