Is Boris Johnson on His Way Out?

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure amid his latest scandal, NATO-Russia Council begins in Brussels, and global growth is set to slow in 2022.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces tough questions from British lawmakers today in Parliament as the mercurial leader attempts to hang on to power following weeks of scandals.

The latest uproar centers on whether Johnson convened and attended a party in No. 10 Downing St.’s rose garden in May 2020, when strict public health restrictions remained in place. It exploded after an email emerged from the prime minister’s private secretary inviting 100 staff members to attend the event; even the usually pro-Boris Daily Mail and Daily Express tabloids have criticized the prime minister. Police are now reportedly investigating whether the event broke any lockdown laws.

Of course, Johnson’s time as premier has seen him ride out other scandals. Is this the one that brings him down?

The British public seems to think so; 66 percent of those surveyed in a recent poll think Johnson should resign, a 12 percentage point increase from when the same question was asked in December 2021. Crucially, for a leader seen as an electoral asset, the opposition Labour Party appears to be gaining support, with an eight-point lead over the Conservatives in a late-December 2021 poll.

So why now? “One of the things to understand about British politics is politicians can make all sorts of enormous policy mistakes—example: [former British prime minister Tony] Blair over Iraq—and it doesn’t bring them down,” John Curtice, a polling expert and professor of politics at University of Strathclyde, told Foreign Policy. “Politicians in this country seem to get brought down much more because of alleged failures of personal behavior.”

U.S. readers accustomed to grin-and-bear-it crisis management tactics from their own political leaders may be surprised at the relative speed at which Johnson, who presided over a landslide victory in 2019, has fallen in the public eye. That’s partially down to the volatility of the U.K. electorate, Chris Curtis, head of political polling at polling firm Opinium, explained to me, where politicians don’t have a reliable base to help weather political storms.

“While the U.S. has become more polarized in recent years, the U.K. has gone in the complete opposite direction,” Curtis said. “The electorate here is more volatile than ever. There are fewer party loyalists than we’ve ever seen before and a lot more ‘compare the market’ voters who switch between political parties in each election. All of this means that a scandal like this is going to cut through because a lot of voters will take a look at the Conservative Party and see better options that they’re also more open to.”

The influential and conservative-dominated British press also seem to have soured on Johnson, with today’s front pages from major newspapers all speculating over Johnson’s future. “The Party’s Over, Boris” reads another daily tabloid’s headline.

But public opinion and media pressure won’t be what would gets Johnson out of office; only his own Conservative party can do that. His level of support within those ranks was shown yesterday, when Michael Ellis, a junior minister, stood forward to address the concerns of his fellow lawmakers rather than any members of the party’s front bench.

At a time of crisis, Johnson has “burnt his boats” with his party colleagues, Strathclyde’s Curtice said. Many Conservatives still bristle at a November 2021 scandal, when they were urged to help a member of Parliament accused of corruption escape censure: “He is not a prime minister who’s ever spent hours working the tea room. He’s not a House of Commons person. And to that extent, he doesn’t have bonds of loyalty within his party,” Curtice said.

As for who may replace him, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is the current bookmaker’s favorite and leads opinion polling—with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss close behind. More than half of Conservative Party members in a recent poll said Sunak would make a better prime minister and would help the party win more seats than Johnson in a future election.

Russia-NATO talks. NATO members meet with Russian representatives in Brussels today for the first NATO-Russia Council since 2019. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, fresh off her bilateral discussions on Monday, represents the United States. Ahead of the talks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said his side saw no “no significant reason for optimism” and would not be satisfied “with the endless dragging out of this process.”

SADC meets on Mozambique. Heads of state and government from the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) meet today in Malawi for an extraordinary summit to discuss the group’s military intervention in Mozambique. Forces from SADC and Rwanda first deployed to Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province last July to help quell a violent insurgency that led to 3,100 deaths and displaced nearly 856,000 people. Last June, Emily Estelle wrote in Foreign Policy about how the Islamic State’s latest offshoot managed to take hold there.

Omicron in Europe. The omicron variant of the coronavirus is expected to infect more than 1 in 2 Europeans over the next two months, the World Health Organization forecast on Tuesday, citing current infection rates. WHO Regional Director Hans Kluge said while the high number of cases was causing hospitalization rates to pick up, the death rate remained low. Despite the high rate of infection, the WHO warned that infection waves’ unpredictability meant it was too early to describe the virus as endemic. 

The global slowdown. The World Bank predicts global economic growth will slow substantially in the coming years, with supply chain problems, easing of government support, and coronavirus troubles expected to impede recoveries, especially in less developed economies. The bank estimates growth would reach 4.1 percent in 2022, down from 5.5 percent last year. It is expected to drop further, to 3.2 percent, in 2023.

German pressure washer company Kärcher has become an unexpected participant in France’s presidential election contest after it chastised right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse for associating its brand with “violence and insecurity” after Pécresse promised to “get the Kärcher out again” in dealing with urban crime.

The cleaning appliance has been invoked by French presidential candidates before. In 2005, then-French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy said he would use the device to clean up “scum” from housing projects.

“The Kärcher trademark is not the ‘banner’ of any political party,” the company said in a Tuesday statement.