Why Boris’s four letter word exchange with a Cabbie won’t do him much harm

The Sun has video footage of Boris Johnson telling a Cab driver to ‘f— off and die’. Normally, this would sound pretty dire for a politician. But having watched the video, which The Sun has put online here, I don’t think this exchange will do Boris that much harm. The Mayor and the Cabbie are both going at it and there’s no sense that Johnson think he’s superior: it is a democratic slagging match. It also rather helps Boris that he is on his bike while it is the Cab driver who is shouting abuse out of a car window.

Now, they’ll be those who don’t like people, let alone the Mayor of London, swearing in public and won’t be impressed by Boris using such language. But these kind of exchanges are disastrous for a politician when they come across as looking like they think that they are somehow better than the person they are talking to, which is why ‘plebgate’ was so politically toxic.