Obstacles pile up on Boris Johnson’s road

To analyse. A few days of rest at Checkers, the country residence of the British prime ministers, and a new haircut will not have done anything: Johnson is approaching the year 2022 very badly. He is already overtaken by scandals. The leader is summoned to explain himself on messages sent in 2020 to a Conservative Party donor, Lord Brownlow: he asks him if he can continue to finance the redecoration of his official apartment at 10 Downing Street and seems to agree, in return, to consider Mr. Brownlow’s suggestion to organize a “big show”. On Monday January 10, the ITV channel published an email from Mr Johnson’s private secretary to around 100 people, inviting them to a “BYOB” party (for “Bring your own bottle”, ‘Bring your own bottle’), in Downing Street Gardens, May 20, 2020, in full confinement. Boris Johnson and his future wife (at the time his fiancée) participated, assure several sources.

Random management of the health crisis

The last two months of 2021 have been calamitous for this atypical, jovial and blundering politician, to whom the general public seemed to forgive everything until then, including his haphazard management of the health crisis (with 150,000 deaths linked to Covid-19, the United Kingdom holds a sad European record). The Prime Minister has followed a series of missteps by deciding unpopular tax hikes, trying to save a friend of Parliament caught in the act of lobbying or refusing to recognize the existence of Downing Street parties in apparent violation of health rules. The electoral sanction was immediate: in mid-December, the Conservative Party suffered a bitter failure in by-elections in one of its strongholds. And the Labor Party is now leading the polls.

Read also Boris Johnson admits having attended a party in full confinement and apologizes, the opposition asks for his resignation

Mr Johnson’s fall in popularity is so brutal that his immediate future appears to be in jeopardy. Carried by his victory in the general elections at the end of 2019, he lost the confidence of his troops: the elected conservatives, who until then had turned a blind eye to his faults – opportunism, little attention to detail, the elastic report in fact – now doubt his ability to lead the party to a fourth victory in a row in 2024. Wednesday January 12, Douglas Ross, the leader of the Irish Conservatives, even called on the Prime Minister to resign, after this The latter admitted earlier to having attended a party during the lockdown. The right-wing media have turned against him, and the candidates for his succession, Foreign Minister Liz Truss, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, are pawing their feet.

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