The Daily - The Final Days of Boris Johnson

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

After a flurry of ministerial resignations and calls from members of his own party for his departure, Boris Johnson agreed on Thursday to resign as prime minister of Britain.During his tenure, Mr. Johnson survived a series of scandals and skated past a lot of bad news. But even he was unable to maneuver his way out of his latest misstep.Guest: Mark Landler, the London bureau chief for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Mr. Johnson’s resignation brought a messy end to a messy three-year tenure.Here’s a guide to why he was forced out and who might succeed him.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, throughout his tenure, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson became famous for his ability to escape a political crisis. I spoke with my colleague, London Bureau Chief Mark Landler, about why this time he couldn't survive. It's Friday, July 8th.

So Mark, I think we should disclose to our listeners that you are such a wonderful colleague that you are talking to us very late at night, despite the fact that you have a cough and a sore throat. That's true. So I hope I'm not too much of a burden for your listeners early in the morning. I'll do my best not to cough. Okay. Well, we can also my best not to cough. Okay. Well, we can also edit it out. Secret audio tricks.

Fair enough. So, Mark, it has finally happened. Boris Johnson will be prime minister no more. It's something we have anticipated, wondered about, and now it's real. So just explain the enormity of this moment. So just explain the enormity of this moment. Well, you have to understand that for people living in Britain, Boris Johnson has been a colossus on the landscape. Really not just for the three years he was prime minister, but for the decade or so before then, when he was mayor of London, when he was foreign secretary, when he was the primary campaigner for Brexit in the 2016 referendum. So this is a guy who has really preoccupied Britons for years. He's been

the most colorful, the most flamboyant, the most impactful politician on the scene by a long shot. And so the idea that he is suddenly no longer the prime minister is really an epical event in British politics. Epical. So I want to get to the very particular set of circumstances that ultimately toppled him, but it feels like it was very much an accumulation that began many months back. In fact, Mark, the last time that we talked to you, it was about one of the scandals facing Boris Johnson, Partygate. He had been caught holding and attending garden parties at his official residence that violated COVID rules in Britain. But it appeared that he had survived that scandal.

So bring us from that moment to this moment where he no longer survives at all. Well, as you say, Michael, Partygate was this drip, drip, drip of embarrassing revelations for the government that went on for several months starting in November of last year. Number 10 staff joking about a Christmas party, sparking an internal, then police, investigation into 12 gatherings in total. 12 parties, 20 fines. Boris Johnson was fined for criminal violation of lockdown rules by the police. Let me say immediately that I've paid the fine and I once again offer a full apology.

The first time a British Prime Minister had ever suffered that kind of punishment. And yet, as you say, he gets through that only to have several more bad things happen in relatively quick succession. Which are what? The Tory party does very badly in local elections. These are elections for council member positions, you know, literally the folks that pick up your garbage. So they're not high profile, but they're a very good barometer for what the public makes of the party and its leader. The conservatives get a very bad result there. And it begins to germinate with many conservatives that this politician, who had been very successful in winning elections,

politician who had been very successful in winning elections might be losing his touch. Remember, Boris Johnson not only won the 2016 referendum on Brexit, he also won a landslide general election victory in 2019. And so he had kind of developed a reputation as a champion vote getter, as one of these electoral powerhouses that just knew how to appeal to a broader set of voters than virtually any major politician on the landscape. But for the first time after these local elections, it began to dawn on conservatives, gee, maybe that's no longer the case. Maybe rather than being our ace in the hole, Boris Johnson is actually a liability at the polls. And that, of course, causes a lot of unease in a party that has depended on Johnson for its success. Got it. So what happens next? You know, so then we get to June and this

unease has been kind of developing, building up, bubbling up in the party for weeks. And it manifests itself in this very unusual process where conservative members of parliament are allowed to submit letters to a committee demanding a vote of confidence in the prime minister. And these letters have been dribbling in one or two at a time over a period of weeks. But after the local elections, there's a sudden spike and a threshold is reached where suddenly Boris Johnson, who may have thought he had skated past a lot of bad news, finds himself in this very perilous moment where the party is now going to get to vote in secret, which is important, on whether or not they still have confidence in him. And 48 hours later, they hold that vote.

