It’s my party… #7

You’re so vain…

To be clear from the outset: I do get it. At an intuitive level I do understand the anger at the multiple social events that took place at Downing Street at a itime when such things were either prohibited or very much restricted. I understand the particular anger directed at BJ, not only for his own participation, but for his lack of integrity and leadership, and for then doing his best to wheedle out of any accountability. I’m pretty sure I do get it.

However… as this thing has worn on and, frankly, people’s attention has waned – it’s rather looking like his ‘stall it and people will forget about it because attention only lasts for a week these days’ approach may well work now – I’ve become more and more attuned to how people actually articulate their objection to his, and his colleagues’ behaviour, and more and more curious about the gap – as I see it – between what we feel and our ability to articulate and reflect upon our feelings. In spite of the seeming obviousness of why folk should be so upset, I’ve not heard anyone really articulate why it matters so much, and as I have no ready answer myself, I thought I’d indulge my wonderings and see how far I can get. So: why do the Downing Street parties matter?

Because my dying relative…

I need to tread carefully around this one which goes something like ‘BJs behaviour is an affront because when I was visiting my dying loved one, I had to wear full PPE, not touch them, and could only stay 20 minutes, while at the same time BJ & Co were kicking back with a post-work glass of chilled white in the Downing Street Garden.’

At a rational level, I’m afraid this is largely a red herring. The various restrictions in care settings were in place in order not to introduce infection to vulnerable populations. Even if one’s loved one were on their way out, without precautions there would still be a risk of a) hastening their death (which, you know, they might not want); and b) infecting staff and/or patients/residents either directly or indirectly, through infection of your loved one.

In care settings the risks of infection are high and the consequences of infection likely to be serious, therefore any reasonable person would accept restrictions, distressing though that might be. Whatever BJ & Co were doing at the time should have no more bearing on your compliance than if someone down the road were doing the same. It would be truly perverse to argue that ‘since it’s apparently ok for BJ to kick back over nibbles, I am therefore going to be blasé about bringing Covid into my loved one’s care home even if that risks killing some of them’. The only coherent case for acting like this would be to argue that ‘since the government’s rationale for restrictions is to reduce the risk of infection, and since the leader of the governement shows personal disregard for those rules, I therefore conclude that in fact there is no genuine risk. The whole Covid thing is either a conspiracy or massively exaggerated, and knowing this, I conclude that it is safe to visit my very ill loved one’.

No-one sane is arguing that of course, and yet the bereaved have regularly spoken in forceful terms of how inappropriate it was for BJ & Co to be hobnobbing over a glass or three while they were saying their last goodbyes through a mask. So how does that make sense? Because I feel it makes sense, but I can’t actually articulate why. What is it that people are actually trying to convey? I feel like an annoying child repeatedly asking ‘but why?’, ‘but why?’ Well, why? Why does this matter in a way that nothing else thus far has?

Two broad categories seem to present themselves:

One: arguments along the lines of ‘had I known this I would have behaved differently’;

Two: claims along the lines of ‘this is a failure of leadership’.

libertarianism

There’s not a lot more to say about the possible argument that goes‘had I known they weren’t following the rules, then I would have done something differently’. Although the logic of the example above can be fairly swiftly dismissed, there is a coherent, more moderate case that could be made along the lines of: ‘those who those who made the rules about social contact and other Covid-related restrictions had access the very best available advice from a range of medical and related experts. Additionally, some of those decision-makers, most notably BJ himself, have personal experience of being very seriously ill as a result of Covid-19. Those people are therefore very well positioned to make judgements as to risk. Evidence of Downing Street social events demonstrates that, when believing themselves away from the public eye, those very informed people nevertheless feel entitled to act on the basis of their personal judgement of risk which is notably more casual than their own advice to others would dictate. I therefore conclude that, if those very informed people actually think that risk is a matter of personal judgement, then I will jolly well make my own decisions, thankyou. And when I notice that those very informed people make judgements that are much more permissive than the rules, I am inclined to think that the rules are probably over cautious, so why should I be subject to those rules?’

