King Street Cat wrote:
While I can envisage a decade of Tory rule, I don't think it will be a decade of Johnson rule. If he even makes it through this first 5 years, I'll bare my backside in Harrods window.
Johnson is more secure
at this point because there isn't an obvious alternate leader around.
When Cameron was there, the obvious contenders for the succession were Osborne and Johnson. Theresa May benefited from Osborne's departure and the sabotage of Johnson's campaign by Gove, but from then on there was always a brooding Johnson waiting for his moment.
When you have that kind of contender with future ambitions, they aren't a threat to the existing PM as long as their ambitions have a timescale that doesn't clash with the existing PM and they feel the existing PM is giving them sufficient promotion and opportunity to build their power base (eg Osborne for Cameron, or Brown in the early days with Blair). Once the wannabe leader feels their time is due, they cluster allies around them who start briefing against the PM and causing mischief (Brown later on; Johnson).
At the moment I think Johnson is in the fortunate position that his coronation has seen off the rivals of his own generation. The old guard like Fox, Gove, Davis, Hunt are not going to be leader now. It's likely that the next leader of the Tory party will be from the next generation, who at this point will be looking to put in their loyal service for a few years. Someone like Rishi Sunak might be a favourite pet of Johnson, willing to do the work, turn up for the tough interviews that Johnson doesn't fancy doing, but who won't be a short-term threat.
But there will be trouble down the road. William Hague has a quote like: "the Tory party is always loyal to its leader....until its not". It has a record of discipline much better than Labour's, until there's a sniff of weakness in the leader and the vultures circle. Even Thatcher became insecure once the Tories started to lose by elections in safe heartlands and with an election 18 months away many Tory MPs started to look nervously at their own seats and be susceptible to the argument 'if only we had a new leader, we might get away with our jobs'. That example might show the potential end for Johnson - the impacts of Brexit are likely to hit the north/midlands industrial base (what's left of it) disproportionately harder than the services-based south. There are a lot of Tory MPs in those areas now with smallish majorities and if the economy goes bad they will be nervous.
Johnson is an enthusiast for history and so he will have seen the way rulers of the past have met various sticky ends. I think he may be different from Thatcher and Blair in that I don't know if he has the drive in him to go on and on past his sell by date as leader. Those two were driven by having a vision of how the country should be and wanted to remake it in that way, which made them cling to power. Being PM probably just appeals to Johnson's vanity in the way being President appeals to Trump. It's something he has always wanted to 'do' but I think he will get tired of the pressure and complexity of office sooner than Thatcher and Blair did. I also think Johnson likes the idea of being an important/popular figure in public life more than just squatting in Downing Street. He might look at Churchill and MacMillan and how they became seen as national treasures in their later life, and look at Blair now trying to have his say on various issues and being treated with scorn, and think he'd rather be a Churchill or MacMillan.