The vote in favor of having confidence in Boris Johnson's leader was 211 votes, and the vote against was 148 votes. And 148 members of the Conservative Party in Parliament vote against the Prime Minister. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's not enough to force him out of office. And therefore, I can announce that the Parliamentary Party does have confidence.

But it was nevertheless a very large number, represented 40% of the conservative members of parliament. So it was a very sobering moment that exposed just how weak Boris Johnson's position was. Right, this is a wounded prime minister. That's right. And that point was driven home only a few weeks later when there were a pair of off-year elections that are held to fill vacant seats,

both of which in this case were held by conservatives, and the conservatives lost both of them. So a party that was already alarmed was now in full panic mode. And those fears really snowballed a few weeks later with the sudden emergence of yet another scandal involving a senior Conservative Party official who had been steadily promoted and advanced by Boris Johnson. Well, Chris Pincher is, of course, perhaps not a household name, but he is a key ally of Boris Johnson. This is a man named Chris Pincher, and he is the deputy chief whip of the Conservative Party, which is a very politically important job, which Boris Johnson gave to Chris Pincher. He was responsible for Tory party discipline, but it is now his behavior under

investigation. So on June 29th, Pincher attends a party at a club in Piccadilly, and he, at that club, drinks excessively. On Thursday, allegations emerged he'd groped two men the night before. And is accused of drunkenly groping two young men who are Conservative Party staffers. His behavior is reported to his colleagues who refer it up to the chief whip who looks into it and Pinscher offers his resignation. In his resignation letter, he said, last night I drank far too much. I've embarrassed myself and other people, which is the last thing I want to do. The prime minister says we're not going to suspend him from the party and

the matter is closed. But as the story develops, Boris Johnson is asked whether he was aware of allegations against Pinscher at the time that he promoted him because Pinscher has a record of this kind of behaviour. In 2017, he was cleared by the Tory party after a claim he'd made unwanted advances towards the man. And Downing Street initially says Johnson had no awareness of any allegations and then corrected itself soon after to say... To my understanding, the Prime Minister has not been aware of specific allegations against Chris Pincher.

Well, he wasn't aware of any specific allegations. What's going on at number 10? I'm a head spinning. I have no idea where we are. A couple more days go by and British newspapers report at least four more allegations against Pinscher. And Downing Street is forced to acknowledge that. and Downing Street is forced to acknowledge that... Last week, when fresh allegations arose, the Prime Minister did not immediately recall the conversation in late 2019. Johnson had been personally aware of allegations

made against him at the time that he promoted him. Wow. As soon as he was reminded, the No. 10 press office corrected their public lies. This all blows up even further when a former senior civil servant in the Foreign Office submits a letter to Downing Street in which he essentially accuses the Prime Minister of lying. The former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office has said this morning that Downing Street

is not telling the truth. And says there was a specific complaint made against Pinscher years earlier when Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary and Pinscher was working in the Foreign Office. I mean, have you ever seen anything like this before? And then Downing Street is forced to acknowledge that, yes, this long history was well known. And, you know, as if to add insult to injury, a story comes out that Johnson used to joke about this man around the office.

With allegations he referred to Chris Pincher as Pincher by name, Pincher by nature. Wow. So you've got this picture of a prime minister who has dissembled about his role in this man's advancement and has even made light of his predatory behavior. So all the ingredients are there for a really explosive situation. explosive situation. Right, and just to be clear, the scandal here is, in the case of Pinscher, that he was engaging in various forms

of sexual misconduct and harassment for a very long time, but the scandal for Johnson is that he knew about it and promoted Pinscher anyway to a job where Pincher then allegedly goes on to be a predator all over again. So he's basically protected somebody accused of being a serial sexual assaulter. That's right. And made light of it rather than responding to it as you would expect any serious person to. And to add one more point to this, not only did

the spokespeople at Downing Street put out these erroneous stories, but members of the cabinet went out and gave interviews on television where they repeated this inaccurate information. So not only did Johnson lie about it, he had proxies lie on his behalf. And that became extremely inflammatory with members of his cabinet and members of his party in parliament, who suddenly saw their own integrity, their own reputations being tarnished by association with Boris Johnson. And for many members of the party, this was the scandal too far. Prime Minister, do you accept it was a grave error to appoint Chris Pinscher to your government? Yes, I think it was a mistake. And I apologise for...

