All the difficulties of Boris Johnson
What worries Prime Minister Boris Johnson? The point of Daniele Meloni
Boris Johnson's summer is as hot as ever. And not only for the 37 degrees that broke into London and the main tourist destinations across the Channel. A recent poll by the YouGov polling institute gave Labor just 2 points behind the Tories, 38% to 40. Another gave Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer 4 points ahead of him in personal rating. Silly season titillation? Who knows.
What is certain is that the case of lowered high school students' grades causes a badly "calibrated" algorithm and the continuous illegal landings of immigrants in Dover are creating more of a headache for the premier, who must also deal with a party – his – returned on a boil after the post-vote honeymoon. Some parliamentarians have specifically asked for the resignation of his education minister, Gavin Williamson, guilty of mishandling the school issue in times of coronavirus. Williamson apologized to all students penalized by the end-of-year voting but announced a reverse that will allow all deserving students to enroll in their chosen universities. For now he continues in his role as minister but many are doubting his reliability. The Scarborough MP is a key ally of Johnson, as was Theresa May, who had appointed him Secretary of State for Defense before ousting him from her cabinet over some confidential revelations that Williamson himself had made to the press regarding the Huawei discussions held in the National Security Council. After this further episode, it seems that his political career – which had already suffered a considerable dent at the time of his resignation as Minister of Defense – can be defined as over.
What should worry Johnson is also the increasingly critical position of the UK's most popular newspaper, the Daily Mail , which has always been a supporter of the Conservative party. The reverse on the A-Levels led the publication directed by Geordie Craig to front page the duo Johnson-Williamson drawn in the role of Laurel and Hardy and with an eloquent title: "Here's another nice mess made by the government." The last time two British politicians were portrayed as the two famous American comedians was in 1993, when the Daily Mirror featured John Major and Norman Lamont in the same guise and title after Black Wednesday that took the pound out of EMS. (It should be noted that after the sensational exit the British economy came out of recession and there was no cataclysm as predicted).
What does Johnson currently have to fear? These tremors have been, there are and will be. The Conservative party is never kind to its leaders, and the ambitions of those who previously seemed like a neophyte to politics are fully revealed. The newspapers are loudly advertising Rishi Sunak, the young Chancellor of the Exchequer, already labeled as "competent" for managing the economy during Covid-19 . And then there is Priti Patel , at the forefront in the fight against trafficking in human beings and against illegal immigration.
Johnson commands a majority of 79 deputies, a huge amount compared to the numbers of his predecessors Cameron and May. To hypothesize that something has broken in the relationship between him and the party seems really too much after only 1 year of government and a brilliant electoral result. But the prime minister whom the British sent to Downing Street by popular acclaim would do well not to underestimate the signals coming to him from various quarters. If the summer is very hot, the autumn – with the end of the furlough and the discussions for trade agreements with the EU – promises to be at least challenging.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/tutte-le-difficolta-di-boris-johnson/ on Fri, 21 Aug 2020 13:10:50 +0000.