Boris Johnson’s willingness to assert power goes along with a sense of fragility. He must retain the faith of voters
was reportedly in the habit of dipping dissidents in tar and using them to light his dinner parties. Boris Johnson has not so far shown an inclination to use his ministers as human torches, but there is nevertheless something imperial about his progress. He dispenses with colleagues with a chilling nonchalance. He barrels into prime minister’s questions every Wednesday, his shirt-tail flapping behind him, to the cheers of the massed Tory benches.
Three things determine whether they will be emperors or wimps: the nature of their personality, the quality of the people sitting around the cabinet table and the size of their majority. In Mr Johnson’s case all three dials are turned to “maximum imperial”. His biography of Britain’s greatest prime minister, Winston Churchill, was a disguised mission statement. He also has an imperial taste for vengeance.
Mr Johnson’s 80-seat majority has also issued him with a blank cheque. The majority is in many ways a personal one: millions of people voted Tory, many for the first time, because of the combination of his personality and his message of getting Brexit done. It enables him to steamroller opposition. Mr Cummings is at the heart of this centralisation project. He is pushing forward with his long-cherished plan of turning ministers’ special advisers, or “spads”, into a sort of New Model Army that sees its primary loyalty as being to Number 10 rather than to individual ministers. On February 13th the chancellor of the exchequer, Sajid Javid, resigned rather than agree to the merger of Number 11’s advisers with those at Number 10.
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