This point of view doesn’t seem to have a really forthright proponent prepared to stick their neck out that far (someone will correct me), but it’s barely below the surface of Tory backbench attitudes and it is, I concede, a coherent, albeint recklessly selfish, libertarian position. It says, ‘I’m an adult, it’s my life, and I will make my decisions myself. I will drink if I want, smoke if I want, pollute the world if I want, invest in corrupt regimes if I want.’ It is, basically, ‘let’s take back control’ and is (social prejudice alert) the point of collusion between Tory privilige and the terminaly thick that keeps the former in power and the latter where they belong. Look: this is Home County Lines, OK? Just because you can equally find the same views on the golf course, doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my opinion, OK?

The funny thing is (not funny, of course, and I know I’m digressing), that such views tend not to (though they do sometimes in a Wildean kind of way) extend their permissiveness to all aspects of behaviour: ‘I can have sex with whomsover I like’, ‘I can take way too much opium if I like’, more usually descending into double standards: ‘I’m free to invest in countries where people have no freedom, so I will’; ‘if I have a coke habit that’s fine, but we need to be tough on crime’; nimbyism, you get the picture.

Also funnily enough (and actually wryly bemusing this time), is that libertarian excess always seems to go one way: more of this, more of that. It doesn’t ever seem to err towards more restraint: you don’t hear people saying ‘It’s my right to live the ascetic life if I choose’; ‘it’s my right to leave all that lovely oil in the ground’; to throw myself of a tall building; to not to party. People feel obliged to do such things, but it’s seldom embraced as a libertarian choice. This does actually turn out to be relvant.

There was someone on the radio this morning saying how he had attended a loved one’s funeral at a time when restrictions were in place and Downing Street was cheese n’ wineing. The funeral was brief, minimal and socially distanced. He wasn’t making the above libertarian argument in any form (and that’s my bigger point: it was supposed to be self-evident that the example alone was sufficient to condemn the Downing Street parties), but he could have. Unlike the care home example, he could have argued that, had we all been free to make our own risk judgements, then that funeral might have been different: there might have been the same cheese and wine opportunities that there were in Downing Street for example. However, what the underlying tone was, and I think was the intended implication, was it’s not fair. Why was it ok for you to have cheese and wine just because you’ve had a hard week, or you’re leaving work, but I can’t at a funeral? It’s not fair!

It’s not fair!

Why does fairness matter, and how does it apply to leaders?

On the face of it, the case for fairness is obvious and goes: ‘if I forego something for the common good, then I expect you to do so too. If individuals opt out then they freeload on the back of others’ hardship and risk undoing the whole project’. To discourage such things, the collective agrees penalties that apply equally to all. This is a sort of ‘libertarianism-lite’ perspective where you can do what you like, provided it is not actually prohibited. If you do something that is prohibited, then you may incur some sort of sanction, but not one that goes beyond the specific misdemeanour.

On this reading, the Downing Street parties amount to ‘BJ just parked in the disabled parking space and chucked his McDonald’s out of the car window’. There are penalties for such things and that is probably what he’ll get from the Met (assuming the Met can resist stop-and-searching Kwasi Kwarteng and then up-skirting Liz Truss). After all, what else has BJ actually done wrong? Well, plenty as it happens, but let’s consider a couple of objections that the default penalties are not sufficient in this case, these being;

Leading by example

The expectation that leaders should set a ‘good’ example (i.e. one in line with stated expected national norms) appears so self-evident as be be virtually a truism, but what does that mean, and is it even true? After all, thinking about populist ‘man of the people’ types (it’s always a man btw), doing the very opposite would seem to be the main criteria for election? (think klepltocratic Putin, corrupt failed capitalist Trump). This is a quite distinct from the issue of whether or not a leader is representative of the ‘common people’ in terms of background or wealth, but about the consistency of their present personal lives with their present political position.

So, why does it apparently matter? Again, I’d think in terms of two broad categories.

