On Thursday, former London mayor Boris Johnson announced that he’s taking his name out of the running for Prime Minister of the UK. “Having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in Parliament, I have concluded that that person cannot be me,” said Johnson during protracted speech in London.
As a high-profile Tory party member Johnson was the official face of the ‘Leave’ campaign to exit from the European Union. He spent the last few months campaigning vigorously throughout the UK for the Brexit referendum.
Many party member expected him to assume the mantle of leadership after David Cameron unexpectedly announced his resignation in the aftermath of last Thursday’s game-changing vote.
As The Daily Wire’s Aaron Bandler reported, Johnson is an eccentric figure in British politics. Before the fiery Brexit campaign fractured the Conservative party, Johnson and Cameron were close allies in parliament. However, Johnson’s bizarre antics and controversial policy positions have landed him in hot water with members of his own party in the past. Despite Johnson’s prominent national profile, he was never very well-liked in Westminster. Caricatured as a curious sideshow rather than stoic statesman, Johnson’s claim to 10 Downing Street may have been tenuous from the start.
But Johnson’s withdrawal was never pre-destined. In fact, his decision may be a consequence of a Machiavellian scheme contrived by his trusted comrade, Michael Gove.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
In a recent interview with BBC shortly before Johnson’s announcement, justice secretary and fellow Leave campaigner Michael Gove suggested that Johnson simply wasn’t up to the job. “I came in the last few days reluctantly and firmly to the conclusion that while Boris has great attributes he was not capable of uniting that team and leading the party and the country in the way that I would have hoped.”
Gove concluded that he, himself, should occupy the leadership void left by Cameron. “I should stand and Boris should stand aside,” he stated audaciously, adding:
It had to fall to someone else. As someone who had argued consistently that we should leave the European Union, and as someone who’s experienced at the highest levels in the Cabinet, I felt it had to fall to me.
Gove was Johnson’s number two during the Brexit campaign. He was the former London mayor’s campaign manager: never the prom queen, always the ugly friend. Gove was the man in the shadows, operating behind the scenes to ensure Johnson reaps the rewards of campaign Leave. From what it looks right now, Gove may have always been more of a Brutus than a Renfield. In fact, Johnson may have referenced William Shakespeare’s tragedy in his de facto concession speech. As The Daily Beast’s Nico Hines notes, Johnson employed distinctly literary language to announced his withdrawal. “A time not to fight against the tide of history but to take that tide at the flood and sail on to fortune,” stated Johnson. Or put another way: Et tu, Brute!
Hines explains Johnson’s subtle allusion:
At this point only the most well-tuned literary ears would have noticed that Johnson was paraphrasing the words of Brutus from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who says: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
So, the plot thickens. Johnson appears to have succumbed to Gove’s betrayal, reluctantly accepting his fate and dropping out of the running for Britain’s highest non-monarchial office. Some Conservative Party members now feel as though Johnson acted like a coward, fleeing the battlefield after the slightest hint of action.
“He’s like a general who marches his army to the sound of the guns and the moment he sees the battleground he abandons it,” Lord Heseltine, former Conservative deputy prime minister told The Daily Beast. “I have never seen so contemptible and irresponsible a situation. He must live with the shame of what he has done.”
Lord Heseltine could have gone with Shakespeare here too: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
The political chaos in the UK is unfolding, well, like a Shakespearean tragedy. We may have to look to the British bard’s prescient plays to find out what happens next.