Boris Johnson Has Only Delayed the Inevitable
Boris Johnson lives to fight another day. Britain, meanwhile, lives to endure another day in his shadow, a bit part in the soap opera of his life, watching on as the drama is set on an endless doom loop from comic farce to tragedy.
After months of turmoil over Johnson’s behavior in office, in which he became the first sitting British prime minister ever to be fined for breaking the law, enough of his fellow Conservative members of Parliament finally plucked up the courage to trigger a formal vote of confidence in his leadership of the party. Had he lost, even by a single vote, the process to replace him as party leader—and prime minister—would have begun immediately, culminating in a new appointment within weeks—the sixth British leader in the space of just 15 years, an astonishing period of political instability and failure. Yet, once again, this master of evasion somehow managed to escape, winning 211 votes to 148 to stay in post.
This “victory,” however, marks just the beginning of Johnson’s fight for survival. Each of his Tory predecessors who were challenged to a vote of confidence lost power soon after, many spectacularly. Even though each prevailed, for Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and , the very fact of
