At the moment of his political death, Boris Johnson was all but alone. The celebrity who once wowed millions could persuade only a gaggle of Conservative MPs to attend his Downing Street farewell. The manipulator who thought he had ensured the loyalty of his cabinet by stuffing it with unemployable nobodies watched as his hangers-on scuttled off in his moment of danger. Only the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns and Nadine Dorries remained, the weirdos and the thickos, shuffling in a ramshackle funeral procession for a once mighty prime minister.
Alone, did I say? Not quite. The Tory press was with him to the death. Newspapers that claim to be against permissiveness, crime, corruption and the double standards of an arrogant elite defended a hypocritical, scrounging, sexually incontinent minor criminal, who took money from any willing plutocrat and partied while the public suffered a pandemic and economic crisis. Just as America’s white evangelical churches were willing to betray their religious principles for Donald Trump, so Britain’s Tory press was prepared to abandon its moral code for Johnson.
Bertolt Brecht wrote: “And even in Atlantis of the legend/ The night the seas rushed in,/ The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.”
And even when Johnson was drowning he could still bellow for his slaves in the media. To the end they assured readers that “his will to win is his greatest weapon” (the Express) and that he “stands head and shoulders above his would-be assassins” (the Mail). The insulting label “client journalism” doesn’t begin to explain the media support Johnson commanded. The earliest examples of its use I can find come from the noughties when Lance Price, Alastair Campbell and other press officers for the Blair government described “client” reporters who became so reliant on spin doctors they lost sight of their independence.
The Sun, Mail, Express and Telegraph were more than victims of a dependency culture. With occasional honourable exceptions, they were an active and willing arm of the Johnsonian state. They gave the prime minister a privatised propaganda service complete with cheerleaders, excuse-makers, bullies and spies. Johnson was one of their own. They loved him for it.
To understand what Johnson did to the UK, and why his legacy will poison public life, see him as a hack following the playbook of the worst type of journalist. Showboat with a dramatic pose that strokes the prejudices of your readers. Don’t worry if your big idea is impractical or your propositions are false. Ignore facts that spoil the argument and lie without shame if you must. When the complaints come in, shift the blame by branding your critics as bores at best and the mouthpieces of special interests at worst.
The Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin damned the Mail and Express of the 1930s for exercising “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. Baldwin’s words now precisely describe his Conservative successor in Downing Street.
Johnson promised to “get Brexit done” – that certainly grabbed attention – and then did what Theresa May said no British prime minister would ever do, put a border in the Irish Sea. He lied about it, and when the lies wouldn’t wash any longer, he tore up a solemn treaty and blamed the European Union for the consequences of his own double dealing. He made an impossible commitment to increase spending and cut taxes – because it was what the punters wanted to hear – even as his country fell further behind its leading economic competitors and inflation, poverty and taxes rose.
Like all cheap columnists, he insisted he was the voice of the people, while collapsing the people’s trust in politics. Whenever his fantasies crashed into reality, there was always someone else to blame: the BBC, the judges, the civil service, “the blob”, the “saboteurs”, the liberal elite, the unions, the enemy within. Never before has irresponsibility had such power. Never before has harlotry become a guiding governing principle.
In his characteristically graceless resignation speech, Johnson shifted the blame for his failure on to the Conservative party. He had won an “incredible mandate” in 2019, the “biggest Conservative majority since 1987”. It was “eccentric to change governments when we’re delivering so much and when we have such a vast mandate”. Conservative MPs wouldn’t listen. They listened to the “sledging” of his critics instead and allowed a herd instinct to take over.
It feels futile to say it after the boosterism of the last three years, but Johnson was never a beloved leader. He was less popular in the 2019 election than May had been in 2017. He won so well because by that stage Jeremy Corbyn was extremely unpopular. But who cares about the boring details when an unscrupulous journalist, who has spent a lifetime manufacturing fantasy, can construct a stab-in-the-back myth in a matter of minutes. I won a “vast mandate”, Johnson will say. I took working-class seats the Tories never thought they could take. I could have carried on and governed into the 2030s but my treacherous colleagues listened to the “sledging” from the enemies of the right, tore me down and opened the way for hated leftists to seize power.
Parts of the Tory press are already working on their betrayal narratives. That huddle in Downing Street showed that a few Tory MPs will no more accept the fall of Johnson than their predecessors accepted the fall of Margaret Thatcher. Out in the country, diehard support remains, despite all the lies and national humiliations. Rob Ford of Manchester University points out Johnson’s approval ratings are at 23%, the same level Nigel Farage achieved at the peak of Ukip’s success. There’s a minority demand for a charismatic leader to sell the line that the corrupt elite sold Brexit and “the people” down the river. Look out for what Farage and Johnson do next. There’s still a market for them.
While we wait, think of this as a fitting epitaph for the Johnson administration and populist nationalist journalism that enabled it. They pushed standards of public life so low that, however despicably future prime ministers behave, they will be able to say that they never sank to the level of Boris Johnson.
• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist
