Jonathan Freedland

Strongmen are nothing without their tribes

How do you kill off a strongman? How do you drain the political life from the brand of nationalistpopulist leader that’s dominated politics across the democratic world in recent times? Last week, we may just have got an answer. Never say never and all that, but we watched the air go out of the Boris Johnson balloon, the UK’s former prime minister deflating before our eyes. While his fellow rightwing populists, the likes of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, continue to wreak or threaten havoc, it’s instructive to work out what did for Johnson. It could even be a formula to follow.

You might think the magic bullet would be hard evidence of appalling behaviour. Johnson’s appearance before the House of Commons committee on privileges revived memories not just of the details of Partygate

– the trestle tables, the raised glasses – but of the very particular rage those revelations provoked.

Last week marked the third anniversary of a lockdown that was like nothing the country had ever endured before, requiring a suppression of the most elemental human instincts: to be close to others, to talk, to touch. The Partygate revelations stirred fury not only because they involved the rankest hypocrisy – those setting the rules were breaking them – but also because they suggested that the deprivations Britons had suffered were not, after all, universal or collective, but rather were somehow optional. If you were a mug, you followed the rules; if you were smart, you ignored them.

Still, we’ve known about Johnson’s unforgivable conduct for a while. It can’t explain why last week he shrank before us. His defence rested on his insistence, tetchily repeated, that it was “essential for work purposes” that he turn up at staff gatherings, say a few words and drink a toast. Since those get-togethers were “necessary” for the functioning of the UK government, he believed they were permitted under the rules – so he was telling the truth when he told MPs guidance had been followed. He would hold that view “till the day I die”.

If Johnson had been describing a day when, say, Downing Street had learned of an incoming missile strike, forcing staff to convene in a small situation room where it was impossible to keep 2 metres apart, we might agree that, yes, those were exceptional circumstances and such a meeting was truly essential. But patting the back of a departing press officer? Lifting the spirits of a few advisers? It’s not exactly the elimination of Osama bin Laden. It meets no one’s definition of “essential”.

The proof is that next to no one else was doing it. They knew they couldn’t. We all knew. There was no exemption for “work events”. Last Wednesday’s hearing was proof that, while Johnson may have had Covid, he still hasn’t the faintest idea what the pandemic meant for the people of this country.

And yet, that cannot alone explain the shrinking of Boris Johnson. Trump ticks those same boxes – reprehensible conduct, specious defence – but he remains Republican voters’ first choice for president in 2024. Ditto Netanyahu, on trial for corruption, but confronted this week by huge protests against his agenda.

Far from being weakened by being called to account, both men draw strength from it. Trump may well soon be indicted by a Manhattan court, and he is said to hope that he’s arrested on camera, ideally with his hands cuffed behind his back. That way he can play the rightwing populist’s favourite role: victim of a deep-state, elitist coup against him, the tribune of the people.

Johnson tried that move last week. The ex-PM called the committee’s investigation “extremely peculiar”. Asked if he accepted its legitimacy, he gave the Trumpian answer that he would regard the committee as legitimate if it cleared him, a response that had his own lawyer shaking his head. Johnson’s allies branded the hearing a “kangaroo court”. Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted: “Boris is doing very well against the marsupials.”

And yet, while that move still yields dividends for Trump or Netanyahu, it no longer pays out for Johnson. Last Thursday, a poll of a BBC Question Time audience that had mostly voted Tory in 2019 showed not one person thought he was telling the truth. Why has he fallen while those other men still stand?

The difference is that Johnson has lost his tribe. Trump was defeated in the 2020 election, but even now few Republicans dare defy him. Netanyahu faces protests from within the Israeli military and on the streets, but most of his party remains behind him. In Britain, it’s different: the Conservatives are abandoning Johnson.

That process only began with his defenestration last summer. Even in October, after the Liz Truss fiasco, at least 100 Tory MPs were ready to bring him back. That number has now dwindled. Last Wednesday, a mere 21 followed his lead and voted against Rishi Sunak’s Windsor framework for Northern Ireland. That’s partly because they’ve seen the alternative: quiet, relative competence, which is kryptonite to rightwing populists, who thrive on drama and division rather than the dull business of actually getting things done.

If the Tories have finally given up their “Boris” habit, they deserve little credit. They came to it late and only when their calculus of self-preservation told them it was safe. But they have at least shown who can topple these would-be strongmen. The courts can’t do it; even the voters can’t always do it. The power, and responsibility, lies with those who acted as their enablers. The grim truth is that, too often, the only people who can bring down these terrible men are the ones who put them there in the first place •

If the Tories have given up their Boris habit, they deserve little credit. They came to it late and for self-preservation