British Prime Minister Boris Johnson could be re-elected before the next election

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has the jealous habit of winning.

He twice became the first conservative mayor of London in a predominantly left-wing city. He managed to help lead a Brexit campaign to victory that had an 18 percent chance, according to pollsters and bookies, of winning a two-horse race just a few weeks before the vote. *

He told the House of Commons that a “zombie Brexit deal” with Europe could not be reached before taking over as prime minister and getting a surprisingly similar deal voted on by politicians.

He called an election in one of the most turbulent political times of a generation and the largest conservative majority returned in more than 30 years. This happened at a time when poll experts said it was not even certain he would not return a majority at all.

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So why risk Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson not even remaining as British Prime Minister until the next general election, scheduled for May 2024?

Events, dear boy, events.

“We are not even sure he will be in place for that long time,” said Steven Fielding, professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. Newsweek.

“The conversation around him and the nature of the COVID crisis itself means you really want to be in government and really apply yourself. There are things about Johnson that people have questions about – his capacity and whether he wants to do it [in the long term]. “

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For all the global catastrophes of the COVID-19 crisis in humanitarian and economic terms, there have been political winners and losers.

Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon has jumped into the polls, with 4 in 5 Scottish people saying they have handled the crisis well, according to polling company Ipsos Mori.

Similarly, under the care of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, her COVID-19 has both reached the global stage and become the most popular Prime Minister the country has had in a century. *

In mid-June, the United Kingdom ranked at least jointly with Mexico in terms of how citizens of each country viewed the response to the crisis, at least in part through the actions of Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings, who is keeping his job. the police opinion, breaking guidelines for locking

The UK government now has the lowest common approval rating worldwide for how they have managed coronavirus

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But even without COVID-19, many were skeptical about Boris Johnson as leader.

Criticism of Boris Johnson is widely known, with some saying he is “incompetent”, that he is out of his depth when discussing issues with global leaders and, as editor of the news magazine Private each Ian Hislop will tell anyone who listens, “not so clear.”

Johnson is also accused of changing his mind all the time, with a number of high-profile U-turns while in government after writing a newspaper column, both before and against leaving the EU. He published the one only in favor of leaving after he decided.

There are several accounts that he is a serious cheater for partners – he once said he was “bursting with spunk” – and he has refused to confirm in any interview how many children he has father, with Wikipedia recording it as “at least six.”

Critics have linked this ‘dishonesty’ with his dismissal as a journalist for making an offer in an article, for writing a number of dubious articles on European policy, including the accusation that the EU wanted to regulate the form of bananas, later mentioned a “myth” by those involved.

This extends to his Brexit campaign bus, which had the slogan “We are sending the EU £ 350 million a week, let us fund the NHS instead” on the side. This was found to be misleading by a number of fact-checkers and Johnson intended to distance himself from this claim after the referendum vote.

But this did not stop him from becoming one of the most successful politicians in a generation that would take a shift in vote that had never been seen before to ensure that he did not win a majority in the next General Assembly. election.

“There is nothing in Boris Johnson’s current data to suggest that he could not fight and win in 2024,” said Ben Page, chief executive officer of Stimburo Ipsos Mori. Newsweek.

“His personal assessments are non-neutral and not non-negative. The hill [opposition party] Labor must climb, the fact that Johnson stays well ahead [Labour leader] Keir Starmer on who would make the best prime minister, the lack of progress so far in Labor is seen as ready to govern, suggesting that Johnson can at least win Johnson in polls. But a year is obviously a long time in politics. “

If a year is a long time in politics, the nearly four years for the next scheduled elections could be a lifetime. The UK is now officially in recession, COVID-19 is nowhere near “resolved”, due to a better word, and Johnson’s desire to have ” [his] cake and eat it, “as he said in 2001, means he’s running a very precarious tight.

“Whatever Boris wants, there are people around him who do not want to do the same,” says Prof Fielding.

“People want to [Home Secretary] Priti Patel and other ministers around the cabinet table are not happy with big government or even a relatively modest government. There are so many tensions in the Conservative Party over all sorts of things and there are questions about the person in leadership about whether he is really in leadership. “

When Johnson first arrived in Downing Street, he expelled 20 MPs (MPs) from the party after they voted to block a Brexit-no deal. It was later U-turned (that theme runs through much of his criticism) but an already tense relationship with backbenchers, those MPs who are members of the ruling party but not directly part of the government, became made even less.

Although Downing Street has not answered questions in this article, a good example of how Johnson can be seen in a recent report by the New statesman.

It said that when the Prime Minister appeared in the WhatsApp group of the Conservative MPs to defend a policy decision, they all moved to another group to discuss things without him.

The party has a long history of ousting prime ministers once they fall from the backbenchers too often.

Former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign after three general election victories after, in the words of BBC News’ James Lansdale, the “unpopularity of the tax service, the divisions across Europe, the dismissal of [then deputy prime minister] Geoffrey Howe, and the self-inflicted mistakes during her leadership campaign. “

The unpopularity of how recent exam results were treated risks becoming a “poll moment”, divisions across Europe remain and the “self-inflicted errors” during the COVID-19 response begin to slowly, by itself, be recognized by the government itself.

That said, the government has so far remained relatively intact with not much dismissal and not much public dissent from government ministers.

And given that Boris Johnson has the habit of winning, is it realistic to think he can become the bankrupt man for a conservative government that likes to stay in power for as long as possible?

“If the party wants to get rid of him, there will be knives from all directions,” Drs. Simon Lee, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Hull, Newsweek.

“When the economy collapses, there are serious food shortages and / or uprisings or serious public disturbances, as we had in England in 1981, and if [Scottish ruling party] The SNP will triumph in the next Holyrood elections and the momentum for a second referendum for independence will be unstoppable, the party will not care to drop him.

“I only see problems for Boris Johnson. Will he, as fellow Conservatives, really want him to be the leader of his party when he agrees to deliver an ‘oven-ready’ exit from one political union? [the European Union] but then fails on that front before the end inspires another much longer lasting political union [with Scotland]?

“I could see Johnson himself deciding to run away. He has the perfect alibi: his health and young son.”

Despite the whispers, the facts remain that the Conservatives have a strong majority, Boris Johnson has no negative approval rating, and in normal times it would be unlikely to remove a sitting prime minister in his first term.

But we are not in normal times and that whistle exists. So if it really came, would he resign or would it take a solid shovel to remove him?

“I’m a little optimistic that it does not occur to me to resign,” Johnson said Observer in 2003.

“I tend to think of a way of Sellotaping everything together and quietly finding a way through it when I can.”

Updated 08/18/20 09:45 EDT: This article has been updated to add information about the “Brexit bus” and the dismissal of Johnson as a journalist to add more evidence behind critics who called him “dishonest”