Rational reasons

Practical reasons are those where inconsistent behaviour either directly hinders the work of government or is indicative of government not working effectively. Examples I’m thinking of are corruption, nepotism, decisions led by narrow self-interest, lack of accountability, fraud, lying… These things undermine the working of government and, being the government, undermine democracy itself. Setting aside the specific, local risk to public health, cheese and wine gatherings don’t really fall into this category unless one argues that such things speak of lack of discipline and control, but that takes us unto the more emotional category. I’m going to put this category aside.

Emotional reasons

When I talk about ‘emotional’ reasons, I mean the psychology that makes being an example matter for group dynamics; we are, after all, essentially social animals. This is inevitably more speculative, but why not?

What is leadership?

Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch into some sub-TED Talk, faux Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo about inspiration and passion. Instead, let’s start in another century with Thomas Hobbes. I’m no political philosopher (can you tell?), but as I understand it, the gist of what he argued (possibly aimed more at the monarch than parliament) was that the job of the head of the body politic was to deliver peace and a degree of prosperity. How they did that was of no concern to the populace, but should the leader not deliver that peace and a degree of prosperity, then they needed to go.

This is more or less the view being put forward by BJ’s supporters: judge the man on his political achievements and not on his personal moral failings. There are all sorts of disingenuous reasons why some might make this case (like, let’s keep the duffer in place because the alternative might be worse, or at least until we get through the coming inflationary car-crash), but it isn’t an unreasonable point of view on the face of it. It’s also not a million miles away from this post’s starting question.

It is however, a point of view that evidently misses the point. I seem to remember someone on the radio saying that, although BJ was elected with the acceptance of inevitable personal failings ‘factored-in’ as part of the package, this was defintiely not one of them. To recap, the current PM is a man with a proven track record of:

What is now happening with all this partygate business that the most the above misdemeanours elicit is a salaciously moralistic ‘tut’, or at worst a roll of the eyes, but that quaffing a lockdown bottle or three in the sun elicits uproar? Just what is it about the latter that is so unforgivable? Here are some suggestions.

We’re in it together

One way of defining leadership is that it is about achieving group cohesiveness: it is about somehow facilitating an otherwise disparate people to come together around a common (and stated) purpose that is in their collective interest, even if not always in their immediate individual interest. Humans are social creatures, and the shared acceptance of a leader helps this process to happen. The leader is someone who is invested by the group with the drive and singularity of purpose needed to achieve the goal. The leader thus comes to embody the collective aim of the group and, in turn, members of the group identify with the leader. In one sense, the group only finds in the leader those qualities that they invested in the leader in the first place, but the process of circular reinforcement can be very powerful: the ability of humans to act cohesively on a scale way beyond any familial or friendship ties (unless, like, UR like counting fb friends LOL) is one of the defining characteristics of our species.

This kind of dynamic works best around specific goals that have clear outcomes, that’s why leadership is big in the military and in sport. The simplicity of the Brexit refurendum was well suited to this, and the ‘take back control’ and ‘get Brexit done’ calls to action were perfect for the occasion. The dynamic also suits populists who may lack an underlying ideological coherence but who have an ear for the mood of the people and the knack of channelling it into purposeful action. BJ scores on that too.

When all this this works well, the leader takes on a special status, being both ‘of the people’ and the ‘leader of people’; at one and the same time ‘one of us’ and a unique figure on whom we depend for direction. Britain (or more accurately, England) has this persistent habit of electing old Etonians and PPE graduates (no, not face-masks) with all the class an privilege baggage that entails: in no sense are they ‘one of us’, and yet, for a while it was a journalistic habit to doorstep them and demand how much they thought a pint of milk cost, or a stamp. When they couldn’t answer this was taken as evidence of their ‘being out of touch’. BJ’s strong suit is that he able to ride both these horses at once: he is unabashedly privileged – a hooray Henry in boomer-speak – of the sort that spilts feeling between resentment and deference. At any rate, he’s ‘not one of us’ and is very much ‘one of them’. Yet, at the same time, he can get away with ‘oven-ready deals’ and cheese on toast references, known, in an admission of affection, by his first name. Incidentally, it’s noticeable how many food references come into this: I have whole diatribe in my head about the government’s fixation with having their cake and eating it.

