“In all humility, I have got to accept
that verdict”, said Boris
Johnson in response to the result of the by-election on Thursday. The idea
of Boris Johnson expressing – let alone feeling – humility is so far removed
from reality that some conspiracy theorists may even wonder how the deep state
managed to replace the real thing with a fake. Normal service was quickly resumed,
however, when the PM added that people have been hearing “a litany of stuff
about politics and politicians” from the media. What he seems to mean by
that is that the problem isn’t anything that he and his gang have said and
done, but that the media have dared to report it. He dismissed all the reports
about parties, corruption, sleaze, flat refurbishments, and Peppa Pig as “exactly
the kind of questions about politics, politicians, the running of government”
which he believes that people really neither want nor need to hear about. From
his perspective, the media should be concentrating, Pravda-style, on reporting
only what the government tells them to report. Having proved over the past two
years that the journalist-turned-pm doesn’t understand what being PM is all
about, he neatly demonstrates that he doesn’t actually know very much about
journalism either.
A few days ago, he was reported to be
furious with the BBC in particular for continuing to report stories about
parties and broken rules. Apparently, he thought that the media had ‘made their
point’ and should now move on. It is the approach he has adopted throughout his
life; do what you like, lie, bluster, and obfuscate, and wait for the fuss to
die down. The idea that actions should have consequences, or that he should be
in any way held to account, is one around which he cannot get his head. And, as
the infamous Eton
letter demonstrates, he’s been the same since childhood. The problem – for the
rest of us, if not for him – is that, to date, the approach has generally
worked. How a man sacked
– twice – for lying, and who was party
to a conspiracy to have a journalist beaten up, could ever have got to be
PM is a puzzle to which there is only one possible solution: the utter
amorality of his party, from top to bottom. The members of that party, from MPs
through to the ordinary members who voted him in as leader, have not only
indulged him, they have positively cheered him on, even when his actions are prima
facie criminal. For the whole rotten party, power is more important than
principle or honesty – especially the power to line their own nests and look
after their own at the expense of others.
Johnson seems to believe that he can prevent
or deter the media from asking the ‘wrong’ questions by simply refusing to
answer, telling journalists that they are asking
“the kind of question that breaks the golden rule”, as though it is for
him to set any rules about what questions they should be allowed to ask. In a robust
democracy, journalists would refuse to publish or air interviews in which a PM decided
which questions to answer, and the media would decline to report any statement
which they know to be factually untrue (a category which would almost
completely remove Johnson from the airwaves). Instead we have mostly had sycophancy and
compliance – one might suspect that the only reason the government doesn’t take
action to control the media in line with the PM’s ‘golden rule’ is that, as Humbert
Wolfe wrote, they are usually quite good at controlling themselves. At the
moment, the media are actually showing an unusual degree of backbone in continuing
to report things which the PM would rather see kept quiet. Whether they will
continue to do so, or eventually conclude instead that, faced with a government
able to ‘exonerate’ itself from all sins and willing to stonewall indefinitely,
they’ll get fed up and move on remains to be seen. The latter of those two
options would be a bad omen for all of us.
Posts
