Held to global ridicule. (Credit: Kois Miah/Getty)
Boris Johnson presented his memoir, Unleashed, at Cheltenham racecourse last week, amid the ghosts of bookies. They, at least, would appreciate him for who he is: a risk-taker who won, then lost, and hopes to win again. But the venue isn’t full. The Boris Johnson cult is over: he is the only one who doesn’t know it yet. The audience is old, rich, and white, and they are here to gawp and giggle. They want jokes, not policies: they always did. And all their choices — including him — flow from that. Johnson was a leader for an age of decadence, and unseriousness: we thought we could afford him, but we couldn’t. Now he is less a G7 leader than a toastmaster.
There was, beforehand, a limp kind of excitement. It felt closely held, protected. Johnson appealed to people who wanted to live through him. Too scared to drive supercars or flirt with strangers or prorogue parliament, they chose someone who would. They still speak fondly of him, because he is still the only politician they have ever liked, and I can’t think of a better measure of our failure. They still talk about his “charisma” because they don’t know him. They just think they do. He has what Kemi Badenoch’s supporters call an ability to “cut through” in the age of attention deficit disorder: in the leadership election she will depend on it. They “hope he will be back” but he “probably won’t be because MPs don’t like him”. The current Tory Party is, “individualist” and “too weakly led”. “I don’t think anyone led the party like he did.”
His entrance is downbeat. He shuffles in, hair shining and dishevelled. He looks, for an instant, mock terrified, and then does the nodding dog with his head. The downbeat entrance is deliberate: his small penance. He can’t say it in words because he doesn’t really feel it. Unleashed is not an apology for how he promised hope and set it on fire, nor is it a fair assessment of what he really unleashed, which is a more toxic populism that even he gave us. It is propaganda, written in the fake intimate style of the lifestyle columnist. I searched in the book for passages on his failure, and how he felt about it. They aren’t there.
He says he’s sorry he’s late, but it’s not his fault this time: “I understand everyone was being frisked for handguns”. They laugh: that’s not their England. The interviewer offers a trivial question first, for the fans. It’s about the zipwire at the London Olympics 2012, when he dangled with a Union Flag: the Johnson stunt by which all others are judged. “Although I was held to global ridicule,” he says, “it had exactly the effect I wanted: not for the first time!” The next day, he says, Britain “began to win medals”. This is Johnson the magician who expresses, entirely unconsciously, a universal boredom with conventional politics. It is also Johnson the Fisher King. His wounds mirror ours — that is his peculiar power — but neither are healed.
He is asked about the Brexit bus and its promise of £350 million a week for the NHS. “It’s the bus of truth!” he cries, even now. This is not a place to analyse the rotting political discourse, and what part he may have played in it. Such agonies are for Leftists. “It’s a significant sum,” he says, “people were right to ask what they were getting for it.” He adds, “Being unleashed from the EU gave us the freedom to do things differently,” and if they weren’t better, that is not his fault. Brexit saved lives during pandemic, he says. She asks about other “concrete dividends”. He looks nervous, cites giving lethal weaponry to Ukraine, makes a joke about William Hague’s baldness, and I remember that there are at least five different people inside him.
Johnson is happiest on diversions: Nicola Sturgeon, for instance. “Princess Twinkle-toes investigated by the fuzz for possession of a campervan. The Nationalist dog barked while the campervan moved on”. It’s a mash-up of metaphor and slang: and it’s meaningless. His serious point, when he gets there, is this: Reform polled low when he was prime minister. He kept us “bubble-gummed together”. But he didn’t. Rather, he opened the doors to them.
He is asked about his Covid. “A lot of people say I was shamming,” he says. But he was ill, he insists. And he realised, “I’ve done some pretty worthwhile things. I need to keep going. I thought I had a lot to live for and I had a country to look after”. Now I think: if he’s telling us he loves us, he wants to come back. He’s waiting for the party to fall so low they take him back.
