- Location
- Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region
- Pronouns
- she/they
The recent by-election in Uxbridge made me think this could be interesting to think about.
When Boris Johnson was trying to get back into Parliament in 2015, the rumour mill tied him to quite a few seats. One of them was Kensington, but then-MP Malcolm Rifkind insisted he wanted to stay on, so Johnson went for Uxbridge, while Rifkind was eventually forced to step down over an unrelated scandal.
But what if Rifkind had just retired, or if the sting that brought him down had happened earlier? Just two years later, Kensington was famously a shock Labour gain. Now, a lot of that was down to the MP who eventually did succeed Rifkind making herself so unpopular locally that even many members of the local Conservatives refused to vote for her. But equally, Johnson would probably have struggled with the many Tory Remainers in that seat. What if he ended up losing to Labour? Apart from being a rare 'Portillo moment' that actually would be on the same scale as the original Portillo moment, how would politics develop with Johnson out of Parliament and humiliated, instead of being able to swoop in, take over from Theresa May, and eventually win in 2019?
When Boris Johnson was trying to get back into Parliament in 2015, the rumour mill tied him to quite a few seats. One of them was Kensington, but then-MP Malcolm Rifkind insisted he wanted to stay on, so Johnson went for Uxbridge, while Rifkind was eventually forced to step down over an unrelated scandal.
But what if Rifkind had just retired, or if the sting that brought him down had happened earlier? Just two years later, Kensington was famously a shock Labour gain. Now, a lot of that was down to the MP who eventually did succeed Rifkind making herself so unpopular locally that even many members of the local Conservatives refused to vote for her. But equally, Johnson would probably have struggled with the many Tory Remainers in that seat. What if he ended up losing to Labour? Apart from being a rare 'Portillo moment' that actually would be on the same scale as the original Portillo moment, how would politics develop with Johnson out of Parliament and humiliated, instead of being able to swoop in, take over from Theresa May, and eventually win in 2019?