Has the Tory press given up on Boris Johnson?

The prime minister appears to have fallen out of favour with a number of the publications that backed him at the election less than a year ago, writes Sean O’Grady. But does it matter?

They are read and heeded by Tory voters, members and MPs; and the papers’ concerns reflect wider public concerns (AFP/Getty)

Busy as he is, the prime minister, even as a former journalist, probably doesn’t have much time personally to check out his media coverage. This is probably just as well, because lately the right-wing, traditionally Tory, press in Britain, which is to say almost all of it, has turned a bit nasty.  

Take yesterday’s early splash on MailOnline: “EXCLUSIVE: In the week Boris told a battered Britain it was in for another six months of Covid winter misery, his partner Carrie Symonds enjoys five-star Italian holiday at £600-a-night Lake Como hotel with son Wilfred and three friends”. Shades of “crisis what crisis?” there and the coming winter of discontent for the premier as a no-deal Brexit and Covid adds to the general sense of a complacent government – prime minister especially – that has lost control of events. Not what you’d expect, maybe, from that quarter.

In fact the Daily Mail has been after Boris Johnson for some time. Back in May, during the Cummings affair, the paper asked of Johnson and Cummings “what planet are they on?”, adding: “Neither man has displayed a scintilla of contrition for this breach of trust. Do they think we are fools?”. The Daily Mail also uncovered the location of Johnson’s Scottish holiday hideaway, which can’t have helped relations. The Mail on Sunday, it is fair to say, is more supportive towards the prime minister, though that may be scant consolation for the scorn of old friends – and colleagues.

For some of the deepest criticism is coming from organs and folk that he has long been associated with. Toby Young in The Spectator (former editor: B Johnson) has publicly admitted he regrets backing Johnson; current editor Fraser Nelson puts it bluntly: “The question now is whether he can become a proper leader with a sense of direction and purpose.” Allister Heath, editor of The Sunday Telegraph, has given him six months to shape up, while his counterpart on The Daily Telegraph, Chris Evans, wonders aloud why the government is treating the people like children over Covid. No one at The Telegraph seems to be terribly sentimental or grateful about those jolly reports about straight Euro-bananas Johnson used to file for them from Brussels. The Times (which has the honour of having sacked Johnson for making up quotes) sniffs that “too often the government has over-promised and under-delivered”. Trevor Kavanagh, former political editor and current political commentator for The Sun, and a man usually in tune with Rupert Murdoch, recently catalogued Johnson’s extensive travails, including in his private life, and quoted one “devout loyalist” that “it’s close to being too late. It’s two minutes to midnight.” Kavanagh did not demur. Only the Daily and Sunday Express can be relied on for unconditional loyalty. Ironically enough, these days they’re owned by the Daily Mirror.

Does it matter?  

Well, the papers don’t matter as much as they did before the internet disrupted their business model. The Covid crisis has also hit them commercially (hence their frustration with lockdowns and the prime minister’s failures), and at least some of their past enthusiasm for Johnson was driven by their morbid fear of Jeremy Corbyn. Some editors might always have privately harboured doubts about Johnson. Like former Mail editor Paul Dacre they might have long wondered about the wisdom of backing a premier “with the morals of an alley cat”. It’s also the case that journalists don’t have to make the tough choices that political leaders have to, and can quite cheerfully demand the impossible. As Stanley Baldwin famously remarked about his Fleet Street tormentors in the 1930s, the media exercise “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”.  

Politically be in no doubt, though; no matter how negative they may feel about Johnson these titles are a very long way from giving the time of day to Keir Starmer, let alone the Labour Party. Even Tony Blair only enjoyed limited success in the benign (for New Labour) atmosphere of the 1990s. For the moment, this re-emerging question of the Conservative leadership is strictly between “family”.  

So the change in their treatment of Johnson has to be set in that context. To a degree, the carping (as the PM might call it) can be discounted – but only to a degree.  

It is also true that there is genuine consternation and disappointment at just how poor the prime minister has been at governing. For example,  the lockdowns that have done so much damage to publishers (and will do so for a further six months or more) would have been shorter and less harsh had the government ever managed to sort out test and trace, made sure there was enough protective equipment around, and made people wear face coverings earlier. Those were avoidable, unforced errors the prime minister must take responsibility for. Likewise he must also carry the can for releasing half-baked policies followed by scrappy U-turns – especially the exams debacle. A chaotic no-deal Brexit will cause more economic problems, as well as discrediting the policy that these Eurosceptic papers campaigned so energetically for.  

Moreover, these newspapers are also substantial presences online. They thus still set much of the agenda. They are read and heeded by Tory voters, members and MPs; and the papers’ concerns reflect wider public concerns.

In the end, it matters much more for Boris Johnson than for the future of the government. Like David Cameron and Theresa May before him, when he ceases to be of use, Mr Johnson can be dispensed with, ruthlessly. There will be another “new” prime minister, but leading yet another Conservative government. It might be more competent, but its challenges and its policies are unlikely to be radically different. It will have more chance of hanging on to power – and that’s what counts. Mr Johnson will then be free to write his memoirs, knock out columns, make some serious money on the international lecture circuit and pursue the other hobbies for which he has rightly become fabled. Those very papers who are now so scornful of his efforts to run the country will no doubt be pleased to welcome him back as a regular contributor to snipe at whoever succeeds him. That’s how the media works.