Boris Johnson Is Out: What Happens Next? In the 2010 general election, Conservative Party leader David Cameron won 198 seats in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons. Short of a majority, Cameron required the support of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats to form a coalition government. It was the first coalition government in the U.K. since 1945.
Cameron, as milquetoast a politician as one could get and an uninspiring leader if there ever was one, then narrowly won a small majority in the following election in 2015. It was not, however, a testament to Cameron’s performance as a leader. Instead, it was a vote against the truly awful performance in government by the Liberal Democrats and the cringe-worthy efforts of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband to appear authoritative.
Then, in 2017, the similarly uninspiring Conservative Party leader Theresa May bungled a snap election and was forced to form a minority government with the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. It was the second de-facto coalition government in less than a decade and a clear sign that Britain’s natural Conservative lean was fading. Without an unconventional leader with a clear vision, the Conservative Party would enter terminal decline and the United Kingdom would face the possibility of an even more dysfunctional coalition government formed by the United Kingdom’s rainbow of left-wing parties.
When Boris Johnson became leader after Theresa May, the party’s fortunes quickly changed. The renegade conservative, former editor of the Spectator and popular Mayor of London, won a thumping 80-seat majority. He broke the “Red Wall” in the working-class north of England, taking seats held by the socialist Labour Party for over one hundred years. And to top it all off, Johnson’s majority allowed him to finish off the job of getting Brexit accomplished with little interference from Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
It ended the era of coalition governments and proved that Conservatives can win an easy majority by staying true to a clear, populist vision. Johnson later turned his back on many of the promises he made to the British people in that election, ruling as more of a Greta Thunberg quasi-liberal than a common-man populist – but despite the failures and despite the controversies, Johnson remained popular. Even after losing a couple of by-elections just weeks before his eventual resignation, Johnson remains one of the most recognizable and interesting people in British politics. Those recent by-election woes could have easily been solved if Johnson had the opportunity to spend the next two years revisiting the promises he made to the British people. But this week, a hoard of frightened Conservative MPs, nervous of the media backlash to the recent Chris Pincher scandal, made sure that would never happen by forcing Johnson to step down.
Who Comes After Boris Johnson?
It means that the party must now elect a new leader who will meet with Her Majesty the Queen and ask to form a government in her name. Whoever the Conservative Party elects will be the next prime minister until the time of the next general election – and that presents a problem for the Conservatives.
Should the Tories forget what made Boris so popular in the first place, they could easily find themselves appointing a new man in a blue tie, void of any connection personality or familiarity with the lives of the working and lower-middle class. The kind of person who may confuse chip shop mushy peas for guacamole.
Thank goodness Michael Gove already ruled himself out.
Luckily, the Conservative Party does have some real characters who could easily generate the same kind of working-class appeal as Boris Johnson enjoyed. Whether the parliamentary party chooses such a candidate depends on whether or not the Johnson saga poisoned the party’s opinion of outsiders and colorful characters in politics
Established around a pro-Brexit, anti-mass-immigration, and low-tax message, a new Conservative Party leader with a personality could easily take on the Labour Party’s decidedly underwhelming and yawn-inducing Keir Starmer. But that message must be clear and believable, and the candidate must be more than just a stuffed suit.
Starmer himself knows that unconventional Conservatives are a force to be reckoned with, too. That’s why he and his team called on the prime minister on Thursday to step down immediately, rather than “clinging on for a few months.” The truth is, the Labour Party has tried its hardest to drag Johnson down with faux outrage from one scandal to the next and is now desperately trying to elbow him out of the public eye after successfully booting him from office.
If Johnson is as unlikeable and ineffective as Labour claims he is, then they’d want more of him on the national stage. Not less.
In my eyes, there are two prominent Conservative members of parliament with the necessary characteristics to not just beat Labour, but to win a Johnson-era majority.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is one of them. He is the eccentrically British Member of Parliament for North East Somerset who served loyally through the Johnson government as the Leader of the House of Commons and later the Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities.
Just as posh as Johnson, Rees-Mogg presents himself more seriously than the outgoing prime minister but is not without a good sense of humor. He is known and loved even among working-class communities in England, and his traditional aesthetic and deep knowledge of history have made him famous all over the world. He also happens to be a devout Catholic and traditionalist with a populist worldview.
The other is Esther McVey, the northern MP who presented her own vision for the Conservative Party, not dissimilar to mine, in The Express this week. McVey has a strong regional Merseyside accent, she irritates the Labourites in the North because she’s more Margaret Thatcher than Arthur Scargill, and she has been vocal in her criticism of Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 lockdowns. She also steered clear of his cabinet and remained unwavering in her support for the populist ideas that got Johnson elected in the first place.
Putting a northern woman in Downing Street would be historic – and infinitely more achievable in 2025 than winning a majority with a Michael Gove or David Cameron-like character in charge.
Unless the Conservative Party wants a coalition with the Democratic Unionists in Ireland in 2024 or is willing to risk a “coalition of chaos” among Britain’s left-wing parties, the Tories absolutely require a visionary new leader in the mould of Boris Johnson.
It just requires those interesting characters to step up and throw their names in the hat.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