The audience is restless. It wants Johnson the avatar of joy, and he’s talking about the nearness of Death, and defending his government. “We acted as vigilantly as we could, given what we knew”. He thinks Covid-19 came from a laboratory: “Do you really believe that this was the result of the love that flowered accidentally between a small slice of pangolin and a bat?” He doesn’t despair about a Trump presidency, even if he hated the Capitol riots: “He is not going to spend the first few months of his presidency trying to make the Soviet Union great again”. He says this last part in an accent thieved from Paint Your Wagon.
But then he reveals something. Being mayor of London was “great” because “I was a monarch”. And that’s it. Johnson was always more suited to absolute monarchy than parliamentary democracy, and, like an absolute monarch, he doesn’t think he did anything wrong, because an absolute monarch is the law. To Tory voters who hated him because he betrayed them, and, worse, made them betray themselves, he offers nothing. To the Tory romanticism he destroyed while pretending to share it he says nothing. The wine in the suitcase was a Downing Street ritual that long preceded him. His defenestration was all, “a bit of a put-up job”. His advice to the audience – a response audience question, they still think he has something to offer, is: “there’s no earthly point in being too self-deprecating”. Is that what he thinks he was?
At Cheltenham, Johnson offers us, as ever, a mirror, because that is what he is. He mirrored our hope. Now he mirrors our confusion. The Tory Party is in ruins — he essentially endorsed Truss, his closest allies voted for her — and it had nothing to do with him. He doesn’t talk about the leadership contest. He talks about himself.
At the end, there are no cheers, as if he has disappointed them, but the disappointment should be with themselves. Johnson was our first modern populist politician and his danger was always in his precedent: now there will be other, less charming populists walking the paths he made. His damage to the polity was incalculable — the prime minister who lied to parliament — and they don’t even mind. Nor, it seems, does he. Out they go, holding copies of Unleashed. It wasn’t what we — or even he — thought it would be. It is something infinitely sadder, and that, of his legacies, will endure.
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SubscribeAre there any subscribers to Unherd of Pakistani nationality or origin who’d like to comment?
The article provides an interesting window into the cultural shifts underway in a predominantly Muslim society. I’d never heard of Aurat March, so i welcome this insight. I worked alongside many well-educated, highly intelligent and pleasant female colleagues of Pakistani origin in the NHS. I’m surprised to hear about Aurat March pandering to western Critical Theory, since my overall impression was that those i worked with were refreshingly free from bullshit.
I understand there has recently been a large donation from the U.S meant to further the LGBTQ+ agenda in Pakistan. It comes in the guise of ‘gender equality’ but is really meant to promote gender ideology
“Today, on International Women’s Day, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Shalanda Young, previewed that the President’s 2023 Budget will request approximately $2.6 billion for foreign assistance programs that promote gender equity and equality worldwide, USAID will strive to improve the lives of women and girls starting the day they are born, with particular attention to those who face multiple forms of discrimination, such as adolescent girls and young women, Indigenous women, women and girls in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community, women with disabilities, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities”
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/mar-08-2022-us-government-announces-largest-ever-budget-request-26-billion-advance-gender-equity-and-equality-around-world
I understand there has recently been a large donation from the U.S meant to further the LGBTQ+ agenda in Pakistan. It comes in the guise of ‘gender equality’ but is really meant to promote gender ideology
“Today, on International Women’s Day, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Shalanda Young, previewed that the President’s 2023 Budget will request approximately $2.6 billion for foreign assistance programs that promote gender equity and equality worldwide, USAID will strive to improve the lives of women and girls starting the day they are born, with particular attention to those who face multiple forms of discrimination, such as adolescent girls and young women, Indigenous women, women and girls in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community, women with disabilities, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities”
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/mar-08-2022-us-government-announces-largest-ever-budget-request-26-billion-advance-gender-equity-and-equality-around-world
Are there any subscribers to Unherd of Pakistani nationality or origin who’d like to comment?
