Boris Johnson may be an incompetent liar, but charm is his
secret weapon
Simon Jenkins
His record as London mayor is farcical. Yet disillusioned
Labour voters are as mesmerised by him as punch-drunk Tories
Thu 13 Jun 2019 19.02 BST Last modified on Thu 13 Jun 2019
22.28 BST
Charm is politics’ deadliest weapon. It is not charisma, the
authority to lead through an electrifying presence. It is a subtler, more
intangible quality, possessed by Boris Johnson. He may be blatantly unqualified
as Britain’s next prime minister, but following yesterday’s first-round
leadership ballot, he is still odds-on favourite. The basis for this lies in
his disposition of charm.
Johnson is the darling of the polls. He mesmerises
punch-drunk Tories and disillusioned Labour voters alike. He emerges from his
biographical record as incompetent, lazy, dissolute and a liar, yet the
public’s response is that he is “our kind of liar”. He was sacked by the Times
for story fabrication and was a wildly biased reporter while in Brussels. His
default mode has always been that of standup comedian: funny, unpredictable,
mildly dangerous. As the current campaign of his rival, Michael Gove, is
derailed for far lesser sins, his campaign appears to glide forwards on sheer
force of personality. The unfairness is grotesque.
Johnson is currently locked away by his handlers. This is
not charisma – it is a man who cannot be allowed to cope even with a Commons
election on his own. On Wednesday, he was allowed to launch his leadership bid
with extreme selectivity. Apart from giving £10bn in tax cuts to the rich, he
cited his qualities for high office by ignoring his dire period as foreign
secretary and concentrating on his time as mayor of London. He claimed credit
for handling knife crime, the 2011 riots, the financial crash and the Olympics.
He was Pericles presiding over Athens.
This is farcical. The London mayor is largely a figurehead,
who administers almost nothing. Johnson’s crime policy was simply to get rid of
his police chief. He capitulated to the tube unions and was a sycophant to
property speculation. He told me to my face that he would emphatically end his
predecessor Ken Livingstone’s “Dubai-on-Thames” skyscraper obsession, yet he
promptly doubled their number. He travelled to Malaysia to plead for cash to
build towers of empty luxury flats, thus creating the London skyline that is
his memorial. I visited one such tower in Canning Town, east London, this week,
with 84 empty flats owned in absentia by a single far east investor. That was
Johnson’s idea of “housing”. What the mayor did in excess was splurge money on
vanity projects. His Thames cable car, his Stratford helter-skelter (“London’s
Eiffel Tower”), his rear-entry buses with rear-entry locked, his water cannon
that may not fire, his unnecessary super-sewer and wildly over-engineered Crossrail,
all wasted staggering sums. A baffling £53m vanished on Johnson’s fantasy
garden bridge, while Hammersmith bridge rotted up-river. The “Boris bike”
scheme – in truth Livingstone’s – was supposed to cost nothing, but cost
taxpayers nearly £200m in eight years. Johnson’s belated visit to the scene of
some of the 2011 riots was an opportunity to be photographed with a broom.
Johnson should shut up about his exorbitant mayoralty. He
was not Pericles but Nero, a maestro of bread and circuses. His character was
certainly engaging, shambolic, often entertaining, and he was a pleasure to be
with. But his aides, desperate for any sign of “vision”, nicknamed him Boris
the Boring. He admitted at one point that his mayoralty might be short-lived,
given his anticipated move to Downing Street. Of that strategy it must be said,
it worked. His London election success was extraordinary, not least for an Eton
toff against Livingstone’s cheeky-chappie Cockney.
The Johnson personality is clearly not to be underrated. As
democracy becomes less a matter of interests and resources, it falls back on
secondary responses, on making people relaxed and comfortable about the world
about them. Voters seem drawn to someone who does not take life too seriously,
is casual about presentation and possesses eccentric unpredictability. People
like laughing at politics, and Johnson appears a fellow human. He is preferable
to the spouters of robotic cliches, such as Theresa May.
Charm is discounted by political science in favour of
integrity, diligence, consistency – and charisma. That is because charm is like
love, its values not analysable or susceptible to science. Yet it was deployed
with aplomb by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and currently by the
actor-president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. Weaponised charm may yet be the
new tool of tyranny.
These are the waters towards which British politics is
swimming. Unless Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove can promote some stop-Boris
coalition, the backwoods of the Conservative party will vote for the only
candidate likely to guarantee them a parliamentary majority. But to put that to
the test, Johnson will have to secure a negotiated Brexit, rather than just
precipitate a parliamentary crisis and a Tory implosion. That means he must
revert to some version of May’s deal, and to some frictionless customs union
for both Britain and Northern Ireland. Reality will soon be screaming at him,
that there is no alternative. He is too intelligent not to know it.
Johnson’s shrewdest supporters are quietly selling the
theory that their hero’s notorious “flexibility” is what makes him ideally
suited to the task. Cynicism and hypocrisy are what the country needs. Johnson
will waffle and dissemble and mis-state and un-promise, until the country finds
itself miraculously on the other side of the Brexit abyss. Such is modern
politics, that it must rely for clear guidance on a leader’s capacity to lie.
But a prime minister’s job is not that of mayor or even
foreign secretary. It is of circus ringmaster rather than performer. Two of
Johnson’s idols are reputedly Disraeli and Churchill, two masters of the art of
volte-face, of a denial of the past, including their own. Both had recourse to
pragmatism when events required it and both were accounted successes.
Come October, the odds are on Britain being desperate for no
more posturing, no more economic machismo and no more fantasies about new trade
deals. It will need one almighty climbdown, in favour of some version of May’s
Brexit deal. If Johnson can deploy his charm to persuade the nation and its
parliament to follow where common sense and circumstance force him to go, I
will be the first to cheer. That is as far as my optimism can go.
• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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