JUST as it was thought that nothing more could be added to one of the most dramatic weeks in the history of British politics, the favorite to become Britain’s next prime minister was forced to pull out of the race after a stunning act of betrayal by his own campaign manager.
The race to be the next Conservative Party leader and UK prime minister was blown wide open Thursday when Boris Johnson, the hot favorite to replace David Cameron, ruled himself out just before his fellow Brexiteer Michael Gove, the justice secretary, threw his hat into the ring.
Johnson seemed like the politician best poised to benefit from the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union, a cunning plot to seize the leadership of the Conservative Party and that of the country. But then Johnson was usurped by Gove, a former ally who worked closely with him on the “Leave” campaign. Gove had been expected to support Johnson and play a key role in his administration. But then came an act of enormous political treachery. Gove said he decided that Johnson wasn’t the right choice, but that he was. “It had to fall to someone else... I felt it had to fall to me,” Grove unabashedly said.
Gove has for years and up until recently insisted he had no desire to be prime minister, and didn’t think he could do a good job. So what makes him think that right now, in the midst of Britain’s biggest political emergency since World War II, he can do the job?
Johnson, meanwhile, should have seen it through and run for prime minister, instead of leaving the battle mid-way. It won’t be clear for some time, if ever, what really happened. But Johnson could have come to the conclusion that there was sufficient doubt he may not get there. He appeared to have thought that he could not command enough support from his party, after a series of key MPs defected to the Gove camp. Johnson may have sensed a backlash against him by the people who had previously liked him. When Gove announced his candidacy, Johnson’s supporters pulled away in droves.
This unprecedented public squabble was a boost for Theresa May, the home secretary who is now in the pole position to become Britain’s second female prime minister. She announced support for her leader’s remain position at the start of the referendum campaign, but she cleverly avoided getting involved in the rough and tumble campaigning that threatened to tear the Conservative Party apart.
It might have been thought that the Labour Party, the major opposition party to the Conservatives, would be poised to take advantage of the party’s post-Brexit disarray. But Labour has been undergoing some serious drama of its own and is in the middle of a leadership crisis. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader whose support for remaining in the EU was half-hearted at best, is refusing to resign from party leadership despite losing a vote of no confidence by a landslide. The majority of his shadow Cabinet has resigned. While the vote doesn’t topple Corbyn automatically, it shows that the Labour Party is currently in a state of civil war. The anti-Corbyn faction is literally staging a coup, and Corbyn is fighting desperately to fend them off.
From the mess of the past week, one thing is clear — the aftermath of the UK referendum has planted new seeds of bitterness inside the Conservative and Labour parties. Brexit is the reason both are in shambles. The Brexit vote was a shattering event that brought out deep ideological fissures in both parties. Now, nobody knows who’s going to run Britain, or either of its two leading parties, at perhaps the most critical juncture in the country’s modern history. Both Labour and the Conservatives are consumed with their own internecine battles at a time when the country requires united and strong leadership.
