2021: How an ‘amazing’ year went from hope to despair for Boris Johnson

Prime minister ends turbulent year in shaky position

(Getty/No10)

As he sat down to write his New Year’s message to the nation 12 months ago, Boris Johnson was in ebullient mood.

Like millions of Britons, the PM was relieved to put a miserable 2020 behind him and welcome a year which must surely be better.

Johnson was brimming with confidence. The nation was an “an amazing moment”, with “the end of the journey” of coronavirus nearing and “global Britain” ready to seize the opportunities of Brexit with both hands.

Looking back from the end of the year - with the UK braced for a fresh wave of deaths and restrictions from Omicron, crops rotting in the fields, the prime minister’s poll ratings tumbling amid a slew of scandals and his rebellious MPs openly discussing a leadership challenge - it is safe to say that 2021 has turned out to be “amazing” in a different way than Mr Johnson expected.

And rereading his New Year address, it is easy to see the seeds of his current discomfort in the confident tone the PM took, as he fell prey to his usual vice of over-promising.

At the time, there were plenty of reasons for the PM to feel optimistic

First and foremost, the vaccines had arrived. The UK had just delivered the world’s first non-experimental Covid-19 jab and had enough stocks on order to rein in the Alpha variant then raging around the country - offering the longed-for prospect of an end to restrictions and an economic boom as Britain reopened.

The five-year national trauma of EU exit negotiations was over with the signing of a Christmas Eve trade deal and the transition out of the single market and customs union on New Year’s Eve delivering on the flagship promise of the PM’s election campaign, to Get Brexit Done.

As well as the new freedoms he hoped this would deliver, Johnson was also relishing the chance to fly the flag for “global Britain” on the world stage as chair of the G7 summit in Cornwall in June and president of the United Nations’ Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November.

Major progress was promised too on a domestic front, with the long-awaited plan for social care and big-spending schemes for rail improvements in the north and “levelling up” of left-behind regions all in the pipeline by the end of the year.

As the cherry on the cake, his approval ratings were bubbling around a very healthy 60 per cent mark. And as vaccines rolled out, the Tory lead over Labour was rising to reach comfortable double figures in the spring, making him the darling of success-hungry MPs.

Looking back now on that rosy prospect, it is hard not to conclude that the PM must now feel that all his dreams for 2021 have turned to dust.

Alpha proved far more devastating than the first wave of Covid-19 in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, and was followed by the Delta variant, imported from India amid accusations that Mr Johnson delayed travel restrictions in the hope of going ahead with a trade visit.

“Freedom Day” was delayed and when it finally arrived on 19 July it was swathed in warnings about the need for caution, rather than celebrations of liberation.

By then, Mr Johnson had lost his health secretary Matt Hancock to humiliating footage of a lockdown-breaking and marriage-ending clinch with a mistress he had hired as his adviser.

And he was savaged by former right-hand man Dominic Cummings, who told MPs that blunders by the PM - who he branded “the trolley” because of his tendency to veer around wildly on policy - had caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Covid restrictions helped to mask the impact of EU withdrawal, as feared queues of lorries at Channel ports did not materialise. While trade with Europe went off a cliff in January, there was enough of a recovery for Johnson to pass it off as “teething troubles”, despite evidence of long-lasting damage to industries such as seafood.

But official statistics confirmed pre-referendum predictions that Brexit would knock around 4 per cent off GDP growth in the longer term, offset by only a tiny fraction of a percentage point by the trade deals negotiated with countries like Australia and New Zealand.

In Northern Ireland, the PM found himself in the bizarre position of demanding the rewriting of the Brexit deal he had himself agreed less than two years previously. And a “sausage war” with Brussels erupted after Johnson belatedly noticed that the treaty he signed included a clause banning the movement of chilled meat from one part of the UK to another.

Meanwhile, onerous new Brexit red tape compounded supply chain problems caused by Covid to empty supermarket shelves, while a shortage of overseas workers left food unharvested and pigs being destroyed in their thousands.

