by David Talbot
Another summer, another Conservative Party leadership contest. Its eventual successor will be crowned the fourth Conservative Prime Minister in six years, no less, which must come close to the party’s 2015 definition of “chaos”. For the Labour Party, after years of tearing itself apart, and four inglorious general election defeats, it must feel that things can indeed only get better. It does, though, have serious lessons to learn from when it allowed the now felled Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to ascend to Downing Street without so much as a whimper of dissent only three years ago.
Boris Johnson was the heir apparent as soon as he comfortably topped the first ballot amongst Conservative MPs in mid-June 2019. Indeed, fellow candidates for the leadership uniformly declared that there ‘must not be a coronation’. It came as no surprise, therefore, when Johnson did indeed become Prime Minister the following month.
Rather than being greeted by a barrage of hostility, the Labour Party barely seemed to register the change of Prime Minister. Unbelievably, it took over 24 hours for Labour to acknowledge Boris Johnson’s new government at all. A tired and rather hackneyed press release was eventually sent at 5pm the following evening tying Boris Johnson to Donald Trump, and macabrely calling for an early general election.
It was stunningly complacent. The Labour Party appeared utterly becalmed at the prospect of Prime Minister Boris Johnson; so much so that Jeremy Corbyn did not hold a single strategy meeting on how his party would tackle the Prime Minister until after the summer recess.
This was, though, systematic of Corbyn’s Labour at the time. The Conservative Party had spent the previous two and a half years learning the harsh lessons from the 2017 election. Labour had, however, convinced itself of its righteousness and believed all it had to do was repeat the same tactics it had employed last time. It was obvious that whilst Labour thought nothing had changed, everything had. Johnson was an incoming Prime Minister hellbent on an early general election, with a clear strategy, a united team, and a heaving war chest.