Boris Johnson and the sound of the crowd
Labour Conference starts at the weekend and no doubt Jeremy Corbyn will be addressing a number of large crowds. It seems unlikely that any will be hostile but if they were I wouldn’t expect the Labour leader to be bothered if they were.
In over 40 years of political campaigning he will have faced on occasion less than favourable audiences and no doubt learnt from the experience.
Then we come to Boris Johnson. Old Etonian and Bullingdon Club member, a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and someone firmly in the political bubble. He may well hear critical views but not those expressed by the hoi polloi outside Westminster.
Even before Johnson became Prime Minister he encountered crowds who booed him and since he has entered No.10 it has got a lot worse. Indeed if you Google ‘Boris Johnson and booing’ there are a surprising number of recent instances.
Essentially every time Johnson ventures outside of Westminster he is confronted and jeered and booed at.
In Luxembourg on Monday for talks on Brexit he encountered a hostile crowd and abandoned a press conference. Some of course were Remainiacs but others were simply those who wanted to know what their status in Luxembourg would be after 31st October. A reasonable enough point.
Johnson however unable to think about winning over the crowd or turning the cacophony of protest to his advantage, having no experience of either, simply abandoned his press conference.
Of course the usual apologists were there to defend him. Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political reporter, claimed that the noise was so great (from 100 people) that Johnson simply could not have gone ahead,
Unfortunately for Ms Kuenssberg veteran BBC journalist John Simpson tweeted that he had been present when Mrs Thatcher left a plane in the dark in Zambia to enter a hostile audience where she insisted on giving a press conference. One doubts they were listening but the contrast is clear.
Meanwhile the paper for whom Johnson has been a star columnist, the Telegraph, ran a front page headline suggesting that the failed Luxembourg press conference had made him a laughing stock
Johnson reflects a lost world of political campaigning where modern day machine politicians not only do not engage with the public but are afraid of doing so.
It is a fairly recent development.
Harold Wilson was reputed to love hecklers during a speech, turning back their comments to his advantage and getting the audience on his side, John Major’s Election soapbox may have been manufactured but he still stuck it out with electors on the stump.
Then came the likes of Blair and Cameron. Suited politicians who preferred the PR and social media stunt, the focus group, and the closed meeting to actually meeting ordinary voters.
Johnson continues the tradition but from an even more privileged position. He might usefully engage with some British history.
In the rather more robust political era of late Victorian England, in 1887, an inmate of Chelsea Workhouse was charged with making an effigy of the master as a protest about poor food. The judge in the Police Court, aquitting the inmate, told the master ‘public characters like you don’t mind a little ridicule. It’s the penalty of greatness’.
We might question whether Johnson can be described as ‘great’ but the point was well made.
If the Prime Minister cannot manage to face a peaceful but noisy crowd of political opponents he is not fit for the Office he holds. Its possible the Hulk might have done better but apparently he was unavailable
This post appeared in the Morning Star 18th September
