As Britain’s Boris Johnson takes hammering, potential successors sharpen their image
- UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s political future appears shaky after Conservative Party revolt, scandals and missteps
- Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak seen as potential challengers for leadership
As speculation mounts that embattled UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson could face a leadership challenge as early as the new year, potential contenders for the Conservative throne are sharpening up their image.
Johnson’s reputation is reeling following a series of scandals and missteps, including supporting the former MP Owen Patterson, who was found guilty by the House of Commons’ own standards commissioner of paid lobbying.
Revelations that Johnson allowed boozy Christmas parties in Downing Street last year, and even hosted a quiz when the country was locked down because of Covid-19, has caused fury even among his most loyal supporters.
The Tories on Thursday lost a by-election in North Shropshire in the West Midlands, a rural seat they have held since it was created in 1832. The Liberal Democrats’ Helen Morgan won the by-election with a majority of 5,925 over the conservatives, according to the Press Association.
Pressure from Johnson’s own colleagues will inevitably now intensify to prove he has a grip on government and can still be relied on to guide the party to victory in the next general election due by 2024.
The Tories have a long tradition of regicide, the fate of Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher being the most notable leadership knifings.
In the age of Covid-19, the days of politicians kissing babies to appear electable and popular are probably over. So, the political beauty contest has moved to the internet.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, viewed as one of the leading candidates for her bosses’ job, is reported to have asked Downing Street for permission to hire a social media specialist to help boost her online appeal.
“Wishing everyone in the UK and around the world a merry Christmas,” she wrote. The tweet received more than 4,000 likes, and 4,000 comments.
Last month, during a visit to Estonia amid growing tensions between Nato and Russia over Ukraine, Truss, wearing body armour and helmet, posed for photos in a British tank. The images were reminiscent of Thatcher riding a British Challenger tank in 1986, in what was a pivotal moment for her re-election campaign.
The similarity was not lost by Russian media which dubbed the foreign secretary the “new Iron Lady”.
“So Liz Truss has done ‘photo shoot looking like Margaret Thatcher’, and now ‘Photoshoot looking like The Queen’,” tweeted the popular UK writer Caitlin Moran. “What British icons are left? Only ‘Flare Up The Bum Man’,” Moran wrote, referring to the England football fan who stuck a lit flare between his buttocks before the Euro 2020 England-Italy football match earlier this year.
When she was trade secretary, Truss’ press team released slick professional shots of her riding a London-made Brompton bicycle by the harbour in Sydney, Australia.
More recently, Truss aides have posted photos on social media of Truss wearing a flight helmet while visiting the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, and another of her disembarking a plane in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
Truss’ prime ministerial ambitions are well known. Back in 2019, when The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine featured her on the cover with the headline “Is this Britain’s next Prime Minister?”, she posted it on Instagram.
Increasing talk of Truss as a potential leader appears to have bolstered the impression that Johnson has lost control of the country’s helm.
But Truss faces more than one serious competitor, not least the suave Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, currently the favourite among some bookies.
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The former Goldman Sachs analyst, who is married to Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy, hired his own social media adviser last year.
Since he took on Cass Horowitz, co-founder of The Clerkenwell Brothers public relations company, Sunak has gone from being featured in grainy snaps visiting local small businesses to appearing in slick videos, and smarter wardrobe to match.
His Instagram profile features him peering out of a train and visiting a food bank. Another, a black and white shot, shows Sunak kneeling at the House of Commons Speaker’s Constituency Garden of Remembrance, with a Photoshopped red poppy on his lapel to match those of the symbolic crosses.
Sunak has been tweeting about his own achievements as 10 Downing Street defends its handling of the pandemic with UK inflation hitting a 10-year high.
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“Fantastic news that Thames Freeport is now open for business, bringing 25,000 jobs and boosting the local economy by £5.1 billion,” he tweeted on Wednesday, referring to his post-Brexit policy of rolling out freeports in the UK.
Sunak was on a business trip to California this week, which allowed him to avoid Tuesday’s vote for the new Covid-19 restrictions. However, he cut short the trip after questions about his absence and as Britain’s hospitality industry complained of Christmas cancellations because of the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
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In many ways, Johnson has no one to blame but himself for his potential rivals’ penchant for professional portraits.
Johnson confirmed last Spring he has three photographers on the government payroll including his special adviser and long-time photographer, Andrew Parsons. Parsons, who took the posed shot of Johnson signing his resignation letter when he left Theresa May’s cabinet in 2019, shortly before Johnson launched his leadership challenge, works part-time on a pay rate equivalent to a full-time salary of £100,000 (US$132,000) a year.
Johnson’s spokesman told The Guardian at the time: “We make these pictures available for editorial use, not just domestically but internationally as well”.
But critics ask if it’s really necessary to use UK taxpayers’ money to take a picture of Johnson’s current wife Carrie, gazing wistfully at the sky against a backdrop of the Coliseum in Rome last summer, or of the couple’s dog Dylan gleefully romping in the snow last Christmas.
