Here’s a thought. Would it actually matter if Boris Johnson were to answer a direct question? After all, the prime minister’s relationship with the truth is so tenuous at the best of times – he can’t even confirm how many children he actually has – that almost everything he says needs to be independently fact-checked. Lying isn’t just second nature to Boris, it’s first nature. It’s what he does. It’s how he navigates his way through the world. He has no moral universe to cause him fits of conscience.
On the whole – give or take a few failed relationships and the odd sacking – it’s a coping mechanism that has served him well. With a bit of bluster, backed up by a shed load of untruths, he’s managed to fulfil his ambition of becoming PM. Yet there’s a world of difference between realising a dream and living with its consequences. Because the cold truth is that Boris never actually wanted to do the hard yards of being prime minister. He was always only the glossy, reality TV show winner: never the man for long hours of countless meetings, reading reports and taking decisions for which he would be held accountable.
All of which has left Boris with something of a headache. Because the British public expect rather more of their leader than a few glib one-liners and a crumpled haircut, even if that’s what – in their heart of hearts – they know they had voted for. It’s unfair I know, but no one can say that Johnson wasn’t warned. Voters can be a fickle bunch. They can happily elect someone whom they know to be a charlatan, but having done so they want him to behave with integrity. And that’s just one of many qualities that Boris does not have on offer. Something the previous exchanges at prime minister’s questions with Keir Starmer had brutally exposed.
And, at first, it seemed that this week’s PMQs was going to be a reprise of all the others. The Labour leader got in an early dig about Boris’s latest U-turn on free school meals – his third within the last month – and then asked about the new social mobility report that found that there were 600,000 more children living in poverty since 2012. How did he explain the increase? Predictably he couldn’t. Indeed it was clear he had no idea the report had even been published and managed to confuse the predictions of even higher levels of poverty as a result of coronavirus with the increase that had already been accounted for. Though not by Boris.
At this point, it was as if Johnson suddenly chose to revert to type. There was no point in him standing at the dispatch box, trying to act like the statesman he was never going to be, and having his arse served up to him on a plate by Starmer. So he just abandoned any pretence of trying to answer any questions and chose to go on the attack himself. So from now on he would be the one who was asking all the questions. Did the Labour leader think it was safe for all children to go back to school or was he just being bullied by the teaching unions?
“Your witness,” Boris exclaimed excitedly, sounding every bit like a coked-up debater at the Oxford Union who mistakenly believes he has just landed a killer line. Starmer blinked, did a double take, pretended he hadn’t heard and pressed Johnson on comments made by Tory-run councils that they didn’t have enough money to run basic services.
Yeah, but what about the schools? Boris yelled again. How come you haven’t answered my question? Starmer politely observed – not for the first time – that the session was questions for the prime minister but if Johnson wanted to make way he would be happy to take his place. By now though, Boris was rushing on his run and whatever he’d had beforehand appeared to be working overtime. He continued to put his fingers in his ears whenever Starmer tried to get a word in edgeways and just kept shouting: ‘Schools, schools, schools.’
It would probably have been better had Starmer bothered to reply to Boris. Just to shut him up. After all, the reason that not all pupils have gone back has far more to do with the government’s own guidelines on physical distancing than because the unions have been difficult. But the Labour leader has principles, was determined not to get drawn off track and eventually pinned down the prime minister on to yet another promise on the immigration health surcharge he had so far failed to keep.
The handful of Tory MPs in the chamber were ecstatic though. Both C-listers Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Bob Stewart observed how good it was to see the prime minister back on fighting form. They had come expecting to see their leader humiliated yet again – the last week has seen the government’s competency and approval ratings take a real hammering – but somehow Boris had managed to escape relatively unscathed merely by avoiding answering any questions. Going low when his opponents aim high has often paid off for Johnson.
In reality, though, PMQs had been a dismal affair. Primetime scrutiny reduced to a charade. We’d all have been better informed watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? There is no area of public life that Boris cannot somehow corrode and toxify and Starmer is going to have to rethink his approach if he really wants to get under Boris and the Tories’ skins. PMQs as playground politics suits them just fine right now. But the rest of us deserve so much better than second-rate theatre at a time of national crisis and insecurity.
Moments after Boris bounced out the Commons, Matt Hancock took centre stage to declare British science to be the best in the world. Given that the UK has the highest death rate in the world, some might also be choosing to think how ironic it is that we also have some of the worst politicians.
