Boris Johnson is in deep trouble. Will he be able to rescue his reputation and his political authority? In a letter published in The Sunday Times on November 8 in response to an article a week earlier, Alistair Lexden quoted some chilling words from Winston Churchill.
Robert Colvile comes gamely to Boris Johnson’s defence, claiming that “Tory voters still back their man” (Comment, November 1). Not so, according to polls conducted by the ConservativeHome website. In the Commons and the Lords, despair reigns.
Would someone of even modest parliamentary talent have given such a huge hostage to fortune by crudely dismissing Keir Starmer’s call for a national lockdown? Or pushed ahead with the Internal Market Bill, which the Lords will reject?
Perhaps if Johnson had accepted my invitation to join the Conservative Research Department in 1988, something might have been made of him. As it is, he needs to ponder words of his hero Winston Churchill: “If [a leader] makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed.”
Lord Lexden
House of Lords
