Is Boris Johnson having his Thatcher moment?

Only weeks after reports of lockdown-busting parties threatened to end Boris Johnson’s political career, it looks as if the crisis in Ukraine might help him cling on to power.

Amid the conflict, the UK prime minister has “won round some naysayers and sought to present himself as a Churchillian leader”, said The Guardian. Even Tory MPs who “privately briefed against him now rally to his defence”, with one declaring Johnson “a true hero in a crisis”, said the paper.

“Anyone making a move against him would not be in the spirit of the times,” said another.

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It seems that in the space of a fortnight “Johnson has transformed from beleaguered leader, assailed by endless allegations about lockdown parties, to burgeoning international statesman”, agreed the Mail on Sunday.

Some previously sceptical MPs have speculated that the crisis could be Johnson’s “Falklands moment”, a reference to the 1982 war that “transformed Margaret Thatcher’s political fortunes”, said the paper.

And it has pleased his political aides in other ways too. It has “pushed to the margins” other issues, such as the “woke agenda”, which is now seen as “trivial”, it added.

Not out of the woods

Those around Johnson clearly view the crisis as an opportunity for him to “show he can be a statesman when required”, said Katy Balls in The Spectator. But although several Tory MPs have walked back from the brink of putting in their letters of no confidence, “it’s not clear that the conversation has gone away for good”.

And those MPs briefing that the Ukrainian crisis could be Johnson’s own Falklands moment “are likely to be left disappointed”, she added. Not only does the rhetoric sound “ill-judged” when Ukrainians are facing “devastation” in their home country, “the UK is openly limited in how far it will go”, focusing only on financial sanctions and completely ruling out a no-fly zone.

The UK, and the West, “could look rather impotent in the coming weeks as the situation in Ukraine gets worse – and Johnson’s promise that​ ‘Putin must fail’ could take a long time to come to fruition”, said Balls.

The public view

While Johnson may have “hoped to be the recipient of a sense of national unity” in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “much the same as Churchill in the face of the Nazi threat”, he has remained deeply unpopular with the British public, said YouGov’s Isabelle Kirk.

According to YouGov polling, he has a net favourability rating of -36, an increase of just three points from its previous survey on 17-18 February. Two-thirds of the public (64%) currently have an unfavourable opinion of the prime minister, while just 28% see him in a positive light.

Intense efforts

A key moment for Johnson’s leadership on the world stage could come this week as he begins “intense diplomatic efforts” with foreign leaders in the hope of building a strong “united front” against Putin, said the Evening Standard.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will be welcomed to No. 10 today, and the leaders of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia will also visit this week.

Johnson is expected to put pressure on international leaders to take more action on removing Russia completely from the SWIFT payment system, as well as pushing them to back his six-point plan to tackle Russian aggression.

Johnson outlined this at the weekend in an article for The New York Times, where he wrote: “Never in my life have I seen an international crisis where the dividing line between right and wrong has been so stark, as the Russian war machine unleashes its fury on a proud democracy.”

The plan includes calls for greater humanitarian aid, more defence equipment for Ukraine, greater economic sanctions on the Putin regime and bolstering Nato forces, including “supporting non-NATO European countries that are potentially at risk of Russian aggression”, such as Moldova, Georgia and the western Balkans.