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Boris Johnson after resignation: The dark side of the clown

2022-07-10T19:01:03.851Z


Boris Johnson cultivated pop star privilege, and cheekiness was part of his success. With the announced retirement, the question arises: Is there a future for his character of the charming rule-breaker?


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Johnson after his resignation statement on Thursday: The opportunity to draw a worthy conclusion has already been missed.

Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP

Sometimes you can see things more clearly from a distance.

While various personalities from the media landscape in the United Kingdom swam across all news channels last Thursday with their impromptu summaries of the British head of government's departure, John Cotter, law professor at the University of Keele in remote Staffordshire, hit the nail on the head in a concise tweet : "The greatest trick the Prime Minister ever pulled," he wrote, referring to a famous quote from the film, "was to make the world believe that he had resigned."

In the original (»The Usual Suspects«, 1995) it is not the prime minister who is fooling the world, but the gangster Verbal, played by Kevin Spacey.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled," Verbal bluffs during police interrogation, "was to make the world believe he didn't exist."

Admittedly, that would never occur to Boris Johnson, after all his whole being is focused on constantly proving his presence to the planet.

But Cotter's comparison still works.

In truth, the British head of government had merely sold the illusion of resignation to the international media gathered in front of 10 Downing Street that Thursday.

Concerned comments from skeptical natures that his declaration not only lacked any form of insight into his own mistakes, but also any fixed deadline for his departure, were initially dismissed as a mere formality: if necessary, the conservative parliamentary group would even change its party statutes in order to quickly dump him.

But just a few days later, the seemingly unstoppable momentum of Johnson's departure had fizzled out again.

The warning of the conservative former Prime Minister John Major to get rid of the blond Boris "in the national interest" with immediate effect had gone unheard.

Likewise the »Bye Bye Boris, Boris bye bye« choruses, which the protesting crowd – based on the Four Seasons or Bay City Rollers hit – around the corner from Downing Street sang so confidently on Thursday.

When David Cameron resigned in 2016 and Theresa May in 2019, the moving vans drove up to the back entrance of the Premier residence on the same day.

Johnson, on the other hand, is still behind the black door, surrounded by grateful parliamentarians who have just been appointed to the cabinet.

He is presumably enjoying reading a survey according to which conservative party members, despite all his sins, would prefer him to all of the previously named successor candidates.

Even at the lowest point in his popularity, he's still the only true pop star in the Tories' ranks - a privilege that has allowed him to turn the laws of political careers upside down in recent years.

All the stories of his pathological dishonesty, his unstable love life and the obscenely expensive furniture he and Mrs Carrie furnished the Downing Street official's apartment with (partly at government expense, partly funded by obscure donations) did him no harm, but rather suited him his pop star persona of the charming rule-breaker, the clown who doesn't conform but subverts the expectations of the political system with a mischievous wink.

His insolence was part of his appeal.

Hence his astounding immunity to allegations of broken campaign promises, incompetence, a lack of planning or outright corruption scandals.

The pop character Johnson created a form of indirect sense of belonging, until finally the moral special case of the lockdown abruptly destroyed this identification of the electorate with the lovable Hallodri.

And whatever his overconfidence may lead him to believe, the harsh realities of an inexorably looming economic crisis will only exacerbate this alienation.

A coming new mass poverty is not suitable as a background for his personal soap opera, which no longer distracts but irritates.

When Johnson's popularity ratings brutally plummeted in the wake of the revealed Downing Street "Partygate" binges earlier this year, I compared the prime minister's bunkered, decadent existence to the final stages of a bloated Elvis Presley abandoned by his own bodyguards.

The right-wing tabloid "Daily Express" then published a story on its website entitled "Boris Branded 'Fat Elvis' in Brutal German Media Smackdown'," which consisted almost entirely of a translation and summary of my text.

And practically without comment, as if even the fan club had lost interest in defending its fallen idol.

In my article at the time, I dared to predict that a palace revolt against the prime minister would break out at the beginning of May after the local elections, which were expected to be disastrous for the conservatives.

In fact, it took two more months and the specific cause - the negligent promotion of a notorious groper who had molested young conservative activists - to awaken an anti-Johnson "herd instinct" among his fellow party members.

What would the self-absorbed eternal pop star Johnson be capable of today?

At least that's how the self-pitying Prime Minister put it in his "resignation speech": "Once the herd gets going, it gets going," he commented with characteristic hubris on the mass resignation of 55 members of his own government team in three days.

We now know that Johnson didn't let this inspire self-doubt.

Instead, he wrote his speech and drummed together a makeshift "caretaker" cabinet from the remaining hard core of his ultras.

The shamelessness of this maneuver should not really come as a surprise, after all, even after taking power in September 2019, Johnson had already excluded 21 conservative MPs as remainers/traitors or even forced a break in parliament, which was declared illegal two weeks later - two spectacularly undemocratic acts of strength , which are hardly mentioned today thanks to the taboo on toxic post-Brexit debates.

So what would moody diva Boris Johnson be capable of today?

One of his former lovers, Petronella Wyatt, ex-editor of the conservative weekly The Spectator, sparked brief panic in conservative circles on Saturday when she revealed on Twitter that Johnson would step down as prime minister on Monday while also running for re-election as conservative party leader .

It was all just a joke, Wyatt reassured four hours later (and technically impossible, by the way, according to party statutes).

Others in Westminster doubt that Johnson is planning a long-term comeback in the style of Silvio Berlusconi.

So isn't it the end of Fat Elvis after all?

On the Sunday question - okay, in Great Britain the election is on Thursday, so Thursday question - Labor is currently at 45 percent.

14 points ahead of the Conservatives.

In Johnson's mind, such a dip seems merely to lay the groundwork for his comeback (after someone else's election defeat), and the pop world has plenty of instructive role models for that.

The mere comparison causes pain for me as a fan, but: Who today still remembers that, for example, The Who, who still exist despite the death of two members in the 58th year of their existence (as a band, they are exactly as old as Johnson), actually played a supposed farewell tour 40 years ago with lousy reviews?

However: Before their first return in 1989, The Who had a break of seven years, interrupted only by the good deed of participating in Live Aid.

Boris Johnson, on the other hand, breaks the essential stage rule of »Leave them wanting more« with his long exit and plays an unwanted encore with his own, third-rate tribute band.

And here's the irony: Thanks to this disregard for the basic laws of pop, Johnson could end up having to deal with those rules of politics that didn't seem to apply to him before.

Especially since he stands in the way of Tory competition with his stay in Downing Street.

The Times already revealed another affair on Saturday, this time with a Conservative employee when he was mayor of London.

A recording of a conversation was also published in which the woman confronted him years later, whereupon Johnson, who had meanwhile been promoted to Foreign Secretary, became quite loud, rude and abusive.

It will hardly be the last story that brings out the dark side of the clown.

"Our future together is golden," said Johnson on Thursday at the end of his "resignation speech" in the direction of the press and the TV cameras, which he always knew was on his side.

There's a good chance he's wrong this time.

Source: spiegel

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