That’s because Johnson’s decision tells us – if we needed reminding of it after his resignation as foreign secretary last month – that he is positioning himself for the next Conservative leadership contest. He is doing so, what’s more, as the candidate of the populist right rather than the liberal centrist guise he adopted when running to be London mayor. Johnson has moved to the right since then: over Europe, over Trump and now over pluralism and tolerance. He is positioning himself to be the leader of a more insular, less moderate and harder-faced Conservative party and a more insular, less moderate and harder-faced Britain. [...]
There are many in the Tory party who still think Johnson is the answer to the party’s problems – in spite of having been a third-rate foreign secretary (second-rate is too generous), of bottling out of the Heathrow vote, of dismissing Theresa May’s negotiating tactics by praising Trump’s, and of many other offences. Just before he resigned, Johnson trailed fourth behind Sajid Javid, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg in the ConservativeHome website’s regular “best next leader” surveys. Now he’s back on top of the pile for the first time since 2016. [...]
It nevertheless raises a larger and deeper question, which lurks behind all attempts to understand the place of leadership in modern politics. No leader is ever perfect. Yet all leaders in modern western democracies seem to be struggling more than in the past to maintain the levels of political support, respect and effectiveness that would enable them to carry out their projects. This is true of May and Brexit. It would probably be true of Corbyn and his economic rebalancing project. And it would also apply to Johnson and his reawakening of lost English greatness.
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