Why Boris will have to go
He didn't have magic electoral armour, he just hadn't broken any real taboos before. Now he has.
In 'So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed' author Jon Ronson examines the fates of various people who found themselves cancelled. The book is a cavalcade of human misery, with one exception.
Why, Ronson ponders throughout the book, does one of his subjects, Max Mosley, survive cancellation relatively unscathed? What was it about the man that equipped him to come through his torment with both social standing and mental health intact? By the end of the book, Ronson has had an epiphany: The explanation wasn’t Mosley, but his sin.
By the time the News of the World splashed photos of Mosley’s cavorting with prostitutes in bondage gear, the images had lost their power to shock. Attitudes towards sex had changed and social mores had moved on. ‘Nobody cared!’ concludes Ronson.
Until the events of the last few weeks, Boris Johnson had been thought politically bullet proof. He had shrugged off furores, scandals and smears that might have killed other political careers and come through it all with a stonking election majority, toppling the Red Wall in the process.
But we have attributed too much of this success to his unique persona. Look again at his list of previous escapes and they don’t seem so miraculous. The public was so forgiving of the sinner because they didn’t really care about the sin:
A liar? That’s OK so long as he’s lying in service of causes that I like. Bigoted jokes? Nothing that Jeremy Clarkson wouldn’t say. A shagger? Spare us the confected outrage of the elites. Improper loans? Let the man have some bloody wallpaper!
Scandals slid off Boris because they were only ever scandals in the minds of people who were never going to vote for him. And, just as the media onslaught towards Trump made people like him more, the exaggerated outrage from Boris’ critics fed his popularity.
But this is different. The outrage is real and universal. However many of us broke or bent rules during lockdown, we all remember the sacrifices we made, the loved ones we were separated from, and the frustration we felt. This is emotional and visceral in the way that redecoration bills never were - and it crosses political boundaries, upsetting friends as well as foes.
Lockdown supporter? Boris’ cavalier and reckless approach is encapsulated in a single photo.
Lockdown sceptic? Boris imposed rules on us that he knew were excessive and didn’t show the same restraint he asked for.
A scandal only becomes a crisis when it strikes an emotional chord. This one has. Boris is not magic, he is finished.