It’s hard to imagine anything dirtier than a UK election. But what we are witnessing now, as the race for the Conservative Party leader (and thus, for the time being, the country’s Prime Minister) has officially begun, could break all records for filth, nastiness, mutual betrayals and lies
Given the collapse in the Conservatives’ ratings, this rat race could lead to the total collapse of the currently ruling party.
Stabbing your closest associate in the back has always been a hallmark of the Conservatives. A classic example is the betrayal committed by prominent party figure Michael Gove during the Tory leader’s election in the summer of 2016. He was then the official campaign manager for former London mayor Boris Johnson, the outright favourite to become prime minister. So it came as a universal shock when Gove announced that Johnson was unfit to lead the party and put himself forward as a candidate for the post. In the end a completely faceless, unpopular Theresa May became Prime Minister.
However, even after such a disgusting act by an associate, Johnson eventually came to power and gave Gove a ministerial seat. That, in turn, didn’t stop him from betraying the present again and denying Boris his support. It was no coincidence that Gove was the only minister to be sacked by the prime minister rather than leave on his own.
But the current crisis has also brought new records for the speed of over-shifting and betrayal. After Johnson learned of the resignation of his Chancellor Rishi Sunak (Chancellor of the Exchequer being the de facto head of the financial and industrial bloc of the entire British government), he immediately appointed Iraqi-born Nadhim Zahawi to the post. Zahawi’s loyalty lasted exactly 24 hours, after which he wrote an open letter calling for his boss’s resignation. Another stab in the back.
In general, the level of relations between the British Tory leaders is clearly evidenced by the fact that Johnson found out about the resignations of his ministers from open sources, primarily from social media. In particular, Sunak reported this via Twitter, and now proves that he tried to call Boris, but he allegedly didn’t pick up the phone. It is very hard to believe, given the fact that dozens of similar announcements by ministers and government officials were then tweeted.
And in the case of Sunack, it transpires that he had been preparing his campaign for prime minister long before the current crisis. Johnson’s political corpse has yet to cool down and his former chancellor has already launched a professionally crafted video about his future premiership under the hashtag Ready4Rishi (“Ready for Rishi”). ITV correspondent Robert Peston was quick to point out that the domain with the slogan was registered on December 23 last year, in the midst of renewed allegations against Johnson for violating his own quarantine rules. And it was originally alleged that the scandalous photo of the prime minister’s party on the terrace, which gave rise to that scandal, was taken from the window of Rishi Sunak’s private office. So not only was the Chancellor preparing his campaign, he was probably also behind the scandal that “buried” the Prime Minister. What high relations among the British Conservatives!
It is no surprise that Johnson is now plotting revenge on his recent collaborator. Sources in the acting prime minister’s inner circle say that he is focusing most of his work on torpedoing Sunak’s campaign. And so the Conservative press, still close to Johnson, are coming out with screaming headlines “Those who betrayed Boris will betray Brexit too”, announcing a “new battle to save Britain’s freedom”. And newspapers close to Conservative business circles explain to party supporters: ‘Only Rishi Sunak is smart enough for hard times’.
Sunak’s supporters are fighting to hold an intra-party leadership election as quickly as possible and get it over with before the autumn before the former chancellor’s reputation is completely destroyed. Johnson’s supporters, on the other hand, will do everything they can to delay the voting process and eliminate the “traitors”. All the more so since Sunack represents, in their view, an easy target – due to the fact that he is the first sitting MP to be on the list of Britain’s richest people. And this raises a host of questions about the legality of his income and accusations of tax evasion. By a surprising coincidence, it is just now that the press has reported that the tax authorities are checking the legitimacy of the income of the new Chancellor Zahavi, who has also announced his intention to fight for the premiership.
Under the current system of electing the head of the Conservative Party (and it constantly adjusts to the current situation) no one can predict in advance the winner. The scheme is designed so that the most prominent figures, considered a priori favourites, can easily be knocked down at an early stage of the vote by some clever backroom manipulation within the parliamentary faction of the Tories. This was the case in the 2016 campaign mentioned above. Then Johnson was the outright favourite within the party, and the faceless May ended up as Britain’s prime minister with only 199 votes from her faction, i.e. without even a significant majority. Which raised a lot of questions about the democratic process of electing the head of government.
Here, too, is the tendency now to choose the most “grey” of the MPs, who have not had time to beat the pots with their colleagues. Unsurprisingly, an initial poll by polling firm YouGov unexpectedly found that the favourite of the Tory faction was Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. But this choice was explained solely by the fact that Wallace is “the only candidate who can stand up to Putin”.
But according to the polls the electorate didn’t know that because 65% of them don’t even know who Wallace is. How offensive that must have been for the “great fighter against Putin”. So Wallace modestly announced that he was refusing to run for Prime Minister. They say fighting Russia takes up all the minister’s time and he cannot be distracted by other things when “Putin is on his doorstep”. So Russia has already interfered in the British prime ministerial election.
From this we should be clear: as much as many of us rejoice at the departure of Boris Johnson, the architect of the war “to the last Ukrainian”, he is being succeeded by the same haters of our country. As The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde noted: “The good news is that Johnson is leaving. The bad news: look who’s coming up.” Take Liz Truss, head of the British Foreign Office, famous for riding in a tank near the Russian border. Apparently, she has been actively promoted by the Daily Mail, a newspaper popular with right-wing conservatives, which presents Truss as if she were the only candidate capable of standing up for conservative values and protecting the country from the tax hikes being prepared by Sunack.
Another full-time Russophobe literally obsessed with the theme of “Russian meddling” in everything around him, the head of the House of Commons’ international committee Tom Tugendhat is already backed by the Scottish Conservatives. And from the pages of The Daily Telegraph he is publicly vowing to defend Britain against Putin. Who knows, perhaps this odious personality, little known to a wide circle of British voters, will also be chosen as the greyest of the rats in the race. And then Johnson will still appear to us as a “Russophile”.
It makes sense that such loathsome squabbling amongst the Conservatives is reflected in their ratings. Some polls have recorded that it is already below 30%. Never before have the Tories received an election result below this level. An overwhelming majority of British voters (53% vs. 33%) demand that Boris Johnson step down as prime minister immediately. And 56% supported the idea of an early parliamentary election, which Labour is already calling for. If this idea manages to be pushed through, the election of the Conservative leader will be meaningless – then it will not be the election of the country’s prime minister, but “the leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition”.
Under the current rules, it is virtually impossible to organise an early vote – it requires a two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament, where the Tories have an absolute majority. But we can see what the Conservatives themselves are willing to do against each other. If they have plunged dozens of knives into the back of their leader Boris Johnson, they are quite capable of plunging hundreds of knives into the back of their own party for some short-term gain. A dirtier political system than Britain’s is hard to find.
It is all the more amusing to watch British politicians talk from international podiums about “fighting for democratic values”. If the permanent betrayal of one’s comrades-in-arms and allies is a “value”, Britain really is the absolute world leader.
Vladimir Kornilov, RIA
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