The article provides an interesting window into the cultural shifts underway in a predominantly Muslim society. I’d never heard of Aurat March, so i welcome this insight. I worked alongside many well-educated, highly intelligent and pleasant female colleagues of Pakistani origin in the NHS. I’m surprised to hear about Aurat March pandering to western Critical Theory, since my overall impression was that those i worked with were refreshingly free from bullshit.
This is not to mention the untold damage this nonsense is doing to LGB rights in conservative developing societies.
It’s certainly made me more conservative.
#MeToo
#MeToo
It’s certainly made me more conservative.
This is not to mention the untold damage this nonsense is doing to LGB rights in conservative developing societies.
Looking round at the Pakistani community in the UK I would say that Pakistani Feminism is an oxymoron.
That strikes me as a compelling reason for supporting it.
“Islamic feminism”
Given that ‘Islamic’ means that which takes the Quran (with its passages of clear misogyny ‘woman’s testimony worth half that of a man’) as a moral guidebook for behaviour; and ‘feminism’ is that which promotes liberty and agency for females, ‘Islamic feminism’ / ‘Muslim feminist’ are indeed terms reflecting oxymoron.
One simply cannot revere the Quran as inerrant AND be a campaigner for women’s equality.
That strikes me as a compelling reason for supporting it.
“Islamic feminism”
Given that ‘Islamic’ means that which takes the Quran (with its passages of clear misogyny ‘woman’s testimony worth half that of a man’) as a moral guidebook for behaviour; and ‘feminism’ is that which promotes liberty and agency for females, ‘Islamic feminism’ / ‘Muslim feminist’ are indeed terms reflecting oxymoron.
One simply cannot revere the Quran as inerrant AND be a campaigner for women’s equality.
Looking round at the Pakistani community in the UK I would say that Pakistani Feminism is an oxymoron.
Progressive elites are more interested in being seen as edgy and pushing boundaries and virtue signaling to each other than in actually solving problems for people, women in tough places in particular.
It’s about accumulating power by perpetuating problems rather than solving them.
It’s about accumulating power by perpetuating problems rather than solving them.
Progressive elites are more interested in being seen as edgy and pushing boundaries and virtue signaling to each other than in actually solving problems for people, women in tough places in particular.
Just one more example of the corrosive effects of unrecognised narcissism – when a tiny minority, or individual, highjacks a far greater endeavour, all in service of the great ‘I am’.
Just one more example of the corrosive effects of unrecognised narcissism – when a tiny minority, or individual, highjacks a far greater endeavour, all in service of the great ‘I am’.
So sad that such a tiny minority has such undesirable and disproportionate influence.
Gender identity ideology and democracy – at least, the kind of democracy that includes the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ – are at opposite ends of a political spectrum.
Gender identity ideology and democracy – at least, the kind of democracy that includes the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ – are at opposite ends of a political spectrum.
So sad that such a tiny minority has such undesirable and disproportionate influence.
Thanks Hina. I value that publications like Unherd can inform me about issues like this by giving a platform to journalists who swim against the tide. I have long thought that since the Bhutto’s era Pakistan has been dripping in upper middle class noblesse oblige, which often conceals entrenched power structures. Woke is its new form and the insane anti-woman gender ideology and hostility to religion and community moral values ( some very questionable), is part of it. Your article gives a fresh and critical perspective.
Thanks Hina. I value that publications like Unherd can inform me about issues like this by giving a platform to journalists who swim against the tide. I have long thought that since the Bhutto’s era Pakistan has been dripping in upper middle class noblesse oblige, which often conceals entrenched power structures. Woke is its new form and the insane anti-woman gender ideology and hostility to religion and community moral values ( some very questionable), is part of it. Your article gives a fresh and critical perspective.
Christ, this bizarre mode of thinking is even being embraced by the upper orders outside of the West.
There appears to be a wilful determination on the part of, loosely termed, the ruling classes of a growing number of nations to separate themselves not just economically but culturally from the wider populace. And how do they do this? By pretending to believe that geezers using the deliberately grotesque excesses of drag to pronounce themselves women really are women.
