Boris Johnson has lost his mojo. The great showman of British politics doesn't quite look or sound like his usual self | BevanShields
Sir Lynton Crosby, the famed Australian election strategist who orchestrated Johnson's London mayoral runs and advised him during last year's Tory leadership contest, says it is too early to say what impact the pandemic will have on the Prime Minister and his government.
Sir Lynton, who also ran campaigns for former prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May and is dubbed 'The Wizard of Oz' by the British press, says the government "has had a lot thrown at it" and is facing other challenges like negotiating the terms of Britain's new post-Brexit trading relationship with the European Union.
Johnson has two main problems, according to Australia's former high commissioner to London Mike Rann. Rann says voters really only saw Johnson as the best of two bad options in last year's election, and believes his style is not suited to the gravity of a health and economic crisis. Privately, some MPs believe Johnson has not fully recovered from his life-or-death brush with coronavirus in April. The 56-year-old ended up in intensive care at the height of the pandemic but returned to work only three weeks after his admission.ran a diary piece at the end of August quoting a woman named Anna Silverman who recounted an alleged conversation with Sir Humphry Wakefield, the father-in-law of Johnson's controversial chief advisor Dominic Cummings.
The government is now preparing for an eventual public inquiry into its handling of the pandemic, pulling together a crucial budget which may include tax rises, and trying to fend off momentum for another referendum on Scottish independence. But Johnson warns predictions of the Conservative Party's demise are premature. Polls have narrowed but the Conservatives are still ahead. For the time being, the Prime Minister's biggest problem is with his own MPs rather than the voters who handed him the keys to Downing Street on December 12.
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