In some ways, Johnson represents one of the more endearing (or at least slightly less offensive) versions of class privilege: that of the carelessness that comes with old money. One of the give-aways of the nouveau riche is that they try too hard to adopt what they understand as the visible signs of class: their cars are too shiny, their pedantic insistence on service and detail too anxious and bullying, their guns too new. Taking their class position for granted, the old rich are much more careless of these things; they are secure enough in themselves that they are able to wear eccentricities like a favourite pair of wellies – unremarked by those of their own class, but eyebrow raising to everyone else. Moreover, via connection to the land and the military in particular, this version of the aristocracy are also unexpectedly adept at practicalities and making-do. Jemima might be minted but she’s happy mucking out a horse. The Queen is, of course, the exemplar of all this: no stranger to protocol but will drive (and probably knows how to fix) her own Land Rover. Unsentimental enough to know when a favourite dog (or child) needs to be dispatched. I digress.

With Johnson of course, despite valid claims to class privilege, the stupid hair and duck-toed bike pedalling are all in good measure affectations, intended to pre-emptively disarm any serious and too-searching inquiry into his all too real (as opposed to contrived appearance of) disorganised incompetence. So, to get back to the point, what does it say about our relationship with UK political leadership, and that of BJ in particular, such that, whatever the final outcome, partygate has become the issue on which public and party support for his leadership has turned?

In moments of national crisis, the dependency of the group on the leader is heightened as is the potency of the group for action. As we all tuned in to the first Prime Ministerial addresses of the pandemic with a degree of anxiety and apprehension there was the potential both for unity in the face of a genuinely common concern (a rare thing), or for hysteria and chaos. The job of the leader is actually pretty straightforward in such circumstances: not to show any personal anxiety and to channel the public into clearly defined purposeful action. Perhaps it’s a myth, but wasn’t the whole wartime ‘collecting saucepans for Spitfires’ thing basically just a ruse to give people a common purpose? Either way, it worked.

The War of course!

Well, what else could it be about? Wartime is, of course, the model for all this because the enemy is easy to define and the stakes are high, and if we’re talking wartime Britain we’re talking the Blitz. Or at least the cultural myth of the Blitz. But before heading off in that direction, it’s worth noting that although many present-day leaders did try to recruit us in a ‘war’ against the pandemic, it was notable that BJ did not fully commit to that rhetoric. In fact, it emerged later that advisors on these things had predicted that public compliance with restrictions would be less unified and shorter lived than it was. There was much anticipation of ‘lockdown fatigue’ that led to a more compromising stance couched in terms of the maintenance of individual freedoms and absence of restriction wherever possible.

Given BJ’s open and aspirational admiration of Churchill, you’d think Covid might almost have been a gift from the gods for him, and yet (perhaps predictably), when it came to it, he never quite filled those boots. I don’t think he did dreadfully, by the way; I’m only reflecting that he seemed more hesitant than might have been expected. I don’t even think that was a bad thing, but I am (via another rather tortuous route) trying to articulate what’s going on around the partygate business.

Nevertheless, my sense is that somewhere in the back of all this partygate nonesense lies our version of what we tell ourselves about the War, and that part of the reason why partygate is not going away (apart from the BBC and the liberal metropolitan elite gunning for poor, hardworking British PMs), is that BJ has not been able to maintain the illusion of what I will call the Blitzscript. That this is so is suggested by two things:

Firstly, Johnson’s self-modelling on the wartime Churchill is no secret. We all know it’s fraudulent of course but it’s convenient and, in relation to Brexit, was successful. In relation to Covid and partygate, he more interesting contrast was with the Queen, not only as an exemplar of dignified self-restraint in her mourning of the DofE but, I suspect in the background, because of her connection to the war and therefore to the cultural narrative of national unity through collective privation.

