Boris Johnson, a character – one of the worst ways you can describe a person

It is safe to say that we – that is, the people who write in and read LabourList – have never got Boris Johnson. A few weeks ago, I heard my colleague very tiredly describing him as a once-in-a-generation politician; a storyteller; an old Etonian with the common touch. From his manner of speech, it was clear that this was something my colleague knew to be true, or at least knew to be considered true by many, but that he really didn’t quite believe. This is because he, like me, and probably like you also, is a member of the Labour Party.

The line is that Johnson is this ball of loquacious charm, a man whose lusty disingenuity is always accompanied by a stage wink to the crowd, who love it, they laugh it up, they vote for him. He’s dangling in his sky wire harness; he’s having affairs with buxom American women; he’s writing comedically misjudged novels about Islamic terrorism; his otherwise informative Wikipedia page is unable to tell you, precisely, how many children he has. He has been carried to the highest office in the land on a gentle gust of winsome bluster. He’s a character. 

However, as everyone knows, “a character” is one of the worst possible ways you can describe another person. A character has stolen your bedding, as a joke, and also your shoes. A character is wearing a Borat-style mankini to the office Christmas party. A character has swapped out your toothpaste for Germolene. A character has run over your dog in their lime green car and handed you a card for their personal taxidermist (but you won’t be getting a discount). A character is arranging to have journalists beaten up over the phone. You might talk about things they have done, but nobody likes them, and they certainly shouldn’t be running the country.

If Boris Johnson is Homer Simpson, then the Labour Party is Frank Grimes, hysterically wondering why nobody can see what they can see while they reach for the exposed power cords. It is one of the things that recommends even Keir Starmer’s more lacklustre PMQs performances: the Labour leader’s apparent and scorching contempt for the Prime Minister.

The problem with everyone in our broad church thinking that Boris Johnson is – not to put too fine a point on it – a total shit, is that it skews our ability to make judgement calls on his political career. You might be a keen political observer on other matters, but when it comes to Boris Johnson many of us are trying to assess the pitch of a noise we could never hear in the first place. This has been the case for years, through Have I Got News for You appearances and general elections and two terms as London mayor. 

In recent weeks, however, news of Downing Street lockdown party after Downing Street lockdown party has broken, and Boris Johnson and his party have plummeted in the polls: YouGov currently estimates that 73% of people think he is doing a bad job as Prime Minister. It would seem more and more people are seeing Johnson not as a hapless charmer but instead as a man who sincerely believes there is one rule for him, and another for everyone else – albeit one whose every action up to this point has serendipitously coincided with that view.

All this being said, Boris Johnson has spent more than a quarter of a century in public life, and one of the key lessons of that quarter century is that a bet on Boris Johnson is rarely a bad one. The mask has not slipped away entirely: it remains to be seen whether the rest of the country will start to see what we see. The Sue Gray report – yet to be released at the time of writing – hangs over the Prime Minister’s head like the sword of Damocles. But, registering a strong performance at this week’s PMQs, it seems Johnson is down, but not out. For the time being, that is.