It's worth noting that Boris Johnson came out and apologised for having hired Chris Pinscher and advanced him. There's no place in this government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power. But to many people, it felt like just one more apology for shameful behavior. It rang a bit hollow. And for some members of the Conservative Party, it deepened the sense of dread that they had about the costs of their association with Boris Johnson going forward. And yet, for all that, there was also a sense in the British press that Johnson would probably weasel his way out of this one, just as he had out of so many scandals in the past. And so for all the outrage and for all the revulsion at what had happened, Boris Johnson was still the prime minister,

and there was no sign on the horizon that he was about to give up that job. We'll be right back. So, Mark, when does the dam start to break? Well, it was Tuesday night, shortly after 6pm, when two very senior cabinet ministers suddenly issued back-to-back letters resigning from the government and saying that they can no longer serve the Prime Minister. Double resignations, a double bombshell for Boris Johnson johnson and his future as the prime minister robert any of this surprise you this evening well pretty much all of it surprises me these are both what they call beasts in the conservative party rishi sunak the chancellor of the ex-chequer

sajid javid the health secretary major figures people with their own leadership aspirations. And though they don't name Chris Pinscher specifically in their letters, they make it clear that it is the issue of integrity, of truthfulness, of honesty and credibility that is driving their decisions. So there's really no doubt that they are reacting not just to Pinscher, but to the cloud of scandal that has hung over Boris Johnson's government from the very start. And it's at that moment that people begin to think suddenly, maybe Boris Johnson won't survive this. Maybe he will not escape this latest scandal the way he's been able to wriggle out of so many before. And sure enough, the next morning, there are more resignations. First, it's a trickle, and then it starts becoming a steady

stream as the hours pass on. And we get to midday wednesday which is customarily the time for this you know uniquely british ritual that's called prime minister's questions where the prime minister goes to the house of commons and he submits himself to questions uh both from the leader of the opposition, but also members of his own party. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today is a big day as we implement the biggest tax cut. It's a rollicking scene. There's a lot of whoops and catcalls. And Boris Johnson is an acknowledged master of the form. But on this day, he is just absolutely clobbered. Awful behavior, unacceptable in any walk of life.

It's there for all to see, but he ignores it. The labor leader, Keir Starmer, deploys a full attack on him for his lack of integrity. And it was the same when he and his mates parted their way through lockdown. Anyone quitting now after defending all that hasn't got a shred of integrity. Mr Speaker, isn't this the first recorded case of the sinking ships fleeing the rat? And then a member of his own party stands up and says, does the Prime Minister think there are any circumstances in which he should resign? Another senior member of the party gets up and reaffirms an earlier call he'd made for Boris

Johnson to step down. Today I ask him to do the honourable thing, to put the interests of the nation before his own interests and before, in his own words it does become impossible for government to do his job prime minister i i thank him very much for the point that he's he's made he's made again i've just got it i respect i just i just couldn't uh disagree with him more uh look at so johnson at the end of this session, is thoroughly bruised. And whatever effort he made to come in looking like he had spirit and defiance is more or less gone. He's a very deflated figure at the end of this exercise. We now come to the personal statement I call Sajid Javid.

I call Sajid Javid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Speaker, I'm grateful... And that is only magnified when Sajid Javid, the health secretary who a day earlier had resigned, stands up to deliver a very emotional, personal statement. When the first stories of parties in Downing Street emerged late last year, I was personally assured at the most senior level that, and I quote, there had been no parties in Downing Street and no rules were broken.