During the war, much was made of the Royals and Churchill visiting bomb sites and being visibly present in general. That Buckingham Palace was hit by a bomb only helped the perception that leaders and led alike were ‘in it together’. I believe I’m right in thinking that Churchill used ration coupons to buy clothes and, after the war, a big deal was made of the Queen using coupons to buy her wedding dress. It was all a sham of course: there was no end of ways that the privileged were effectively exempt from rationing (rationing didn’t extend to restaurants, for example, and didn’t apply to game – handy if you own an estate), but here’s the point: the people knew it was a sham. Of course they did: Churchill was an aristocrat – he hardly needed to wear a siren suit, especially to meet foreign leaders, but it was a visible sign of being part of the collective effort and suggested a workman-like functionality that finds its echo in today’s donning of hi-vis and hard hats (BJ being no exception there).

Symbolic exchange

Two fat gentlemen
Met in a lane
Bowed most politely
And bowed once again
"How do you do?"
And "How do you do?"
And "How do you do?" again

So, if there was no real effort to deceive the proletariat that their leader really was ‘just like them’ – and I don’t think there was – what was going on such that the pretence was felt to be important enough to maintain back then, and what has it to do with partygate now? If the visible signs of a leader sharing the hardships of the masses are essentially symbolic and understood to be so, what is going on?

To put it another way, if the contribution of a leader ‘doing their bit’ by using ration coupons or managing not to  wander into a party in their back garden on the pretext that they thought it was a work event, is tokenistic both in terms of actual contribution to the overall effort (a drop in the ocean so to speak), and in terms of actually sharing the pain of the people (we don’t really expect them to suffer, or even to be saints), then what is left? What is the value of this symbolic gesture?

Let’s take the example of gift giving, or even just everyday social pleasantries. At an elementary level, gift-giving requires the giver to recognise that giving a gift is what is called for by the situation. Yes, I know there are random acts of kindness and a true gift is given without expectation of reciprocity, but for our purposes, gift-giving tends to be ritualised and, to go smoothly, the occasion needs to be recognised as such: when someone leaves work, recognition of their contribution in the form of a card, a gift, and/or words are appropriate (in fact, that was what was going on at Downing Street on several of the occasions under investigation). If someone invites you to dinner, it’s customary to bring a token of some sort. Similarly, if you run into an acquaintance on the street, you ask how they are: it’s just a ritualised exchange of course, but the point is that all of these examples involve recognition that the other needs to be recognised (if you follow).

• The work leaver needs some positive recognition so that they can achieve separation from the group. Equally, the group needs to part on good terms with the individual so that it can reform around its core purpose without introducing unwanted feelings of rejection or whatnot.
• When you rock up at someone’s house for a meal, it’d be pretty rude to just plonk yourself down and expect to be fed. It’s customary to recognise the effort the cook has made by bringing a small item so any feelings of resentment at spending the afternoon sweating in the kitchen are dissipated and you’re able to mutually enjoy each other’s company.
• When you meet someone in the street, asking how they are, even in the most formulaic way is about signalling an attentiveness to the other’s emotional state.
• Making a public show of buying your wedding dress with ration coupons is about signalling that you understand the privations that the public are enduring by willingly putting yourself in their position, even if only for a moment.

The tokenstic or symbolic nature of these exchanges makes clear that this is not about tangible value, either in the form of monetary value or in terms of actual effort required. By these measures the exchange is worthless, but more accurately they take place outside these economies, and in that sense are beyond all material value. Beleive it or not, the market has not quite permeated everywhere, even if we persist in seeing everything in its terms.

So, is that really it? Does all this come down to the fact that we all, deep down, want BJ to see our need to be seen, to understand our need to be understood? Perhaps this is what lies behind the angry allegation (that I’ve heard several times) that BJ ‘took us all for fools’. No-one who followed the Covid restrictions was a fool; quite the opposite. It was clearly the morally right thing to do as well as being an informed, reasoned, broadly effective way of limiting infection and loss of life. So why fools? Fools for thinking BJ was, at least at a personal level, anything other than an indolent libertarian? We all knew that already: that was the ‘baked-in’ part of the deal. So, fools for thinking he might be competent enough to at least pretend to care? I think that’s closer. I suggest that we may feel like fools because our own neediness is exposed, and that, in turn, makes us angry because we don’t like to be confronted with that.

