To imagine the predicament he finds himself in, Boris Johnson does not need to know that a spiral is a plane curve that is generated by the displacement of a point where two different movements coincide, one linear and the other angular. He doesn’t need to be an ace at algebra, integrals, polynomials, or set theory. Not even geometry. A few notions of arithmetic are enough for him, just enough to add up to 148 (the conservative deputies who voted against him in Monday’s motion of censure), and of calculation, to discover that they constitute 41% of the party.
Johnson is badly hurt. It is like a gang member who has been given a knife by his own gang and left lying on the train tracks, and from here the scenarios are limited: that he commits political suicide with the pistol that he carries on top of him ; may he die quickly; let it be a slow agony in which he slowly bleeds to death (like Theresa May); or that a miracle occurs, he recovers prodigiously and is accepted by the tribe again. He is preparing to play for time, waiting for something to happen in the world that will take his chestnuts out of the fire, as the war in Ukraine already did.
He is also going to put something on his side, with the fireworks of a legislative offensive that shows that he is still alive, with investment of money in Education and Health, the opportunity (as Thatcher did) for tenants of subsidized flats to buy them and, above all, a law for the United Kingdom to unilaterally repeal the aspects of Brexit related to trade with Ulster that it has never liked, but that it signed. The plan is to appeal once again to English nationalism, and present the EU as the enemy that weighs down the country’s economy and does not let it breathe.
The Prime Minister met yesterday with his Cabinet of faithful but not very bright ministers, and reiterated that “it is time to turn the page.” The 148 parliamentarians who expressed their distrust do not think the same, an eclectic group, without a leader, in which all the factions of the party are represented (the eurosceptics disenchanted by the way in which Brexit is being implemented, the Thatcherites, the Europeanists. ..).
The rebels threaten to torpedo the rest of the legislature and abstain from voting, preventing laws from being passed and creating a sense of gridlock. To which Johnson responds by threatening to expel or suspend them, and even with the nuclear weapon of calling an early election in which, as things stand, the majority would lose their seats. Like the mutually assured destruction of the cold war, when the United States and the Soviet Union aimed long-range missiles at each other.
But before there is time for a miracle to happen, or for the bandages he has put on to stop the bleeding, the Tory leader is going to continue bleeding. Within a fortnight he faces by-elections in Yorkshire and Devon which, if the Conservatives lose as many analysts are betting, will further aggravate his wounds and the impression that he has become an electoral ballast. And then comes the inquiry into whether he lied to the Commons by repeatedly denying that he had any knowledge of the Downing Street parties, an offense which leads to the withdrawal of the parliamentary act. No British prime minister in history would have dared attempt to prevail over such humiliation, but Johnson defies precedent and history itself. He will only leave Downing Street legs first.
His logical survival strategy would be to become what those who voted against him want him to be. The problem is that his enemies do not constitute a coherent group, and if he satisfies some, he creates enemies on the other hand. There are those in favor of public spending to overcome the crisis, and there are those in favor of returning to austerity. There are those who would assume tax increases to improve Health and equalize the country, and there are those who think it is an aberration. There are those who support the breach of the Brexit agreements, and there are those who believe that a country like the United Kingdom cannot sink so low.
But, at the bottom of it all, the drama of the premier is that 41% of the parliamentary group (plus all those who wanted to have expressed their distrust and did not dare) are against him, and they fear that he will lead them to an electoral massacre. It is in the middle of a spiral, at a point where various linear and curved movements converge against it. To realize this, you don’t have to know the formula of a polar equation, or be Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras or Fourier. You just have to be Boris Johnson, and in addition to Latin and Greek, know how to add.