In which he talks about how he had tried to walk this tightrope between integrity and his desire to be part of this government, to be engaged in public service. And at some point, we have to conclude that enough is enough. I believe that point is now. He then addresses himself directly to his fellow ministers who have not yet resigned. It is a choice. Not doing something is an active decision. And basically demands of them

the same act that he himself took. I got into politics to do something, not to be somebody. And if I can continue to contribute to public life and my party from the back benches, it will be a privilege to do so. You just have this extremely dramatic, vivid spectacle, and you can almost feel the power ebbing from the Prime Minister by the minute as you watch this unfold in the House of Commons. Commons. And then we move into the afternoon. And by then, this steady stream of resignations really turns into a torrent, turns into a flood. Developments in just the last couple of minutes, Hugh. Another cabinet resignation. Just in the last half an hour or so, five more ministers resigned together in a letter to the prime minister. 42 members of parliament

have now quit their government positions, but the prime minister is refusing to go. By the end of the day, you're nearing 50 cabinet ministers, senior, junior. Wow. And then at this point, it's an actual problem

just of running the government. Where his government is collapsing around him. His government is collapsing around him. His government is collapsing around him. There's a big question about who's going to run these agencies, who's going to run these ministries. So not only is the prime minister engulfed, he's losing his team and the government is really completely paralyzed. And at that point, we're moving into the early evening,

a delegation of his own cabinet members. These are the people who have not yet resigned. They pay a visit to 10 Downing Street, along with senior officials from the Conservative Party. And they say to the prime minister, look, your time is up. You've lost the support of the party. But in the immediate aftermath of this meeting, Boris Johnson looked like he was going to remain defiant.

He said he had a mandate from the people. He'd won a landslide victory. His job was to deliver on behalf of the voters. And rather than quit, he actually fired one of his closest and longest standing allies, a man named Michael Gove, who had a very senior position in the cabinet. Gove's crime is that earlier in the day, he had paid a quiet visit to Boris Johnson and told him that maybe it was time for Johnson to go. And so late on Wednesday night, word comes out that Michael Gove's been fired.

And the mood around Downing Street really begins to resemble what I remember from my time covering the Trump White House. It's almost a Game of Thrones atmosphere. The knives are out. You know, the prime minister, like President Trump, is lashing out at everyone around him. You don't know what's going to happen next. lashing out at everyone around him. You don't know what's going to happen next. And that's really how the day ends in this moment of just peak uncertainty,

complete paralysis in the government, and utter uncertainty about what's going to happen the next day. So, Mark, that, of course, brings us to Thursday morning in London. That's right. And the city wakes up with a sense of keen anticipation after this really crazy day on Wednesday. But what happens is people begin resigning again. There's several more resignations. And then in one particularly damaging moment, the man who Boris Johnson named only a day earlier to replace Rishi Sunak as chancellor, he comes out and says the prime minister should resign. So even people who have been promoted by Johnson

in the last day or so are now rats leaving a sinking ship. And I think that when that reality dawns on Johnson, when he realizes just how this exodus is going to deprive him of literally everybody, the reality of a situation at long last sets in. He realizes that resistance is futile. There's nothing more left to do. And sure enough, just two hours later. and sure enough, just two hours later. Good afternoon, everybody. Boris Johnson steps out to a lectern that's been erected in front of 10 Downing Street, that famous doorway.

And in the last few days, I've tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we're delivering so much, when we have such a vast mandate and when we're actually only a handful of points behind in the polls. And he delivers a brief, somewhat defiant speech in which he says, I didn't want to resign.

I wanted to stay. But, you know, the political establishment in this country sometimes moves like a herd. It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. And in this case, it did. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the brakes. I know that even if things can sometimes seem dark now, our future together is golden. Thank you all very much. Thank you. And, you know, he turns around and walks back inside and the Boris Johnson era is officially over. Mark, it's so interesting.