Churchill and the wartime royals recognised that a visible symbolic gesture was required of them by the public in order to cement the unity of the nation. This was never about leaders needing to show that the rules applied equally to themselves as to everyone else: frankly, they didn’t and they still don’t and everyone knows that they don’t. And that’s OK, because we’re all signed up to the fiction of the deal, but when leaders fail to recognise that such a gesture is required, or – as with BJ – their double standards are forcefully exposed, then the tacit spell that keeps the group unified is broken.

All apologies

Broken, but not irreparable. If a leader fails to maintain an affirming public connection, then there are opportunities to redeem themselves. This happens via more explicitly scripted symbolic gestures in which the leader is called upon to recognise the new needs that have replaced the previous, unrecognised, need for recognition and understanding: yes, apologies are really weird things.

Here’s what I find fascinating about apologies. Take the example of a parliamentary apology which is particularly scripted and so easy to follow.

1. Whatever they think about their own volition, the miscreant has been summoned to appear. No-one has ever apologised for something they have already got away with, and even if they had, it would only be a pre-emptive heading-off of public anger. Everyone thinks BJ’s parties were an outrage; no-one thinks it outrageous that he didn’t immediately fess up but chose not to mention it.
2. In summoning the leader (on whom the larger group / political party / nation are dependent for direction and their sense of common purpose, that is ‘leadership’), the group changes from a subservient position to a dominant one; from a supplicant position to a critical one or, if you like, from a child position (of dependency) to a parental one. It’s akin to a school class saying to their teacher ‘you come here and you apologise right now for what you’ve done’. It’s odd when you see it like that, and it gets odder.
3. There is a punitive element to apologies: the miscreant is expected to look contrite; they are meant to look unhappy (nothing goes worse than apologising with a smirk on your face). So the performance gives the impression of being about making the miscreant feel a certain way (‘did he show remorse?’ the judge asks); but of course, it’s the opposite.
4. Stating the obvious, people are called upon to apologise because they have done something that hurt someone (or lots of people in this case). If no insult was perceived, then no apology would be called for. I know this is obvious, but the point is that the apology is not about what the miscreant did, it’s about how the aggrieved party felt then and feels now. When a leader lets down a people by not recognising their needs and the spell of cohesion is broken, the people are left with unwelcome feelings of loss (of the figure of the leader, of purpose), and the return of those unpleasant feelings previously put aside in the name of group cohesion (distrust, rivalry, self-interest).
5. Calling upon someone to apologise is about giving them a second opportunity to recognise the unwelcome feelings brought up by the original injury (I’m sorry I held a party) and a second opportunity to understand the group’s needs in the present (I can see you are angry and that I need to apologise and I feel bad for having hurt you). In both respects, the group is hoping that they can re-establish that the leader really does care about them and therefore that they can restore the leader as leader and rid themselves of their unwelcome feelings of loss and conflict. The apology is about the needs of the people and the purpose is for the people, and not the leader, to feel differently at the end of it. It is really ‘I want you to apologise so that I feel better’.
6. If all goes well (and the group wants it to go well – that’s why bungled apologies are just a disaster) the leader is restored to their former position and the group can resume their position of relative dependency. This is where they feel most secure.
7. And so the temporary inversion of hierarchies is over and order is restored. The group that, in its uncontained state, felt empowered to haul the leader in front of them, now relinquishes their new-found authority and reverts to the relative security and safety of dependence.
8. It’s a funny business this telling someone that you need to be told what to do. It’s the class demanding the teacher apologise for being a rubbish teacher and to get on with teaching them, and demands for apologies in general say much more about the needs of the aggrieved than the particular misdemeanours of the accused.

(you’ve not only let yourself down, but you’ve let me down and you’ve let the whole school down…)

So, are we any close to understanding what’s gone so wrong for BJ? Why this issue and not any of the other four hundred and thirty-six others?

Going back to where I started, I think that it makes a bit more sense of the many (including at least a couple of MPs) who have spoken emotively about the death of loved ones during restrictions. Although there is no rational connection between a Downing Street leaving do and having only curtailed and regulated visits to someone close with very little time left. It does, I think make a bit of sense of how feelings of loss and anger around someone’s death that would normally have been kept for the private sphere, spill out and become directed at a leader in a public setting, because when the group as a whole loses its orientation, emotion becomes unmoored, particularly when the loss of a leader as leader evokes similar feelings of abandonment.

