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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.
Boris Johnson has announced he will resign as Prime Minister of the UK.
He once delivered his party historic victories, but now he is being called a risk to the United Kingdom and an existential threat to the existence of the Conservative party by his own colleagues.
So how did one man do so much political damage?
Today, World Editor at The Saturday paper, Jonathan Pearlman on Boris Johnson’s incredibly predictable downfall.
It’s Monday July 11.

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RUBY:

Jonathan, late last week, Boris Johnson announced that he would resign as Prime Minister of the UK after days of clinging to power while his cabinet abandoned him. So tell me about what happened?

JONATHAN:

Yes, that's right. Ruby So on Thursday last week, Boris Johnson finally announced that he would quit.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“Thank you. Thank you. 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.”

JONATHAN:

This was clearly something that he didn't want to do.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“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 and when we have such a vast mandate and when we’re actually only a handful of points behind in the polls…”

JONATHAN:

He'd been clinging on for days, despite a major rebellion within his party. Mass resignations, really unprecedented in British political history. Some of his closest allies have been begging him to go, calling him, texting him and he really tried to hang on for as long as he could.
But it started last week when his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid, two of his closest loyalists at that point resigned.

Archival tape -- Reporter 1:

“Sam… I'm just going to interrupt you. We're just hearing that Sajid Javid has resigned.”

JONATHAN:

And that started a tidal wave of resignations.

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“Five ministerial resignations, all in one fell swoop. We've got over…”

JONATHAN:

Over 50 members of the government had resigned late last week.

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“It's not even a drip, drip now. It's essentially a deluge. It's a waterfall of resignations and a joint effort. This is the letter…”

JONATHAN:

It was really a display of how the party viewed him at that point and quite an incredible turnaround from where he stood just a few years ago when he won a massive election landslide. And the trigger for all these resignations had been a sexual harassment scandal involving Chris Pincher, who was the party's deputy whip. But really, before that, there had been questions about Johnson's integrity and history of deceit and misleading parliament, which had gone on for months and years, really.

RUBY:

And I want to talk about all of the scandals that led to his resignation. But before we do, can we speak a bit about Boris Johnson, because he's always been this larger than life, kind of bumbling, blustering, scruffy figure with a reputation for chaos, really, and for not telling the truth. So can you tell me a bit about who he is and where he comes from?

JONATHAN:

Yes, that sums it up very well.
He had always wanted to be Prime Minister. As a child, he used to tell people that he wanted to be world king and his name was actually Alexander. Boris was a middle name. And I think that reflects in some ways this self-invented nature of his personality in that colourful character. And he was a brilliant self inventor. So, you know, one side of his family were European aristocracy. And he went to Eton and Oxford and two of the most exclusive schools and universities in Britain. And then after Oxford, he started as a journalist, and he was famously prone to embellishment and exaggeration. He was sacked from the Times after making up a quote from his godfather, who was a historian. He became a columnist at the Telegraph and was one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite columnists. And then finally and inevitably, really, he entered politics and eventually he became mayor of London in 2008, and he sort of established himself as a sort of progressive conservative. He backed strong environmental policies. You know, he brought in the Boris bikes. And, you know, it was often scenes of cycling around London with helmets that were much too small for him.

Archival tape -- Reporter 3:

“Where are you on helmets Boris?”

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“Raindrops keep falling on my head! Dee dee dee dee dee deee.”

JONATHAN:

And those terms as mayor really helped to push on his career and sort of set himself up to head back to Westminster.

RUBY:

And it was Brexit, wasn't it, when Boris Johnson really became a big player in national politics?

JONATHAN:

That's right. So he actually took a long time to decide what his position was on Brexit. He famously drafted two columns announcing his position, and one of them was pro-Brexit. One of them was anti-Brexit. And he eventually settled on the pro-Brexit column and joined the Leave campaign two days later. Now, this was really an incredible decision and changed the course of British history.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“But after a great deal of heartache, I don't think there's anything else I can do. I will be advocating Vote Leave or whatever the team is called.”

JONATHAN:

And became a hugely influential figure in British politics at that point.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“Because I want a better deal for the people of this country.”

JONATHAN:

It seems very unlikely that the Brexit referendum would have passed without him becoming involved in the Leave campaign.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“I think we should take the chance now as a country to take back control, take back control of huge sums of money.”

JONATHAN:

So that was a huge turning point. And obviously in the end he helped the Brexit campaign to win.

Archival tape -- David Cameron:

“The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected.”

JONATHAN:

So that then led to the resignation of David Cameron.

Archival tape -- David Cameron:

“But the British people have made a decision to take a different path, and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction…”

JONATHAN:

Johnson was expected to succeed Cameron, but in the last minute his support inside the party collapsed. And in the end Theresa May took over as leader of the party and as Prime Minister. But Johnson remained, and he clearly still wanted the top spot.

RUBY:

So Boris Johnson, he’s highly ambitious from a very young age, and it seems like he's willing to make decisions not based on personal conviction, but rather on what he thinks is going to bring him the most success as he chases power. But how did he manage to make that final leap to actually become the Prime Minister of the U.K.?