Why are our ruling classes doing this?
Christ, this bizarre mode of thinking is even being embraced by the upper orders outside of the West.
There appears to be a wilful determination on the part of, loosely termed, the ruling classes of a growing number of nations to separate themselves not just economically but culturally from the wider populace. And how do they do this? By pretending to believe that geezers using the deliberately grotesque excesses of drag to pronounce themselves women really are women.
Why are our ruling classes doing this?
How do they know that 0.24 of the population in Pakistan is transgender? I clicked in the link, but couldn’t find an explanation.
It’s not just Pakistan; the same applies absolutely everywhere else. What does it actually mean to say that somebody is ‘transgender’, when the only metric allowed is self-identification? It is no more meaningful than citing what proportion of the population claims to be ‘a good person’, or reincarnated, or Jedi. But worst of all, for such navel-gazing to attempt to usurp the fight for the emancipation of actual, biological women – a scientific reality that gender identity ideology flatly rejects – is utterly shameful.
Well said!
Exactly.
Well said!
Exactly.
It’s not just Pakistan; the same applies absolutely everywhere else. What does it actually mean to say that somebody is ‘transgender’, when the only metric allowed is self-identification? It is no more meaningful than citing what proportion of the population claims to be ‘a good person’, or reincarnated, or Jedi. But worst of all, for such navel-gazing to attempt to usurp the fight for the emancipation of actual, biological women – a scientific reality that gender identity ideology flatly rejects – is utterly shameful.
How do they know that 0.24 of the population in Pakistan is transgender? I clicked in the link, but couldn’t find an explanation.
Claims of being funded from the west are easily put aside – Pakistan has been begging for western funding recently because of the flooding. Perhaps you can’t have your cake and eat it.
By the same argument, if the elite in Pakistan does want billions of dollars of investment from the west, they surely should copy the attitudes of the west to get it. The attitudes of the west are clearly NYT-like attitudes. Makes a lot of sense to me.
So, if we want countries like Pakistan to clean up their act, don’t we have to sort out our priorities first?
May I observe that your comment reeks of colonialism, and the idea that starving people should only be fed on condition that they abide to your progressive values is quite morally repugnant ?
People like you or the Aurat march organizers are in fine guilty of giving talibans the moral high ground, at the very least in the eyes of the afghan population
It is called ‘irony’. Either you are American or very young.
Your comment that Emmanuel took issue with did not come across as ironic to me either. But I am, in fact, American and apparently given your comment above, we are all the same in our inability to catch irony. So, not sure where that leaves us.
It was patently ironic.
It was patently ironic.
Your comment that Emmanuel took issue with did not come across as ironic to me either. But I am, in fact, American and apparently given your comment above, we are all the same in our inability to catch irony. So, not sure where that leaves us.
Chris W is describing woke shitt, not advocating it.
It is called ‘irony’. Either you are American or very young.
Chris W is describing woke shitt, not advocating it.
May I observe that your comment reeks of colonialism, and the idea that starving people should only be fed on condition that they abide to your progressive values is quite morally repugnant ?
People like you or the Aurat march organizers are in fine guilty of giving talibans the moral high ground, at the very least in the eyes of the afghan population
Claims of being funded from the west are easily put aside – Pakistan has been begging for western funding recently because of the flooding. Perhaps you can’t have your cake and eat it.
By the same argument, if the elite in Pakistan does want billions of dollars of investment from the west, they surely should copy the attitudes of the west to get it. The attitudes of the west are clearly NYT-like attitudes. Makes a lot of sense to me.
So, if we want countries like Pakistan to clean up their act, don’t we have to sort out our priorities first?
I can’t wait to read Musa Al-Gharbi’s new book: https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/05/05/book-announcement-we-have-never-been-woke/
I can’t wait to read Musa Al-Gharbi’s new book: https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/05/05/book-announcement-we-have-never-been-woke/