It was a low point even for GB News, a rolling-opinions TV channel with no documented highs: to celebrate the anniversary of Churchill’s funeral, it interviewed a Churchill impersonator as if he were Churchill. “Why do you think there is still so much admiration for you?”, the man – his name lost to the viewers, unfortunately, since the strapline underneath read simply “Winston Churchill, former prime minister” – was asked. “I think probably because I was the right man at the right moment,” he replied, having made the baffling decision to stick with the first person while consigning himself to the past. “I don’t think I could survive in the current climate,” he continued, presumably because the woke warriors would come for him. Too right we would. “You’re dead,” we would say, “and yet still talking. For this gross unnatural act, you are hereby no-platformed, nay, cancelled.”
Some time in the early 2000s, a survey found Churchill to be the Briton most admired by his compatriots, and that was interpreted – some would say overinterpreted – as a lesson on what kind of prime minister we all secretly wanted. Did we like him best for his lofty rhetoric or his white supremacism? For his salty remarks at parties, or his “I, too, am human” physique? It was none of those things, of course. People liked him because he won things. Not all of them – he lost the odd election. But the important things, he won. Well, one important thing, but to give him credit, it was pretty damn important.
The salient thing now is not so much Churchill himself, who is – one more time for the GB viewers at the back – very much still dead, but what British politicians are trying to invoke when they wang on about him. The prime minister has written a book about his hero, but, even if you were prepared to read it, you would struggle to find the Churchillian value that Johnson most seeks to emulate. This is because it isn’t anything intrinsic to the man himself but rather the nature of his legacy: to Winston-stans, nothing matters, nothing he said or did, no mistake or omission, besides that one thing that he won. Imagine how relaxing it would be for a chaos monkey or a seat-of-pants merchant to live that creed: don’t sweat the small stuff, just choose one huge thing, and say you won it.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
