On Saturday, I was in a public library, waiting for an old guy to finish with the Times. But he seemed to be reading every word of every section, and sort of peering at it frowningly in an annoying way. So I did something I hardly ever do: I picked up the Daily Mail.
I had forgotten that I might find Boris here. I wondered what I thought of him these days. One is meant to despise or at least disdain him, of course. But I’ve always struggled to.
Oh, I often come very close. I came close the other week, when I read Rory Stewart’s memoir. Politicians should obviously be devoted earnest types, I felt, not semi-charming smoothies like David Cameron, or fully-charming roughies, if that’s a word, like Boris. I winced, slightly, when Stewart told of first meeting Boris: though the older Old Etonian was being briefed on the situation in Afghanistan, he behaved as if they were both in on an enormous joke. That’s also how I felt the one time I met him.
One is meant to despise Boris, of course
Anyway, I started reading his column, about taking down Christmas decorations. We should be allowed to burn our Christmas trees, was his point. But the content’s not the point. The style’s the point.
About one line in he addressed the reader as ‘folks’. I frowned sceptically. Isn’t it getting a bit tired now, all that merry English act? Maybe his appeal has finally worn off, I felt, maybe he’s gone stale. I read on a few lines and you know what? A reluctant smile was forming on my face goddammit. I felt a bit comfy and cosy in his company. The ‘folks’ thing, which I had just seen through five seconds ago, was working.
And it hit me with fresh force. The man has a unique sort of power. I don’t defend it. I’m basically on the side of his morally upstanding critics. But I think it should be acknowledged. I find it troubling, charisma like this. So I can see why people resist it by deciding to despise him. I guess there are grounds for despising him. But it seems to me that most of his despisers are worried they might fall for him if they don’t demonise him.
Why is his rhetorical act so potent? It’s a sort of relaxant. Relax about being a middle-class Brit (probably English man). Take quiet pride in it. Other people say this too, all the other Daily Mail columnists, for example. But from them it feels brittle and hectoring. With Boris it feels liberal, in the old fashioned sense: generous. He makes one feel as if an old English attitude, or ethos, is still defensible, still good at heart. ‘Good’ in a vague, blurry, human, familiar, lived-in way. It’s not quite triumphalism, though it semi-ironically tilts in that direction. More like relaxed-ism. We’re part of a fine tradition, so don’t be too anxious and apologetic about who you are.
But, after his costly incompetencies in office, there is no longer any excuse for falling for this act, you might say. And you might be right. But you’d also be missing the point. We still have a deep need for a voice that conjures up a sense of community, of national community. And who else does this? Who else calls us ‘folks’?
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