On December 11, 2021, reporters from Country, Rafa de Miguel spoke of comments made by rival and admirer of Boris Johnson, whom they compared to Harry Houdini, the historical illusionist and escapee who was able to get out of any adversity unscathed, despite the fact that by his actions he had systematically destroyed the “huge electoral capital” he had come to power.
Nearly six months later, party gate had cornered Boris Johnson, who no longer needed to be Houdini to get out of this predicament, but Bruce Willis, when he starred in The Glass Jungle, known in Latin America as Die Hard, a film who made the American actor famous in 1988, where he played cop John McClane, a man who seems immune to danger no matter how he presents himself.
It seems that Johnson played McClane and succeeded in this attack on him, thanks to the fact that he got the 210 votes out of the 180 needed to win, but one fact was no small feat, and one that had to be reckoned with: 148 deputies from his own party turned down.
For now, he will remain in office, as the BBC explains, but his prestige as leader has been seriously shaken. For the British network’s political editor, Chris Mason, the win was a temporary relief for Boris Johnson, but the 148 on the conservative side, who think the country is better off without him, could cause big problems in the future.
Mason warned that there are now more lawmakers looking to get rid of him, far more than “wanting to get rid of Theresa May when she faces a vote of no confidence”. What happened after? May goes six later.
The battle to remove him from 10 Downing Street will continue because the reading is clear: More than half of his own party does not want him, the same people who three years ago raised him to the British leadership in the last general election.
The inevitable fall?
Labor leader Keir Starmer told the LBC that regardless of the outcome, this was the “beginning of the end” of Boris Johnson’s political career.
“If we look at previous examples of no-confidence motions, even when Conservative prime ministers held out (…) the damage had already been done”, one also no doubt imagines that falls are inevitable: “they usually fall pretty quickly after”.
The reason is clear, for those who support this motion, they don’t see Johnson as an attractive voting magnet, quite the opposite, and plus that the prime minister’s popularity has clearly declined since mid-2021, when 49% of voters disapproved of his management, when on July 19 he ordered the withdrawal of all restrictions across the country to avoid infection with the coronavirus.
Despite the dire prospects, Bruce Willis of British politics can work wonders, although this time you’ll have to wait a few months instead of the hours that action films usually take. @the whole world