JONATHAN:

Well, there was that really torrid period after the Brexit referendum when Theresa May just could not find a way to complete Brexit. And partly it was because of people like Boris Johnson who were pushing for a harder line. But eventually, Theresa May resigned after she just couldn't negotiate a Brexit deal. So after that, Boris Johnson's rise to the leadership seemed inevitable. He easily won the leadership of the Tory Party. So all the conditions were right for Boris Johnson and he won a huge, huge victory. It was the biggest majority for the Tories in more than 30 years since Margaret Thatcher's win in 1987.
And he promised to, you know, to get Brexit done as he claimed to set the country on a new path. But then things started to change very quickly, and that was partly because COVID 19 arrived and reshaped his leadership.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

So Jonathan, Boris Johnson won the last UK election with this huge margin and that was really the beginning of the success story for him personally, but also for the Conservative Party. However, less than three years later, he has been forced out. So when exactly did Boris Johnson's problems begin?

JONATHAN:

So I think to understand where things started to fall apart for him, we have to go back to December last year and that's when we started to hear these reports.

Archival tape -- Reporter 4:

“We know from a source that there were drinks, and there were nibbles and there were games!”

JONATHAN:

They stated in British newspapers in The Daily Mirror that there'd been these parties and gatherings at Boris's official residence and at other offices during the COVID hard lockdown.

Archival tape -- Keir Starmer:

“Does the Prime Minister really expect the country to believe that while people were banned from seeing their loved ones at Christmas last year, it was fine for him and his friends to throw a boozy party in Downing Street?”

JONATHAN:

But Boris initially denied that these had occurred.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“Mr Speaker, what I can tell the right honourable gentleman is that all guidance was followed completely during Number 10.”

JONATHAN:

And then photos and videos started to emerge.

Archival tape -- Reporter 5:

“Metropolitan Police said that they would be launching an investigation into those alleged parties in Downing Street during lockdown so that changed the picture dramatically…”

JONATHAN:

And as more and more of these reports emerged, the British people really felt betrayed.

Archival tape -- Crowd:

“Liar! Liar! The worst PM in History!”

JONATHAN:

There was mounting calls in the party for him to resign. And then last month, there was a no confidence motion, which he won, but not that convincingly, 41 percent of the party room voted to dismiss him as leader and really then he sailed on for a few more weeks until the Pincher scandal arrived.

RUBY:

So let's talk about the Pincher scandal then, Jonathan. What actually happened?

JONATHAN:

So Chris Pincher was an MP in the Tory party and he'd been forced to stand down as the Deputy Chief Whip after allegations emerged that he had groped two men at a private member's club in London while he was drunk last month. The real issue really was how Johnson handled that scandal because he denied knowing about Chris Pincher’s long history of similar sorts of allegations of harassment, and he denied knowing about this allegation when he promoted Chris Pincher to be the Deputy Chief Whip and Dominic Cummings, who'd fallen out with Johnson after being really his his closest aide, claimed that Boris had once referred to Pincher as “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature”, suggesting that Johnson knew about the predatory behaviour claims.
So Johnson held out, denied knowing about this, but eventually was forced to admit that he did know about the allegations against Pincher. And for a lot of Johnson's colleagues, including some of his close allies, this was really enough. His colleagues no longer had trust in him, had questioned his integrity, and now all began to resign en masse.
And it leaves the Conservative Party and British politics in chaos, really. The Conservatives will be onto their fourth leader in six years, possibly more if there's an interim leader. They may well have to call another general election. The Labour Party are urging them to call another election. So, you know, the future for the Tory Party now is very unclear.

RUBY:

Hmm. And with Boris Johnson now on the way out, are we also seeing the end of a certain type of politician? Because obviously Donald Trump was recently voted out. And here in Australia, Scott Morrison is also gone. So is there a kind of version of conservative populist politics, what they represented also over?

JONATHAN:

I doubt it. For one thing, the parties that are removing these leaders are not showing any signs of moderation.
Boris Johnson could well be replaced by a more conservative leader. We've seen here that Scott Morrison was replaced by Peter Dutton rather than a moderate. Donald Trump is still around and still menacing American politics.

Archival tape -- Reporter 6:

“What do you do to relax, what do you do to switch off?”

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“Uhh I… oh I make things… I like to…”

Archival tape -- Reporter 6:

“What do you make?”

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“I have a thing where I make models of… buses.”

JONATHAN:

It's hard to imagine another character like Boris Johnson. I think that is true.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“I get old um I don't know, wooden crates… right? And then I paint them.”

JONATHAN:

He is quite a unique character.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“And I turn it into a bus and so I put passengers. You really want to know this?”

Archival tape -- Reporter:

“You’re making buses? You’re making cardboard buses? Ok that’s what you do to enjoy yourself.”

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“I paint the passengers enjoying themselves… on the wonderful bus…”

JONATHAN:

So we may not see another character on this global political stage like Boris Johnson for some time, but I'm not sure that it marks the end of this era of populism.

RUBY:

Jonathan, thank you so much for your time.

JONATHAN:

Thanks Ruby.
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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Mourning for Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will continue today, with a vigil being held in Tokyo before his funeral on Tuesday.
Abe was assassinated on Friday by a lone gunman with a homemade shotgun. The killing has shocked Japan, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world.

And…

In Sri Lanka, thousands of protestors have stormed the official residences of the President and the Prime Minister — swimming in pools and ransacking offices.

Protestors are demanding action to end the worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation at over 50 percent and the cost of living spiralling.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.
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