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yesOris Johnson’s complete lack of shame has long been one of her defining narcissistic traits. Your willingness to betray family, friends, and colleagues for short-term personal gain is common knowledge. In the same way, his lack of competence, his inability to grasp basic details, has also been factored into the equation, as no one at Tory banks cared much about it. It was just Boris being Boris.
But something has changed throughout the summer. Johnson is no longer seen as a man with the winning touch. Rather the opposite, in fact. Many conservatives are slowly realizing the fact that it can be a drag. Many prime ministers have found that being in the top job requires a different skill and mindset than getting the top job.
The difference with Boris is that he shows no signs of being willing to learn to adapt to change. Rather, he seems to be getting worse as prime minister. Limitations that are increasingly exposed in laziness, bad temper and forgetfulness.
The prime minister’s questions are often dismissed as a play. Something that only interests those who are inside the Westminster bubble. And there is some truth to that. But they also offer a window into the soul of a leader, revealing qualities such as empathy, resourcefulness, intelligence, and humility.
And in all respects, Boris is failing miserably: His inability to gauge not just the mood of the House of Commons, but the nation as well, is borderline sociopathic. It is as if he is hiding in a bunker, surrounded by men who, yes, there are hardly any women in Boris’s inner circle, who tell him only the things he wants to hear.
On the contrary, Keir Starmer is a fast learner. His first outings to PMQs were never less than competent, but there was some discomfort to them. As if he were figuring out how to play the role of a man who had been elected leader of the Labor Party. But now we are beginning to see the real man. His questions are equally focused, but now he has the ability to think quickly and respond to the prime minister’s lies and misinformation with genuine disbelief, anger and, when necessary, humor. In PMQs there is only one person who seems fit to run the country and that is not Boris.
So it’s not as if the Labor leader hasn’t been spoiled by the lines of attack against the prime minister, and unsurprisingly, Starmer chose to enter exam chaos. Either Boris knew about the problem and chose not to know anything, or he didn’t know when he should have. Simple question: what was it? Predictably, Boris resorted to bullshit and bragging. Work had never wanted children to go back to school in the first place. An outright lie, as Starmer had unequivocally supported the returning students on several occasions in May and June.
After that, Johnson had a total collapse. Even the few conservatives in the chamber had the grace to appear embarrassed. First, Boris accused Keir of being anti-Brexit, as if having been a holdover meant that you automatically wanted tens of thousands of people to die from the coronavirus and for less well-off students to be downgraded on their A-level results. He then moved on to accuse Starmer of being a supporter of the IRA.
This was too much for both Labor leader and spokeswoman Lindsay Hoyle. In the past, Hoyle has been reluctant to challenge Johnson when he launches into a tangential mega-spiel, but this time he was quick to slow him down.
Starmer seemed understandably furious and reminded Boris that, as director of the public prosecutor’s office, he had brought charges against many terrorists. He could also have pointed out that it was not he who had recently offered a noble title to Clare Fox, who in the past had given enthusiastic support to the IRA bombing in Warrington.
“If he were a decent man, he would apologize,” Starmer said. But Boris is not a decent man, so he didn’t. Instead, he continued running. There would be no extension of the licensing plan because it would simply encourage people to stay home and do nothing. As if the prospect of becoming unemployed is a lifestyle choice for millions of workers.
Starmer ended by asking why Johnson was now refusing to meet with the families of those who had been afflicted by Covid-19, having promised to do so on television a few days earlier. Remind me, was this the 12th or 13th U-turn in the last six weeks? Now was the time for Boris’s sad face. Or failing that, serious face. But he can’t do either, so he smiled a little. The reason he didn’t go to see the bereaved was not because he cared too little, but because he cared too much. Their stories could make you unhappy. And furthermore, it would be inappropriate since the bereaved are in dispute with the government. They were not, but what is one more lie among so many?
The Starmer-precipitated melt continued for the remainder of PMQ. Boris seemed to have no idea that there were a host of industries like aviation, tourism, and hospitality that weren’t going to get back to normal anytime soon.
He also didn’t know that Matt Hancock had just extended some local closures at the same time that he said more people should go back to work. Some day, it may occur to Boris that some companies do not want to bet on the health of their employees by forcing them to return before the workplace is adequately safe. But today was not that day.
Rather, it was the day for Boris’s keepers to try to get him out of the Commons before he did more harm to the country or the Conservative party.
It was also a day for PMQ viewers to wonder what they had done to deserve a leader who visibly collapses week after week. There was never anything very smart about Boris – now there isn’t even anything funny. Of all the coronavirus joints, in all the peoples of the world, it enters ours.
