Just keep the lie simple, smile and repeat
As Boris Johnson wins on a slogan, you can bet our politicians are paying careful attention,
AGAIN and again in the UK media, they paint a simple picture of Boris Johnson. He tells it to you straight. He says what he means. He gives you a straight answer. You know where you stand with Boris. He’s a straight talker.
If you paid close attention in recent weeks you’ll have heard those phrases coming back from members of the UK public, interviewed in media vox pops.
Those descriptions of a straight talker refer to one of the most notorious liars in modern politics.
Boris Johnson was sacked as a journalist for making stuff up. He was sacked by his party leader, for lying. He lied repeatedly to his wife.
As a journalist in Brussels in the early 1990s, he gloried in making up nonsense about the EU, which had a serious effect on UK public opinion.
His recent election campaign was peppered with endlessly-repeated lies. Conservative journalist Peter Oborne has compiled an online archive at borisjohnson-lies.com.
It’s not an insult to call Johnson a liar, it’s a simple statement of fact.
He not alone lies, he runs from interviews — most notoriously when he hid in a fridge last week, to avoid a reporter.
Yet, despite all this — even as he runs, even as he ducks into the nearest handy fridge — Johnson is genuinely perceived by many to “give you a straight answer”.
How does that work? We ought to find out. With our own election due within months, our politicians will no doubt have studied Johnson’s methods.
Jeremy Corbyn not alone had to fight Johnson, he had to fight people within his own party who loath him.
This election was, in part, fought on ground still chewed up by the legacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The British Labour Party was broken by the Iraq War. The Tony Blair government saw the pending US invasion as an opportunity to piggyback on the power of the Americans. The Yanks would “shock and awe” Iraq. Helping them do so would give the UK renewed status on the world stage.
The British ambassador to the US, Christopher Meyer, recalled getting an instruction from Blair’s people: “We want you to get up the a**e of the White House and stay there.”
Among those who rebelled against this cynicism was Jeremy
Corbyn.
Among those who voted for a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives were many names familiar from the recent internal Labour Party assaults on Corbyn’s leadership — Caroline Flint, Alan Johnson, Margaret Hodge, Tom Watson, Hilary Benn, Louise Ellman etc.
A strong motive for attacking Corbyn’s leadership was because his Labour Party would not support foreign policy adventures. And these are necessary if the UK is to preserve the illusion that it remains a world power.
Corbyn saw the UK as one country among many, with a questionable history of empire and a casual attitude to the lives of others. This outraged his opponents.
He took their party away, they would not rest until they took it back. Nothing mattered more.
Every British national newspaper opposes Labour — except the Guardian and the Daily Mirror. And even both of them opposed Corbyn.
Despite all this, Corbyn offered something new — a radicalism the Labour Party hadn’t seen for decades. It was denounced as “far left” madness, though it was what it said, for the many, not the few.
How could a man like Boris Johnson prosper — with no grasp of detail, no record of being capable of hard work, no vision of a better world, and no principle in sight except the advancement of his own career?
Perhaps because we’ve entered an age when you don’t need to convince people of anything, you merely have to sway them momentarily.
Corbyn came up with a radical manifesto. It promised an end to austerity, and to restore the services that had been crushed by the Tories.
It promised to renationalise services that had been privatised, services made inefficient, hugely expensive for consumers and hugely profitable for rich investors.
Corbyn also came up with a complex — and pretty silly — route through Brexit, one that was supposed to hold onto Labour’s leave supporters, and its remain supporters. And ended up alienating both.
Johnson and his team of manipulators came up with a slogan: Get Brexit Done.
The election pitted the man with a detailed manifesto against the liar with a punchy slogan.
The context within which politics happens has changed.
A long period of relative prosperity, through the 1990s and into the new century reduced the perceived need for trade unions. From the 1980s, laws were quietly brought in that tied unions up in legal restraints. Political activity waned.
The relative prosperity took a hit in 2008, when capitalism came close to collapse. When they’d used public money to make good the losses of bankers and bondholders, politicians imposed austerity.
There was little fightback. As homelessness grew and under-resourced hospitals foundered, there was always some cynical politician to direct anger towards “benefit cheats” or immigrants.
For most of the last century, the information on which people decided how to vote came in bulk — in newspapers, with columns of speeches and policies and arguments. People went to political rallies and meetings; political pamphlets and magazines were commonplace.
Today, people exchange insults on Twitter.
A culture of political activity has been greatly reduced, and with it the language of political activism.
Political journalists read several newspapers, keep up with Twitter, read magazines and books.
And there’s a layer of people who have a deep political interest and who keep up with what’s happening.
Many, though — particularly in the UK
— read the same tabloids throughout their lives. Some pick up information from a radio shock-jock.
The flow of information which helps to make a decision is for many no more than a trickle. And it’s one they trust, if only because it’s familiar.
Much of the events that cause media controversy pass by, unheard and unseen. Over here, there’s a man with a beard and a manifesto.
Every word you’ve read about him, every day for years, says he’s evil — someone you’d be mad to trust.
When you see him on TV he’s for Brexit, kind of, and kind of against it, but he wants another referendum, but before that...
Meanwhile, he wants you to read his manifesto...
With Mr Johnson, there’s a friendly, crumpled man, with untidy hair, a ready smile and a posh voice, and he says, “Let’s get Brexit done!”
And, he says he’s going to build 40 hospitals. How about that!
Now, the beardy guy wants to explain about how there’s money assigned to upgrade only six hospitals, and that the 40 hospitals is a lie. But, by then the friendly, crumpled man has repeated his lie a dozen times.
When people say he gives a “straight answer”, they mean he gives an answer people easily understand. And one they want to hear. “Let’s get Brexit done!”
It doesn’t matter whether he means what he says, or whether it’s possible. It sounds good, it’s uncomplicated. It does the job, he’s elected.
Later on, he’ll simply say he kept his promise, and he’ll repeat that, and the uncritical part of the media will carry it, as though it’s true.
No doubt our politicians are pondering all this.
‘You don’t need to convince people, just sway them momentarily’