Do you feel that Boris Johnson has been a successful prime minister/politician?

Hi guys. I was reading this really interesting opinion column in The Sun referring to Boris Johnson as “the most electable individual on the planet”: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15339636/trevor-kavanagh-the-boris-party/

Coincidentally, given that today was supposed to be “Freedom Day”, I thought it would make a really interesting thread if I asked; do you feel that Boris Johnson has been a successful prime minister/politician?

As for my personal take; as much as I would not choose to have Boris Johnson as prime minister out of the current candidates, and I don’t agree with some of his policies, I do think Boris has been successful, personally.

As much as his policies don’t resonate with me as much as those of other parties do, he has followed through with many of his promises from the 2019 election, and he is clearly very charismatic and, rightly or wrongly, extremely popular with the public. People like Boris Johnson, and he’s clearly trusted by the public to do the right thing.

But what are your thoughts?

Short answer: no. Long answer: erm...best reserved for the Tavern.

No. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deceiving themselves

Anyone who votes yes is clearly living on Mars. Every topic has a discussion point usually but I just don’t objectively see how anyone can’t say yes (except for people on Twitter who post pictures of the royals, and has in their bio: I England, all lives matter, screw the left, etc) because clearly they’d say he’s done a smashing job. He literally hasn’t. That’s not even an opinion either. It’s a FACT.

Danscott22 said:

Anyone who votes yes is clearly living on Mars. Every topic has a discussion point usually but I just don’t objectively see how anyone can’t say yes (except for people on Twitter who post pictures of the royals, and has in their bio: I England, all lives matter, screw the left, etc) because clearly they’d say he’s done a smashing job. He literally hasn’t. That’s not even an opinion either. It’s a FACT.

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The reason I voted yes isn’t for what you said above.

I don’t agree with many of the Conservative party’s policies, I would vote Labour out of the 2 main parties, and I would definitely call myself left-wing over right-wing.

However, in fairness to Boris, he’s delivered on a number of his main pledges from the 2019 election, and I feel that while there are some things that could have been done differently in hindsight, Boris has responded nobly to the COVID crisis, and has acted well and with the country’s safety in mind given all the data that he had at the times when key decisions were made. So in that regard, I would personally call him a successful prime minister.

Matt N said:

However, in fairness to Boris, he’s delivered on a number of his main pledges from the 2019 election, and I feel that while there are some things that could have been done differently in hindsight, Boris has responded nobly to the COVID crisis, and has acted well and with the country’s safety in mind given all the data that he had at the times when key decisions were made. So in that regard, I would personally call him a successful prime minister.

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Nobly? Not at all.

He didn't attend any COBRA meetings prior to the pandemic hitting these shores.

In an attempt to ease public concern he shook hands with Covid patients. Promptly came down with it.

Locked down when it was the last possible moment.

Defended Cummings after Barnard Castle, this caused the change in public perception of lockdowns.

Ignored the calls of a lockdown in September. Introduced the tier system which was a mess.

Tried to save Christmas. Failed and had to cancel it the weekend before.

Told schools to reopen. Then closed them when realised how bad things would be.

That's ignoring the cronyism rife throughout the government, the PPE issues and just generally bad decisions. The only thing he's succeeded at is delivering a Brexit deal, which was worse than the one May got.

Edit - Forgot to mention that the decision not to put India on the red list for political reasons is the main reason why this new variant is here and caused the delay in restrictions loosening. So super successful.

Effective politician, yes, sort of in the same way Farage is.
Boris is good at convincing people to like him and elect him. Is he good at actually managing things and putting in place good policy, nope.
Similary you could say Farage is the most successful politician not to be elected as an MP as he got what he wanted (leaving the EU) while only ever being paid by the EU and never being elected as an MP.

Personally I think he's awful... but the electorate still seem to approve of him so in that sense he is "successful".

He is clearly out of his depth and even as a Tory voter I can honestly say he has made a lot of mistakes dealing with COVID, unlikely a Labour government would of done much better but hey he has made a lot of in hindsight bad decisions.

I obviously don’t know him personally but his public persona is a likeable, flamboyant, one of the lads type caricature.
He is clearly very successful though if that was the OP point, he won a huge majority in a general election and that alone makes him one of the most successful politicians in the last 50 years, only Blair and Thatcher have equalled that kind of election success.

This whole hindsight thing is rewriting history as far as I'm concerned - for it to be hindsight it'd have to have been a decision which didn't clearly have a 'right answer' at the time, and it absolutely did - the scientists had it, and if you didn't believe them, you had no choice but to believe it when the Italian mortuaries started overflowing.

The man is a shambles and it is a damning indictment on our democracy that he is so wildly popular.

But then he is wildly popular, and by that measure, he is objectively a massive success.

Matt N said:

The reason I voted yes isn’t for what you said above.

I don’t agree with many of the Conservative party’s policies, I would vote Labour out of the 2 main parties, and I would definitely call myself left-wing over right-wing.

However, in fairness to Boris, he’s delivered on a number of his main pledges from the 2019 election, and I feel that while there are some things that could have been done differently in hindsight, Boris has responded nobly to the COVID crisis, and has acted well and with the country’s safety in mind given all the data that he had at the times when key decisions were made. So in that regard, I would personally call him a successful prime minister.

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I’m not convinced he’s acted well or nobly at all during any of this?

Boris's government has had some successes (vaccine program, financial support, testing roll out) as well as several disasters (track&trace, Brexit deal, PPE, failure to act quickly enough, messaging, financial support, lockdown confusion, christmas, illegal actions etc)

Boris himself is not a leader, and therefore has been a bad prime minister. He is a very good campaigner and therefore still garners support. Boris especially fails time and again to empower his ministers to do their jobs.

There are winners and losers. They spent £5 billion on a tax duty holiday to 'heat up house prices', so if you're a landlord, an estate agent, a letting agent or a property developer, then Borris is your mate. They said that land owners and construction companies wouldn't have to pay anything towards replacing flammable cladding. Another win for property companies. They said that teaching in universities would go ahead, got all the students to sign contracts with landlords, and then moved the teaching to home. Another win for landlords and letting agents.

As long as you've got lots of money and you're a bit dodgy, you could aruge that Borris Johnson has actually been pretty decent. Well worth every penny you've spent on 'lobbying'.

As a politician, he is successful. He's consistently fallen upwards after failing at every position he's ever been given.

• Fired as a journalist.
• Ended up a Tory MP and in the shadow cabinet under Michael Howard, and sacked for lying.
• Won the London Mayoral contest twice. Came back as an MP, gambled his career with the EU referendum and won.
• Withdraws from the 2016 Conservative leadership contest after Gove withdraws his support
• Ended up as foreign secretary under Theresa May and resigned.
• Involved in a coup to remove May, and then himself became leader and Prime Minister.
• Wins biggest Conservative majority since 1987.

In terms of doing good for the country, he hasn't done a single thing. He's the worst person at the worst time to be leading this country. All he wanted was the accolade of being Prime Minister, with none of the work. He constantly wants to be seen as a Churchillian figure of 1940-45, but has ended being Churchill of 1951-55. Lazy, feckless, and disinterested in the job.

I thought you were going to say that he wanted to be the Churchillian figure of 1940-1945, but ended up being the Churchill of the car insurance ad.

Boris need to grow some balls, he didn't have any to sack Cummings and needs some to sack Hancock. Boris is propped up by these people.

I've seen and been calling Hancock a weasel (not on here) since the start of the pandemic.