Boris Johnson seeks salvation with a purge of his team and a handful of populist measures

Beyond the devastating verdict on his credibility that the polls have issued in recent days, Boris Johnson remains convinced that salvation is within his grasp.

He only needs to sacrifice a few heads of his team of faithful so that they pay for the rest of the excesses of alcohol and partying in the Downing Street of the confinement, and offer the hard wing of the Conservative Party - the one that helped him reach the pinnacle of his political career — some of the populist measures that he has been demanding for years.

The phrase-slogan that the Prime Minister's spokesmen repeat these days is to “end a culture of alcohol” in Downing Street.

As if organizing a collection to have a fridge in the office full of bottles, sending someone every week to the corner supermarket with a suitcase to bring it full of liquor or ending up drunk at three in the morning and breaking the excess weight of the boss's son's swing were idiosyncratic traits of any British Government or its senior officials.

An alien “culture” that would now need to be eradicated, with improvised measures such as the express prohibition of alcohol in the office of the Prime Minister's Cabinet.

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“When the Conservative Party sees Johnson as a liability, they will end his political career to save theirs”

Sources from the Conservative Party, who attended Johnson's meeting with his deputies last week, assure that the prime minister was convinced that he had had to pay the piper for others. "Sometimes we take credit for things we don't deserve it for, and this time I got to take credit for the same thing," Johnson said, according to those witnesses. With that protective shield, his team is betting that the report by the permanent deputy secretary of the Cabinet Office, Sue Grant, who is expected to have it ready by the end of this week, will charge harshly against the excesses that occurred in Downing Street during the lockdown, but don't hurt Johnson.

It is an approach that hides something of a trap, because Grant does not have full autonomy to investigate —she reports directly to the prime minister who has appointed her— nor authority to point out criminal offenses. You can point out facts or recommend reforms. You can hardly afford a value judgment. But if his final conclusions point in that direction, Johnson will be able to throw a clean slate image, after unceremoniously purging much of his team of advisers and senior officials. Martin Reynolds, the prime minister's private secretary who sent 100 people an email invitation to one of the parties, is the leading candidate to go out the back door; and, next to him, Dan Rosenfield, chief of staff; Jack Doyle, Director of Communications; and some more of this last department.

Even so, “Conservative MPs are going to have to ask themselves if they see it possible for this prime minister to recover from a situation in which practically half of the people who voted for him two years ago believe that he has to resign”, The most reputable electoral sociologist in the United Kingdom, John Curtice, warned this Monday in an intervention for

.

"Carnaza" for the deputies

Although Johnson's team insists on denying the veracity of the terms, it has already caught on among journalists and politicians the joke that the operation to save the prime minister is called

(save the boss), and that of recovering the confidence of conservative deputies and voters,

(red meat, or carnaza). What better bait to stimulate the hard wing of the conservatives than to announce, as the Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, did this Monday, that the army would play a fundamental role in the crisis of irregular immigrants who cross the English Channel.

“I believe that citizens fully support the Government to do everything possible to protect our borders, and that is why it is essential that we maintain a combined options approach”, the minister assured, confirming that the army would become a “key operational partner ” in channel protection.

Again through unconfirmed leaks, Patel's department has again suggested its intention to send intercepted migrants on their journey from the French coast to a third country, where they would be held while their asylum application is processed.

If at first there was talk of Albania,

assured this Monday that the Johnson government is considering the possibilities of Rwanda or Ghana.

The enemy, the BBC

But the true black beast of the conservative eurosceptics has always been the public radio and television corporation, which they have never stopped seeing as a nest of leftists and the last redoubt of supporters of the European Union. That is why Johnson has sent his Secretary of State for Culture and Media, Nadine Dorries, to the House of Commons to announce that the Government was going to freeze the rate that the BBC charges each viewer annually for the next two years. It's 159 pounds. About 190 euros.

It is not so much because of the quantity —which barely allows the corporation to cover the necessary budget for the quality and demand that is expected of it—, but because of the police punishment and the criminal sanction that non-payment entails. In the age of

, digital platforms and broadband, the Conservatives have found the perfect breeding ground to launch their attack on the BBC. "The days when our elders were threatened with jail sentences or with fines at their doorsteps are over," Dorries announced, with an exaggeratedly populist tone that delighted some Conservative MPs.

Not of all, however.

There are already 15 who have expressed their displeasure with the continuity of Johnson.

And several British media indicate that there are already 30 "letters of confidence withdrawal" received by the leadership of the parliamentary group.

If the magic number of 54 is reached, an internal censure motion will be automatically activated to question Johnson's leadership.

A weekend of letters of rage and fury

The main thermometer available to MPs in the United Kingdom to measure the political climate and to see their own future is the exchange of emails with the voters of their respective constituencies. It is very common for them to hold so-called

(consultations) every weekend, to listen to the complaints and concerns of all of them, but their mailboxes (increasingly, email) are always open. And last weekend, those of the conservative deputies were flooded with messages of anger, frustration and disappointment with Boris Johnson and his government over the scandal of the parties banned in Downing Street during confinement. 

There are six deputies from the prime minister's party who have publicly called for his resignation, but many more have used high-caliber words against the government to respond to their scandalized voters. “I have heard the prime minister's apologies. To put it bluntly, I am not happy at all, ”replied in a text the deputy Giles Watling, who complied with the rules of social restriction during the pandemic and could not see his sister, who ended up dying from covid.

People in positions of power "should not shy away from their public responsibilities," George Freeman, Secretary of State for Science, admitted to one of his constituents.

"The Prime Minister and his Cabinet are bound by the highest standards," Freeman said, after admitting that the party scandal had left him "shocked and speechless."

Grassroots Conservatives (Base Conservatives), the association of the conservative affiliates that most tread the street, has assured this Monday that, according to its latest poll, up to 40% of its militants are convinced that Johnson should resign for the good of the party , and that there is "massive irritation" among the bases for everything that has happened. 

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