We love ‘Boris’

You may remember the line from former remainers after the EU election when it became clear that Brexit would have a hugely negative effect on Britain and Britons for the foreseeable future. There were no positives, only the loss of hard won rights and privileges and a long term economic decline. They said this: “No one voted to make themselves poorer”. But the voters in their million hordes did just that in order to “take back control” and for that extra £350 million a week for the NHS. As we are about to be reminded in the local elections in general and the Hartlepool by election in particular, no minds have been changed.

Reports from Hartlepool, a town which once elected a man dressed in a monkey suit as mayor, suggest that Boris Johnson’s clown car Conservative party is about to score a resounding victory in today’s by election. Johnson, we hear, “has done well with Brexit and vaccines”. His candidate, an identikit Tory outsider, will stroll to victory today with Labour trailing so far behind, I doubt that Labour leader Keir Starmer will be able to even see its wake, let along be in it.

I cannot possibly read the minds of voters in the north east but it has been clear in the campaign that they love ‘Boris’. When visiting the constituency, he has been mobbed by friendly locals wishing to engage him with jolly banter and to take selfies. The world-beating COVID death toll, the cronyism and corruption of the Tory party, rising poverty, more foodbanks, higher unemployment, cuts to working age benefits and a catastrophic rise in homelessness are a mere aside as Johnson bestrides the Hartlepool seafront like a colossus: none of these things damage ‘Boris’, who people still seem to love.

People used to say things like: “I hate politicians. They are liars, they are only in it for themselves. They want to make themselves and their friends rich off the back of the working classes”. Perhaps, they still do, but with less conviction because with Johnson we have a lurid combination of the worst kind of politicians people supposedly hate. Lying and corruption are, seemingly, baked in with Johnson and he always gets a free pass. I suspect if he  burgled a blind pensioner, more people would say, “Ah, but that’s Boris for you” than condemn him. He is not so much teflon-coated as bullet-proof.

What does it say about our politics that Johnson is so loved by the electorate. It can’t just be the magnetic sex appeal he seems to hold to so many women or his carefully staged, apparently bumbling speeches that are in fact honed to the point of near perfection. If I knew the answer, I’d tell Keir Starmer, a man from a working class background whose father worked in a factory and whose mother was a nurse and rose to the top of his profession by dint of his hard work and brilliance and not, like Johnson, by way of who he knew not what he knows. In a real meritocracy, Johnson would not be trusted to run a whelk stall.

Even his most fervent supporters must know that Johnson is a wrong ‘un, a fraud, a liar and a shyster. But for reasons many fail to fathom, his popularity remains undimmed.

Today will be a good say for Johnson and the little Englanders who hang on his every word. For the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the low paid and the homeless his success will be everyone else’s loss. In my view, Johnson’s enduring popularity speaks volumes about our country and not in a good way. The next person who tells you how much they hold politicians in contempt, ask them if they love ‘Boris’. If they do, there will be little point in continuing with the conversation.