Searching for Waterloo: This Defeat Might Not Be Decisive for Boris Johnson

“I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.” Such are the words, attributed to the Duke of Wellington inspecting his troops before the Battle of Waterloo — the anniversary of which we celebrate Sunday.Apocryphal, maybe. Waterloo, though, is a metonymy in its own right for a “decisive or final defeat.” Instead of the Iron Duke, Brexiteers must make do with Boris Johnson. For now. The ex-premier was central to the triumph of British independence in June 2016 and the Conservative electoral romp — that, in December 2019, pushed Brexit over the line of victory . . . just.That, though, was Mr. Johnson’s high-water mark, and a series of missteps and policy bungling brought him low. He was compelled to resign from office last July and the repercussions from what has come to be called Partygate continue to reverberate. He stood down as an MP two Fridays ago in anticipation of the Commons Privileges Committee report. The damning (and damnable) findings were released Thursday. On Monday, Mr. Johnson’s former colleagues will vote on whether to accept its sanctions against him. Ergo, Mr. Johnson’s “Waterloo.”Or is it? “Citizen Boris” makes most of its recommended punishments moot — like a 90-day suspension that would necessarily trigger a recall vote in his constituency. The worst that could happen, short-term, is the petty punishment that he lose his complementary pass to the Palace of Westminster that is generously granted to all former MPs.Like a general at battle, Mr. Johnson has signaled his loyalists “not to die in a ditch” by contesting the motion that must be introduced by the Conservative leader of the House of Commons. Unlike “Mont-Saint-Jean” — the French name for Waterloo — it’s not a hill worth fighting for.Or again as the English might say, it’s “small beer.” Apropos gastronomic sentiments, perhaps, given that Boris proves his insouciance by becoming a columnist for the Daily Mail. He promises his readers “it is going to be exactly what I think about the world, completely unexpurgated stuff . . . I may even have to cover politics from time to time, but I’ll obviously try to do that as little as possible, unless I absolutely have to.”His first wire? His discovery of a weight-loss serum and the “search for the hero inside myself — the one that was three stone lighter.” Of course, Boris being Boris, he prefaced his battle with the bulge by a description of how Cabinet colleagues had slimmed down. “I immediately thought of Julius Caesar, and his preference for well-fed colleagues,” BoJo writes. “‘Let me have men about me that are fat,’ said the Roman dictator, shortly before his assassination. ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.’“As it turned out, Caesar was right to be worried about Cassius,” Boris muses. Incidentally, his current successor at Downing Street is a “diminutive” 5’7.” True to form, the ex-premier is now facing further controversy with the Advisory Committee for Business Appointments, for undue haste in taking up his pen and resuming his journalism profession. One dispute at a time, I say. Doubtless there are few stalwarts who will heed his orders to stand down; battle will be enjoined on Monday, if not necessarily for Boris. One Conservative MP called it an “absurd war between Team Boris and Team Rishi.” Indeed, there are some suggestions that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will search for some excuse — meeting a foreign head of state, perhaps? — not to be present in the Commons for this latest civil war.In one respect, his presence would hardly tip the balance, for it is a foregone conclusion that anti-Boris MPs on both the government and opposition benches will vote in favor of accepting the committee report and its findings against Boris.Yet at the same time, it indicates a dereliction of duty or, perhaps more concerning for the Conservative Party itself, a lack of leadership. Tory MPs will be keeping track of who among their number will be voting against their former paladin. In the words of Conservative members, expect “a series of rebellions” and, more ominously, “it is going to be a bloodbath.” Sadly for both the party and the nation-at-large, the Conservative government is bereft of the sort of generalship that Wellington displayed. By deft maneuvering, he saw to it that he would meet Napoleon on his own terms, reputedly telling a fellow officer “that I saw this ground a year ago, and I’ve kept it in my pocket.”In his own way, Boris Johnson may be subtly telegraphing that he does not see Monday’s vote as the ground of his choosing. Nor, apparently, does the voting public think this is his “decisive defeat.” An exclusive Omnisis poll conducted for the Express found that while 64 percent of respondents did not want Mr. Johnson to return to frontline politics, 24 percent do want him to rejoin the fray — including half of likely Conservative voters.Perhaps Boris will fight under new colors. Last Sunday, another hero in the Battle of Brexit, Nigel Farage, suggested that both he and Mr. Johnson could join forces to defend their Brexit legacy by forming a new center-right party.Such as they are, BoJo’s strengths are clearly strategic and “big picture.” He can describe in enchanting scenes the “sunlit uplands,” but it remains for others to chart and direct the journey. Despite his own doubts to the contrary (reported by allies after the fact), Mr. Johnson could not argue against the tax increases introduced by his then-Chancellor, Mr. Sunak; nor counter government advisers on their strict program of Covid lockdown.Conservative-minded voters must search elsewhere for a leader. In the battle for Brexit and “maximal liberty and minimal government,” advocates have not yet met their Waterloo. The fight goes on. Again, though, with a nod to the Wellington lexicon, “It has been a damned near-run thing.”

Searching for Waterloo: This Defeat Might Not Be Decisive for Boris Johnson

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