For several weeks, millions of Britons have said or heard words to the effect of: “Surely Boris Johnson can’t survive this.” And yet he has, batting away Sue Gray’s non-report after the Metropolitan police helped gut it, morphing daily into a plummy-mouthed Donald Trump, littering an already mucky political world with lies and entirely bogus smears about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile. Yet Johnson is now treated by his growing band of critics as a freakish aberration who has disgraced the esteemed office of prime minister. His predecessor, Theresa May, who built her own career on bashing migrants – an approach that culminated in the Windrush scandal – has won plaudits for castigating Johnson in the House of Commons.
But Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless. When Johnson solemnly lectured the nation to abide by the rules while presiding over illicit parties in his Haçienda-on-Thames, his thought process is not hard to imagine. He must have believed that the rules had to accommodate his needs, rather than vice versa.
It’s the same attitude that drove the expenses scandal: the MPs who railed against “benefit cheats” while milking hard-pressed taxpayers believed they were not sufficiently remunerated, certainly not compared with the party donors – the City hotshots and top lawyers they clinked champagne glasses with. Why shouldn’t they just help themselves to extras they deserved? A handful of MPs went to prison, but for most, being personally winded by some adverse newspaper headlines did not prove a roadblock to their future political careers.
The revolving door between the fourth estate and politics has enjoyed a bit-part in this scandal. The career of the former journalist Allegra Stratton did not survive being demoted to being Johnson’s human shield. But perhaps she felt invincible after her false portrayal of a single mother as a benefit “scrounger” on Newsnight in 2012 led to 27,000 complaints and a BBC apology, but did nothing to impede her media career. Compare and contrast that with Newsnight colleagues who attempted to scrutinise the wealthy, well-connected Jimmy Savile just months before, and claimed they paid with their BBC careers. But spreading myths and outright lies about benefit claimants, refugees or Muslims is largely consequence-free. It’s quite a different story when media figures target the powerful.
When, in December, Boris Johnson sought to distract from “partygate” by escalating the war on “middle-class drug users”, he merely emphasised the establishment’s unofficial motto: rules for thee and not for me. It made his recent suggestion in parliament that the Labour frontbench are drug takers all the more bizarre: he’s admitted to taking drugs; so has his deputy, Dominic Raab; and so has Michael Gove – to cocaine, indeed, on several occasions. Coke may coat parliamentary latrines, but our country remains one in which Black drugs offenders are 1.5 times more likely to be jailed than a white offender, not that the latter group will include politicians.
Our scandal-convulsed prime minister once boasted that nobody “stuck up for the bankers as much as I did” after the crash. Indeed, Johnson has been a longstanding and unapologetic champion of the wealthiest, who he once described as a “put-upon minority” who made a “heroic contribution”. They barely needed his defence. Following the financial crisis, 324 financiers were convicted of crimes after the financial system nearly collapsed in the US. In the UK, the number of bankers who went to prison was just five. Again: terrible behaviour, minimal consequences.
There are good reasons why members of the establishment may believe their power and connections are a bullet-proof vest. Consider the fact that in the UK, you are 23 times more likely to be prosecuted for benefit fraud than tax fraud . Benefit fraud may inflict far less economic and social harm, but our society hysterically demands that it’s the sins of the poor that must be punished. When Cressida Dick faced demands to resign after her officers attacked a vigil for Sarah Everard last March – a rather more heavy-handed approach than the officers stationed at No 10 offered when government officials boozily frolicked – she must have known she’d brazen it out. After all, the Met had already avoided full accountability for police spies having relationships with women under false pretences and stealing the identities of dead children , the unlawful killing in 2009 of Ian Tomlinson, and the 2005 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes – the latter in an operation headed by none other than Dick herself.
Johnson may understandably be bewildered that he is suddenly facing the level of scrutiny he always deserved after getting away with so much for so long. In fact, much of the fourth estate has conspired to help construct his jovial, amiable persona. From the Evening Standard editor who was a personal friend when he was London mayor to Theresa May appointing him foreign secretary, he has always been helped to power.
Now he is viewed as a liability. His support is melting away like a marshmallow over a flame. But self-serving attempts to paint him as an anomaly should be fiercely resisted. Johnson is the British establishment in its undiluted and unapologetic form. If he gets away with this, it will be another illustration of the truth that is as old as the establishment itself: that consequences are for the little guy, not for the powerful.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
