I worked on Boris Johnson’s mayoral re-election campaign in 2012.
You may be wondering, “What’s a nice liberal girl from New York City doing working for a British Conservative?”
The short answer: I was finishing my Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. Conservatives over there aren’t anything like conservatives here in America, and he was running against former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a known antisemite who claimed it is “not antisemitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”
Plus, in those days, Boris Johnson was known for his love of cycling and dedication to greener transportation policies, his tough-on-crime approach, pledge to build more affordable housing, and fanaticism for making the London Olympics a triumph. And in all these areas, he succeeded. Johnson rolled out his hugely popular fleet of “Boris Bikes” and added cycle lanes throughout the city; while he was mayor, the homicide rate fell 50 percent; and the Greater London Authority built nearly 100,00 affordable homes. The Olympics were widely praised.
That said, his record as mayor of London has been all but erased because of what came next: Brexit.
As the son of a member of the European Parliament and the former Brussels columnist for the Daily Telegraph, Johnson’s populist, pro-Brexit position made little sense. It felt completely unnatural to hear him talk about how bad globalization had been for most Britons or the breakdown of society due to the vast gap between the elites and everyone else. This was a man who thrived in elite environments like Oxford, where he became Oxford Union president, and whose campaigns were bankrolled by hedge fund managers and other elites.
That doesn’t mean that the “haves” versus the “have nots” isn’t a very real issue. It certainly is! But Johnson jumped at the opportunity to differentiate himself in a crowded field of Conservatives, many of whom appeared to be motivated by the promise of power more than anything else.
People don’t wake up one day and just decide that globalization is an existential threat. It’s just not how it works.
It made matters worse that the Brexit campaign was based on dangerous lies. As Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic, “The electorate was promised that departure from the EU would lead not only to fewer immigrants but to greater prosperity, more welfare spending, less crowded hospitals. Instead, six years after the vote, Britain is less prosperous and more unequal. Brexit reduced the U.K. GDP by at least 1.5 percent even before it took full effect; the U.K. has the highest inflation rate in the G7; small businesses, especially importers, have been crushed by Brexit-related red tape and supply-chain problems.”
Britons know it, too. According to the latest polling, 50 percent think it was wrong to leave the EU, compared to 36 percent who think it was the right decision.
I bring up Brexit not because it was the reason that Boris Johnson ended up having to resign as prime minister. There were a litany of scandals that caused that. From so-called “Party-gate,” where Johnson broke his own COVID rules to host get-togethers, to the most recent brouhaha regarding Chris Pincher, the Conservative MP and party whip who resigned after reportedly getting drunk at the Tory Party members’ club and is accused of groping two men. It was discovered that Johnson apparently knew of previous harassment allegations levied against Pincher but continued to promote him — so there is plenty that went very wrong.
But Brexit matters because it’s the biggest load of crap that Boris Johnson sold the British people. And whether Britons are talking about it explicitly or not, as they sit around their kitchen tables, Brexit underlies critical aspects of society that are affecting quality of life at very difficult times. These include, but are not limited to, the cost of goods and services, the freedom to travel and work, and broader feelings of nationalism and community.
Brexit also was the most glaring example of how a politician who may have been regularly admonished for his behavior, but ultimately — and on occasion, inexplicably— is loved for his candor, quirkiness and brashness, can fall from greatness. The big Brexit sell, coupled with mismanagement, lies and sidestepping of other issues, all added up to a huge betrayal.
A politician has nothing without the public trust. And like a house of cards, it all fell down around Johnson because the foundation upon which it was built was faulty.
I realize that the story of his resignation has a shelf-life and it may be a short one, at that. But there are very real lessons for our own leadership class here in America from the Boris Johnson experience.
“Rules for thee, not for me” doesn’t fly. Don’t flout your own rules or shirk responsibility.
Norms and limits matter. Voters like outside-the-box thinking and innovation, but they like reliability and expertise more.
Live by personality, die by personality. You’re only charming as long as you’re delivering.
And most of all, don’t lie to voters. It was good to see Conservative politicians taking a stand and resigning from the British government, and we could’ve used some of that in America during the Donald Trump years! But at the most basic level, the public trust isn’t something to be trifled with. All democratic societies are held together by this fragile relationship, and it can take only so much.
Boris Johnson found he’d hit the limit and I hope that in the future, politicians consider his case before they push voters too far.
Jessica Tarlov is head of research at Bustle Digital Group and a Fox News contributor. She earned her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in political science. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaTarlov.