The Tories are hooked on paranoid short-termism and cheap electoral tricks

Boris Johnson’s obsession with survival, at any cost, mirrors that of the party as a whole, writes Marie Le Conte

Boris Johnson during a news conference to outline the government’s new long-term coronavirus plan (Reuters)

Many column inches, including my own, have been dedicated to the chasms between Boris Johnson and the parliamentary Conservative Party. He is, in so many ways, an odd choice to be a Conservative prime minister; on this, a lot of people agree.

Still, there is one aspect in which they mirror each other, and which deserves to be looked at more closely. Boris Johnson is a man who clings on; he is a man who just about gets away with it, a man who fudges to get what he wants, even if he knows that his solutions are temporary, and will probably land him in hot water later on. In short, he is a “just do whatever you can to win now, the rest will surely figure itself out” leader.

It should feel jarring that he is now the face of the Conservatives, one of the greatest electoral machines in the history of democracy and, we are often told, the natural party of government. There should be an ease to Tory power that Johnson doesn’t quite have; he is a bad loser and an even worse winner, and nothing about him feels steady.