You earlier invoked Donald Trump and his defiance in the final days of his presidency. But insofar as the comparison between Trump and Johnson feels fair, the story in the UK seems to be that a conservative party acted very decisively and very effectively to oust their leader when he got into trouble, rather than protect their leader as many Republicans did with Donald Trump after January 6th. So this feels like a very different story. Yeah, I think you're raising a very important point, Michael. story. Yeah, I think you're raising a very important point, Michael. There is just a profound difference with the way the Republicans treated their leader and the conservatives treated

their leader in the United Kingdom. In the Republican Party, you see almost no one willing to stand up to Donald Trump. He's able to impose this kind of rigorous discipline on almost the entire party, while in the UK, it took a while for them to do this, but you see a party that gathered itself together, that stood up and said, enough, we want a change. But I do think there is one area where there is, you know, a commonality, and that is the motivation for the conservatives in the UK is not dissimilar to that of Republicans in the US. Republicans have stood in line, have fallen in line behind Donald Trump

because they believe he's a winner. Right. And they believe the cost of crossing him is to lose themselves. In the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson was perceived as a winner. And for as long as he was, he enjoyed that kind of loyalty,

that kind of discipline. But as it became clear that he was no longer that big winner, but indeed a liability, you saw that loyalty begin to crumble. You saw lawmakers decide that their futures were in jeopardy if they continued to toe the line, if they continued to be loyal to him. So in that respect, there's a similar motivation, even if it has led the parties on each side of

the Atlantic, to very, very different responses. So, Mark, what happens now to Boris Johnson? Because he remains prime minister for some number of weeks, right? The lamest of lame ducks. And then what? He becomes a private citizen? Well, it's very interesting. He's going to be prime minister for anywhere from one to two to three more months. And one can't rule out, by the way, that something unexpected could happen during that time.

He's pledged to be a true caretaker. Well, we'll see. I mean, when is the last time Boris Johnson stuck to the rules? But after he does leave office, he has a number of options. He could decide to stay in Parliament, return to the backbenches. Other former prime ministers have done that. He could still be an influential player. He could also decide to leave politics altogether, return to a life of delivering paid speeches, of writing newspaper columns, of finishing his biography of Shakespeare. But I think one thing we know from looking at his history is this is not a guy who is going to go quietly. He likes to be a disruptive presence, whether he does that from within the House of Commons or outside of it, I think we are certain to see

Boris Johnson be a player in British public life going forward. Mm-hmm. So I'm curious, now that this is all played out, Mark, how the British people regard this man, and perhaps how they should regard this man. I mean, are they likely to see him as a tragic figure or as somebody who more or less got what he deserved?

I think that the answer is, it's complicated. I mean, on the one hand, he is a consequential prime minister, regardless of how his term ended. This is, after all, the leader who took Britain out of the European Union, the most significant single event since the end of World War II. On the other hand, there's so much about the rest of his government that was a disappointment. The incompetence, the lack of direction, the endless preoccupations with minutia, the scandals. So Johnson is an endlessly complicated figure. Many will simply say, this is a narcissist who got what he deserves. Others will feel that it was really a missed opportunity and a great disappointment. I think the only thing we can say for certainty is that any book on

British prime ministers is going to have a very big chapter on Boris Johnson. Well, Mark, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Get some rest. Thanks, Michael. I'll do my best. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer already serving a 22-year state sentence for the murder of George Floyd, was given an additional sentence of 21 years in a federal trial. The new sentence was the result of Chauvin pleading guilty to using excessive force against both Floyd and a 14-year-old boy named John Pope in an unrelated but similar incident. Chauvin will now serve both sentences concurrently. And the WNBA star Brittany Griner, who has been detained in Russia for the past five months,

pleaded guilty on Thursday to bringing cannabis into the country, a crime that can carry a prison term of up to 10 years. Her plea will accelerate a legal proceeding that is widely seen as stacked against her and speed up the timetable for a potential prisoner swap in which Greiner could be exchanged for a Russian who is imprisoned in the U.S. Today's episode was produced by Will Reed, Carlos Prieto, Michael Simon Johnson, and Rochelle Banja, with help from Chris Wood. It was edited by Paige Cowett, with help from Anita Wood. It was edited by Paige Cowett

with help from Anita Botticello. Contains original music by Marion Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderland. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.