Could the Cabinet save Boris's premiership?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Despite a torrid time for the Prime Minister's popularity over the last few months, there may be a political revival on the horizon. His decision not to lockdown over the Omicron variant seems to have paid off and won back some of the support from his party. But will the Johnson project end up a failure?

A lot of the Prime Minister’s future rests on the people who work closest him. On the podcast, Fraser Nelson points to the high turnover of staff at No.10 that has been destabilising, especially for someone who usually builds a strong support system around him.

‘This is a sign, the high turnover of staff suggests a dysfunctional No.10 which isn’t capable of making decent high-quality decisions' - Fraser Nelson

Also on the podcast, can the success of the booster campaign help Boris Johnson try to win back some of the government's lost reputation for competence?

All to be discussed as Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Cindy You and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.
0:10.6	Now James, Boris Johnson ended last year in a pretty awful position, probably the worst months that he'd had in his premiership so far.
0:18.1	But you writing your political column this week that perhaps it was
0:22.0	actually somewhat of a blessing in disguise in the way that it showed him how best to govern.
0:27.5	Well, I think the first step says, I think he probably thinks it was very well disguised. But I think
0:32.4	what it's done is, if you think back to two years ago, just after Boris Johnson won that 80-seat majority,
0:39.7	he was a totally dominant figure in his government. I think that people thought that he had won a
0:46.4	majority that no other Tory could have won. He created a new electoral coalition that was as much
0:51.2	about his role as a Tribune of Brexit as it was the fact that he
0:55.1	was leader of a Conservative Party. And he had won that majority on a manifesto that wasn't
1:01.4	kind of classic Tory fare. It envisaged a bigger role for the state than the Tory party has
1:06.2	since at least 1975. And what I think that meant was that Tory MPs in the cabinet were prepared to defer to him
1:14.5	even when they didn't agree with him. And that lasted for a remarkably long time. You know,
1:19.2	just think back to just September when he decided he wanted to increase national insurance
1:24.5	to put more money into health and social care. I think if you had
1:28.3	held a secret ballot of the cabinet, you probably wouldn't have got majority support for that.
1:32.9	But, you know, they swallowed their objections and backed the policy because he was the prime minister.
1:37.9	But then what you saw with that cabinet meeting just before Christmas to discuss over further
1:43.0	lockdown measures were needed, you saw a very different thing going on there.
1:46.0	You saw Boris Johnson having to chair a cabinet meeting,
1:50.0	went on for several hours.
1:52.0	Most of his cabinet meetings are perfunctory affairs,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.