So, we did BJ do it? Why did he do something that almost everybody agrees is just crass? Speaking for myself, I’m not actually that bothered by fact of the various parties, but I could see immediately that he’d made a really big gaff, and was only compounding it by having no insight into the expectations that he was now required to be unequivocally contrite.

To explore this (indulge me for a moment), I’m going to drag the Queen into this again. The Queen is a very wealthy woman and also very powerful. However, her de facto power is very limited: although she’s Commander in Chief of the armed forces (I think), she doesn’t steer military strategy or go around invading middle eastern nations; she doesn’t raise taxes in her own right; she doesn’t write laws or intervene in parliamentary business: she doesn’t do very much. And yet she is a revered leader.

Let’s be a bit more nuanced about this: the Queen (one mustn’t dis the Queen – and I’m not) is a figure that the nation comes back to in times of trouble. The monarchy, and this monarch in particular, is a figure of reassuring continuity through all manner of tribulation, a figure of resilience who has seen it all before (how many prime ministers now?) and who embodies the nation in good part through her connection to the war. But it is very difficult for the Queen to demonstrate leadership by doing anything ‘active’, such as launching missiles, or proroguing parliament (BJ?), or flashing her cash. The extent of her overt power seems to be to allow others to give us the odd street party on her behalf.

What she is permitted to do, and what she is very good at, is not doing stuff. For a wealthy person to spend money is not interesting and potentially very alienating. For a wealthy person to forego something is quite powerful, that’s why the wedding dress gesture worked; that’s why her being a faithful wife was important; that’s why her lone mourning of the DofE was so affecting. Bizarrely we have a monarch who we turn to at times of austerity and uncertainty (when, historically, such times would seem ideal for a bit head lopping) because she represents resilience and fortitude and restraint.

BJ on the other hand… Well, though I can’t say (politely) that I warm to the guy, he is (or rather, was) a demonstrably good leader. Enough people believed in him to vote him in as London Mayor and an MP and he was chosen for ministerial duty, and he fronted Brexit and he became PM: it’s not a bad CV. I’d say he has/had two strong suits:

1. He was good at (or good at doing an impression of) doing stuff. All the ruffled hair and the verbosity and flight of ideas and careless dressing, plus all the signature projects – the busses and bikes and Brexit – all gave the impression of someone on the go. Energetic, too busy for detail, get on with it in public and in private life: he was doing it all over the place, so much so that no-one quite knew just how many he’d done, he was so busy.

His whole response to (or lack of) nearly dying of Covid was instructive: he seemed to come out slightly chastened by the experience, thanked the staff, said he’d lose some weight, and then reverted to type: doing stuff. Many people – most people – change after a close brush with mortality, but not BJ! He could have used his experience as a point of connection with people, as a visible sign of sign of suffering as ‘one of us’ (I can’t help thinking of Mussolini and his fake war wound, but that’s too harsh), but he didn’t. The capable, irrepressible had to go on.

But was that what was needed? In many ways ‘yes’. Although he was criticised for hesitancy on several occasions, he at least gave the appearance of a man undaunted and that is no mean feat and he represented someone who would ‘get us through’ by sheer faux-Churchillian bloody-mindedness. But when it came to showing that he wouldn’t do something, that he was willing to forgo something, he came unstuck. He just couldn’t put up with John Lewis furnishings in Downing Street, but instead of quietly putting his hand in his own pocket and forking out, he flustered and blustered and let everyone know he was a class apart and so alienated people.

And of course he couldn’t not do a social drink or three, because that’s the kind of person he is: he can’t forgo anything. He can’t even forgo a pole dancing septic, even if he has to divert a bit of public cash her way, and as I write this I remind myself that I have a whole blog on having your cake and eating it. He is nothing if not incontinent and in this respect the contrast with the Queen (whom he tried to bullshit and joked about how he nearly infected her, remember?) could not be greater.

