“You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”, were the infamous words of Margaret Thatcher at the 1980 Conservative Party Conference, and these were the words that shaped her leadership for the next 10 years. Although she was most certainly the most divisive Prime Minister of the 20th Century, through her hard stances on industry, taxation, and privatisation. What shaped her Prime Ministership the most were her strength and forcefulness, in both her ambition and policy making. This, I believe, set her apart from other cabinet ministers and allowed her to drag Britain through its worse economic and cultural crisis since the war. Since Thatcher left Downing Street in 1990 there has been a steady decline in this display of ‘backbone’ in leaders and as we’ve traversed down this pit of weakness over the last 30 years, I believe, we have finally hit the bottom. This, of course, is the grimy, gloom-ridden, and messy nadir of British politics, that is Boris Johnson.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffer Johnson (I know I rolled my eyes at that bit as well) is the 87th Prime Minister of Great Britain. He was educated at Eton College and then moved on to Oxford University, where he studied Classics. During his time at Oxford Boris would become the president of the Oxford Union, his leadership of which was so poor that many questions were raised about his competence and seriousness- such questions would continue to be asked throughout his career. He then moved on to journalism, his career in which was varied, mainly because of all the trouble he caused at each paper he was at. From providing information for the assault of a fellow journalist or the racist and homophobic language he used whilst working for the Spectator- calling Muslim Women “letterboxes” and gay men “tank-top wearing bum boys”. Johnson then crossed over into politics, where he made a splash as the ‘bumbling buffoon’, who soon managed to become Major of London. At this point nobody even considered him to ever be Prime Minister. However, in 2019 he was elected Prime Minister of the Conservative Party, and within 6 months of this election the Covid-19 pandemic took hold of the world, and Johnson had his first crisis.
It is safe to say that Johnson and the Conservative Party’s handling of the Corona-Virus is one of the most disorganised and incompetent of any government worldwide, if not the worst. The UK, as I am writing this, has a death rate of 103,602 , and this is only increasing each day. As we see countries like Vietnam and New Zealand practically free from the virus, one cannot ignore the failings of our government and begin to question why we are in this position and who is responsible? The vast majority of the blame, I think, lies at the hands of Boris Johnson.
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines ‘incompetence’ as a lack of ability to do something successfully or as it should be done, and if this doesn’t epitomise Johnson’s handling of the Corona-Virus, I don’t know what does. Whether it be the first failure to enforce an immediate lockdown, leading to a colossal reassurance in the infection rate or the mass failure to provide PPE to the NHS staff, resulting in hundreds more COVID deaths, or the failure to provide sufficient meals for children living on the breadline, Johnson’s leadership definitely shows fatal levels of incompetence, which contributes to the disaster we currently find ourselves in and outlines the perils of such leadership.
Another glaring flaw in Johnson’s leadership is the incoherence and indecisiveness of both his policy makings and his addresses to the nation. Surely, it is the leader’s responsibility, in times of struggle and hardship, to speak to the nation in a calm and earnest way, that is both clear and factual, helping people understand the situation and have faith and trust in the government to fix it. Perhaps a good example of this would be President Roosevelt’s ‘Fireside Chats’, given to the USA during the Great Depression and WW2 as a way to keep order and to make sure the American people were informed. These were often short but factual helping Americans to be aware of the nation’s struggles but trusting in the Government to have them fixed. Boris Johnson’s ‘briefings’, on the other hand, seem to have a different tone, particularly his earlier ones in the pandemic were often confusing, repetitive, and contradictory (Comedian Matt Lucas did a satire on this for the GBBO). It left most people feeling even more confused and bewildered than before and squandered any trust left in the Government whatsoever.
Finally, and most fatal of all, is his inherent indecisiveness and weakness as a leader. As with most members of his cabinet, their lack of backbone and can be shown through the number of ‘U-turns’ made as a result of their indecisiveness and bad policy making. By October, the Conservative Government had made a whopping 15 U-turns in their policies. There was the scandal with A-Levels in August, where ministers were accused of a postcode lottery after it emerged that results would be moderated to reflect how individual schools usually perform in the exams. The Government then organised a U-turn to allow pupils to use their mock results as the basis for an appeal, however, this descended into confusion when the exams regulator admitted it could not clarify how the new system would work until days after results were received. Another example of such a U-Turn was Johnson’s change of heart on the prospect of a second National Lockdown- “Let us try to avoid the misery of another national lockdown, which he [Sir Keir Starmer] would want to impose” was the comment made by Johnson when asked about implementing a second lockdown. However, he soon ate his words when 2 weeks later he stated “The virus is spreading even faster than the reasonable worst-case scenario of our scientific advisers, whose models now suggest that unless we act, we could see deaths in this country running at several thousand a day, a peak of mortality, alas, bigger than the one we saw in April.”. This ultimately proves the complete indecisiveness and weakness of the Johnson Premiership and how together with other factors it has resulted in Britain having the world’s largest death rate.
In conclusion, Boris Johnson’s leadership is the reason Britain is in this terrible position, through his incompetency, incoherence, and indecision Britain has become a symbol of how not to run a country during a pandemic. Now more than ever we need a leader with a clear display of intelligence, coherence, and backbone to drag our country through these dark times and into a brighter future.
Jay Frederick Palombella (01/01/21)
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