Boris Johnson’s unexpectedly tricky Conservative Party conference

When Boris Johnson carried all before him at the polls last December, he had every reason to look forward to his first post-election conference. For the classically-minded prime minister it would be the Tory equivalent of the Roman triumph, the spectacular parade celebrating a conquering commander. That dream has faded, and not just because the event starting on Saturday will be online, stripping away the buzz and bustle of the real thing.

Despite winning the biggest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher’s two landslide victories in the 1980s, Johnson’s main task at the conference will be to try to resurrect his faltering leadership. A national emergency normally plays to the advantage of a prime minister as the country rallies behind the government and pays little heed to the opposition. That happened during the spring lockdown, when Johnson had sky-high approval ratings. But since then public support for him has sunk, because of growing discontent with the overall way in which he has handled the epidemic. On the eve of the conference he trails Keir Starmer on who would make the best prime minister and the Conservatives have fallen behind Labour.

If it were just the public that was disgruntled, Johnson could afford to relax, since there is plenty of time until the next general election. But there is deep disquiet in Conservative circles, which surfaced in a recent issue of the Spectator, the magazine once edited by Johnson. Fraser Nelson, its current editor, urged “the missing leader” of “a government at sea” to regain his mojo. He said: “The question now is whether he can become a proper leader with a sense of direction and purpose, or whether the pattern we have seen in recent months—of disorder, debacle, rebellion, U-turn and confusion—is what we should henceforth expect.”

Already under fire for the fiasco over A-level and GCSE grades and the continuing inadequacies of the “world-beating” Covid-19 test-and-trace system, Johnson has provoked further fury through his controversial plan to break international law, specifically the withdrawal agreement with the EU that he himself signed. Speaking in the House of Commons on 21st September, Theresa May accused the government of “acting recklessly and irresponsibly, with no thought to the long-term impact on the United Kingdom’s standing in the world.” She added that it would lead to “untold damage” to the country’s reputation and put “its future at risk.” It was an extraordinary ticking-off of her successor.

Tory backbenchers have become resentful about a governing style that appears to take them for granted. One of their shop stewards, Charles Walker—a vice-chair of the 1922 committee—got a lot off his chest in the House in the debate on the second reading of the Internal Market Bill, which contains the offending law-breaking clauses. He declared he would not support it on that occasion because “if you keep whacking a dog, you shouldn’t be surprised when it bites you back. We are all members of parliament and we deserve to be taken seriously.”

With ungrateful Conservative MPs starting to snap at his heels, Johnson will miss the physical presence of party members whose loyalties are less fickle. Like the “red wall” converts to the Tory cause, and specifically to Johnson himself, the party faithful will be reluctant to admit that they made the wrong choice in last year’s leadership election when they selected a troublemaker rather than safe-pair-of-hands Jeremy Hunt. But he will still want to make the most of this opportunity to reconnect with and to bolster his party base.

Instinctively, Johnson will want to placate Tory members with what they want to hear. Such a speech would be above all a message of hope about the way out of the Covid-19 nightmare. There would be much less about what happens when it is no longer possible to finance extra public spending simply by borrowing more and more. Naturally it would include stirring stuff about the restoration of national sovereignty thanks to Brexit, and a defiant stance towards the EU in the vexed trade talks.

The trouble is that this is precisely the wrong speech if Johnson wants to set a sustainable direction for his government. That requires the spelling out of harsh home truths to his party. The prime minister needs to reinforce the message that containing the disease will be a long haul, requiring unpalatable restrictions well into next year. He should also start to prepare the ground for the tax increases that must come to mend the public finances. And he needs to avoid rhetorical provocations that will jeopardise reaching the Brexit trade deal with the EU that is vital to avoid compounding the damage inflicted by the epidemic.

Forty years ago, Thatcher used a party conference in the year after her first election victory to double down on her controversial economic strategy to defeat inflation despite the cost in rising unemployment: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning,” she declared. As a serial U-turner, Johnson can’t repeat that famous moment. But he could reset course by casting himself as the leader who will take Britain through the coronavirus catastrophe and deal with the consequences. That would be a triumph of a kind.