• His other strength is that he can read people. Sort of. I was thinking that’s it’s a funny conundrum being someone who, really, seems to be pretty contemptuous of ordinary folk but at the same time a populist. I think he manages it by pretending not to care too much but plainly does. So how does someone who thrives on the wave of popularity manage to get it so wrong? I think it’s a case of ‘see above’: he’s good at perceiving what the public want and giving it to them so far as his competency extends to going that. But he’s no good at understanding what people don’t want him to do.

I think I’ve written myself out. There have been many rationalisations as to why the various Downing Street parties went on. I suspect that the whole thing is complicated by it being both a residence and a workplace, and by many people working long hours. When the first report of the Christmas 2020 party came out I seem to remember someone saying it really hadn’t been a very cheerful affair anyway, and that put me in mind of the scene in Downfall when Hitler ‘celebrates’ his final birthday in the tomb-like bunker, surrounded by the faithful, death outside. I had an image of that strange mix of slightly forced hysterical ‘enjoyment’ amidst calamity. I suppose a more domestic simile would be that of people having furtive sex in air raid shelters during the blitz: you get the picture. I was completely off though: the subsequently leaked pictures of BJ and Co chilling in the May sunshine looked like any other late afternoon beer garden and commentators instead floated the suggestion of a messiah complex, which at least had the redeeming element of wanting to save people. Others just called it arrogance.

I suspect now that he just doesn’t get it and that the clue is in his own response to his own hospitalisation. Although he said some words afterwards, it’s hard not to think that had the penny had really dropped about his own mortality and how close he came to not coming back, he’d be a different person and a different leader now. I suspect he doesn’t understand people’s anger because he has so little empathy for others: he knows when he’s liked, and he knows what things to do to ‘get that like’ (weirdly, maybe he is the first truly facebook-generation PM), he knows how to bluster on ever-forwards, but has no capacity for reflection.

But so what? The point of this indulgence was because I genuinely find it hard to articulate what it is about the DS parties that are – and they are – so objectionable. In the end, it says more about us than it does about BJ or DS culture. This is more so because BJ has so little in the way of – I can’t quite articulate it – principles that are his own, certainly, integrity, yes, but that doesn’t quite cover it: there’s just so little there. To mix metaphors somewhat I see him as a vain fairy-tale prince looking into the mirror of the nation and asking ‘who is the fairest of them all’, and is only bewildered when the answer comes back ‘not you at any rate’ (fill in your own blank there but it’s hard to do – I suspect that’s why he’s still in place).

But then the conundrum of popularism is that is he is a mirror to us. He accurately reflected the mood of resentful disenchantment behind Brexit and gave it an active sense of purpose: with BJ more than most, we get back what we put in and his strength is that he runs with it.

 And as he wants to be adored, so perhaps we want him to adore us, only it turns out he doesn’t adore anyone but himself. Should we really be surprised? Are we, after all, really just angry with ourselves for ever thinking otherwise? In this sense he has taken us for fools, or rather we’ve too willingly offered ourselves up as fools if we ever thought a hollow Etonian libertine of limited intellect was some sort of saviour. Whatever the case, the group has turned on the leader and that’s one of the inherent risks of popularism: if your skills lie in harnessing the emotive power of a nation then when it goes well you will be an idol, but when it goes wrong, you will be torn to pieces.

So, what do I think will happen? For the sake of putting something down on paper to look back on, let’s have a stab:

• If I were the Tories I would keep him in post for the short term. With rising prices and interest rates and taxes just kicking in then it makes sense to us up BJ’s credit completely. Stick him out to dry and let him be the fall guy for the whole lot and then wheel in a new hero to save the day. Looked at the other way round, who’d want the job with all that lot coming at you? It’d just be a hiding to nothing.
• So an interim, sacrificial, leader? Maybe, but too much change isn’t good. I’m sticking to ‘1’.
• Who will succeed him?
  • Liz Truss 8 / 10
  • Andrew Mitchell 7 / 10
  • Dominic Raab 7 / 10 (god help us)
  • Jeremy Hunt 7  / 10
  • Rishi Sunak 5 / 10
  • Theresa May 3 / 10