Rows over Brexit overshadowed Mr Johnson’s moment in the G7 spotlight at Carbis Bay, where world leaders’ pledges of 1bn vaccines for developing countries fell far short of the 11bn needed to prevent the emergence of variants like omicron.

Mr Johnson’s hopes of a historic Cop26 deal to limit global warming to 1.5C were derailed by a last-minute ambush by China and India, who drew tears from summit chair Alok Sharma by toning down a key pledge from “phasing out” to “phasing down” coal power as China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin stayed away.

The limits of “global Britain” were brutally exposed as Joe Biden neglected to consult Johnson about the handover of Afghanistan to the Taliban, leading to a chaotic airlift as then foreign secretary Dominic Raab sunned himself on the beach.

And the PM horrified traditional low-tax Tories with a 2.5 per cent hike on national insurance, bringing the share of national income taken by the state to its highest sustained level since the 1950s just as millions of voters were suffering cuts to benefits and inflation was on its way up to 5 per cent and beyond.

An early sign of the shine coming off the Johnson premiership came at the Conservative conference in October, where jokes about “building back beaver” and promises of a “high-wage, high-skill” economy fell flat in a nation still frightened about Covid and worried by the hit to their living standards.

And soon it seemed nothing could go right for the PM.

His attempt to spare Brexit comrade Owen Paterson punishment for paid lobbying ended in ignominious retreat amid the fury of Tory MPs effectively ordered to vote in favour of sleaze.

His social care “reforms” turned out to be a massive transfer of money from the working poor to the heirs of wealthy pensioners. And he provoked the fury of the north with a rail plan which cost billions but axed or scaled back long-cherished schemes. Meanwhile, the white paper on levelling up was quietly postponed until next year.

The prime minister suffered a “emperor’s new clothes” moment in a crucial address to the CBI, as he stumbled over his words and bemused business executives by asking them if they had been to Peppa Pig World, prompting one TV reporter to ask: “Is everything OK?”

Bungled handling of allegations of Christmas parties in Downing Street turned a passing embarrassment into a national scandal, as Johnson’s protests that no rules had been broken crumbled in the face of growing evidence. When his close aide Allegra Stratton resigned after being filmed laughing about the party, the PM - mocked on prime-time TV by Ant and Dec - was forced to order an inquiry into what had happened.

As if that were not bad enough, questions about the funding of the lavish refurbishment of the Downing Street flat were revived by an Electoral Commission report which fined the Conservative Party and revealed messages in which the PM asked for money.

Worst of all, the arrival of the Omicron variant forced Mr Johnson to activate Plan B of his Covid plan, bringing back mandatory face-coverings and restrictions on sports and entertainment events in a way which he hoped was in the past.

The arrival of wife Carrie’s second child on 9 December did little to relieve the gloom enveloping the prime minister, whose personal ratings plunged to unseen depths as Labour took its first sustained polling lead of the Johnson premiership and Keir Starmer was installed for the first time as voters’ preferred option for PM.

Ninety-nine mutinous Tory MPs inflicted the second-worst rebellion on a prime minister in modern times, with some openly saying he must change to survive as leader.

His Brexit minister Lord Frost, one of the few Johnson loyalists in the government, walked out after the PM caved in to Brussels over the principle of European Court of Justice oversight.

And the one factor which attracted the party to Johnson more than any other - his election-winning prowess - was comprehensively trashed by the loss of rock-solid Conservative seats in Chesham & Amersham and North Shropshire on stupendous swings to Liberal Democrats.

As 2022 approaches, the prime minister will once again be relieved to be putting the past year behind him.

But this time round - with the UK gripped by a contagious new variant, tax hikes looming, an impending public inquiry into the handling of Covid, new customs barriers to trade with Europe and mutterings about a leadership contest - Mr Johnson has less reason to look ahead to next year with the confidence he showed 12 months ago.