The PM seems in his element in the role of ‘war leader’, but have voters forgotten their anger?
has done more foreign travel and frantic diplomacy than in all his previous years as prime minister combined.
“It’s almost like he’s worried he won’t have many more opportunities to play the international statesman and his next tour is going to be on the lecture circuit,” said one unsympathetic Tory MP who also pointed to Johnson being forced to make friends with “second-tier” leaders rather than Biden, Olaf Scholz or Emmanuel Macron.
“This could be like Boris’s Falklands moment,” said Ryan Shorthouse, the chief executive of the Conservative thinktank Bright Blue. “The polls seem to indicate that the fall in support for theseems to have stopped as a result of the crisis in eastern Europe, which would indicate that the public consciousness has moved on from the breaking of rules inside No 10.”
On many of the trips, journalists have not been given access, apart from one broadcaster and one wire reporter, so there is little visibility about what Johnson is doing – or promising – to his fellow international leaders while out of the country. For his visit to Ukraine in early February, the media were told there was “no room” on the 300-seat taxpayer-funded plane.
Domestically, Johnson’s activities also have the feel of a soft relaunch of his premiership, with the Tory chair saying a two-year election campaign would start from this May. The prime minister is speaking on Friday at the Scottish Conservatives’ conference, before heading to Blackpool on Saturday for the Tory spring conference – the first time in years that the event has been billed as a major event.
Robert Hayward, a Conservative peer and elections expert, said the impact of the Ukraine crisis on Johnson’s reputation “has two effects: one is the leadership effect, and there are signs that Macron and, to a lesser extent, Biden are having the same benefit. And then there’s a second effect, the obliteration factor, which is that by keeping on the page dealing with an international drama such as this, you hide other things.
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