The country needs direction and discipline – instead it has Boris Johnson

Only the prime minister can prevent his own terminal decline in the new year, writes Salma Shah

‘The year is jam-packed with potential pitfalls and the prime minister is going to have to change a few things’ (PA Wire)

Our beleaguered prime minister may just have been granted a New Year’s miracle by the Omicron variant. The diminished severity of the disease is a relief and even concerns around the capacity of the NHS are shifting away from cataclysmic scenarios and starting to look more manageable, granting Boris Johnson a reprieve of sorts.

There is enough good cheer around, after the government’s latest assessment stated that we’re not heading towards tighter restrictions, that it feels we’re in the final furlong of the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean Johnson’s headaches are over. Far from it. It’s more likely that our attention will start to shift from the immediate horrors of a life-threatening emergency situation to the record of the government and its ability to deliver on its original election promises. With the prime minister’s position remaining precarious, there are a few things he needs to pay attention to if he’s going to swerve his predecessor’s fate.

After a few delays, the white paper on levelling up is due at the end of January. If this document fails in its radical aim or transformative agenda, the central pillar of the government’s vision and reason for being will look implausible. If they can’t sell a message of opportunity to the Red Wall seats that have given the Conservatives a majority, the backbenchers representing these seats will become ever more disgruntled. The package has to be meaningful, which normally means throwing money at the problem – but cash is in short supply. Michael Gove, who is delivering this paper, will need to pull out all the stops to prevent this from being a damp squib.

Undoubtedly, it will also have an impact on local elections too, which are a real-life litmus test for the success of the government. While many English councils will see only a third of their number up for re-election it could shift the balance of power in many areas and will certainly be monitored for the changes in London. We’ll have real-time intelligence on what the voters are saying on the doorstep – will they have forgiven Johnson for the No 10 parties or the Downing Street refurb? Might they be grateful for their boosters and the family Christmas? Either way, the prime minister will be out on the stump garnering support for his party. Any sign that the shine has gone will stir more than a bit of trouble so he really needs to sell the local message of success against a backdrop of real-terms budget cuts in councils and inflationary pressures on households.

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Then of course there’s Brexit. As the principal advocate for leaving, Johnson is the ultimate poster boy for the fate of the deal. There’s going to be a reckoning this year on how successful the departure has been. Liz Truss might have the job of delivering on knotty issues like the Northern Ireland protocol, but ultimately the prime minister’s boosterism is going to have to have paid dividends for it to have been worth it.

The year is jam-packed with potential pitfalls and the prime minister is going to have to change a few things. Mostly, the chaos that has governed his tenure at the top will have to go. No number of new advisers or media interventions will prevent a terminal decline if Johnson himself isn’t willing to alter his way of doing things. The country needs direction and discipline – not qualities usually associated with the prime minister – but with an in-tray that is loaded to capacity and understudies waiting in the wings, he has little choice but to launch into 2022 with a change in his focus and a determination to survive.