Agnès Alexandre-Collier, professor of British civilization at the University of Burgundy
The establishment at the local level of the conservative party is declining after the elections on Thursday, May 5, while the Labor Party, the ecologists, and above all the Liberal Democrats are progressing. How to explain it?
Agnès Alexandre-Collier: Local elections are quite special. It is about electing municipal councilors in local governments that have historically had a reputation for being politically opposite to the party in government. Structurally, these elections have always functioned as a form of protest against the power in place. At the end of the Thatcher years, the “local governments” were essentially Labour.
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It is certainly surprising to see seats like that of Westminster, Conservative since the 1970s, switch to the Labor camp. At the same time, this may be a long-term consequence of the December 2019 legislative elections. While they had then conquered the famous “red wall” (Labour stronghold) in the north of England, they had lost support in the Southeast affluent blue wall. In the same way, the conservative constituency of Canterbury had swung into the Labour camp.
Local elections are a snapshot in time of the mood of the people across the UK. They are the consequence of several factors – pandemic, Brexit, internal crisis of the Johnson government.
The Labor victory is notable but not sufficient to lead to a change of attitude among the population. In 2013, the local elections were overwhelmingly won by Labor led by Ed Miliband just after the victory of the Liberal Democrat coalition. Their success was not repeated in the legislative elections.
Could Conservative MPs make Boris Johnson pay for this failure by provoking a vote of confidence?
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Agnès Alexandre-Collier: The situation is very delicate for Boris Johnson and anything can happen. At the moment, there are not enough Conservative MPs asking for a vote of no confidence. Some said they sent their letter to the head of the 1922 Committee, an internal body within their party. But for the time being, the fateful figure to be reached of 54 Conservative MPs, or 15% of the Conservative parliamentary group, to organize a motion of no confidence, has not yet been reached. Then, nothing says that a majority of deputies would vote no confidence.
Admittedly, there is concern among the deputies of the “red wall” who risk losing their seats. One of them has already joined the Labor Party. It’s quite unprecedented. But the Conservative MPs are faced with contradictory injunctions: managing the daily recriminations of their constituents who threaten their seat, and on the other hand, their allegiance to the party to ensure its maintenance in the next election. They know well that those of 2019 were won on the basis of the popularity of Boris Johnson. He remains the strong man of Brexit, of the management of the pandemic with the success of vaccination.
Who would be Boris Johnson’s rivals within the Conservative Party?
Agnès Alexandre-Collier: In fact, there isn’t really a potential candidate to replace him. In the current context, he is perceived by the majority of the parliamentary group as the only convincing Conservative leader.
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There are competitors, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak. But a case of tax privileges granted to his wife could discredit him. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, is another potential figure. She belongs to the right of the party and was one of the signatories in 2012 of a pamphlet “Britania unshamed”, founder of the ideological evolution of the Conservative Party and of a new generation of young MPs. This ultra-liberal text, which intends to make the United Kingdom a tax haven, is not soluble in the interventionist discourse “One Nation” which allowed Boris to win the seats in this region of the country in 2019.
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Why do investigations into Boris’ personal behavior during the pandemic crisis have so little impact on him?
Agnès Alexandre-Collier: For several months, we have been waiting with the conclusions of Sue Gray’s administrative report on partygate (parties given by the government despite strict rules during the pandemic) and those of the police investigation. These conclusions are also highly criticized on social networks because Boris Johnson and his wife had to pay fines, the amount of which is lower than those that other Britons had to pay.
With Boris Johnson, we are faced with practices that are closer to the consensual definition of populism, which combines ideas and the practice of power. He put in place a classic Conservative program of identity politics with a refocus on a pro-Brexit, anti-immigration England. At the same time, there is a form of procedural populism where the all-powerful leader does not hesitate to circumvent the law and the institutions to govern in his own way.
The “partygate” revealed in him an ability to act contrary to the “Rule of law”, one of the major constitutional principles of British democracy. Whether he stays or leaves, we have entered a new cycle which means that we are moving away from all the presuppositions that we could have had until now on the foundations of this model democracy. It remains to be seen whether this is a “Johnson parenthesis” or whether it will last.