Johnson has achieved the impossible
EXPERIMENTS conducted by the physiologist Benjamin Libet proved that some of the basic physical processes in movement – such as the electrical signals in the brain – occur before we have consciously decided to move. This has led some scientists and philosophers to argue (as indeed, some have been inclined to do since their subjects began) that there is no such thing as free will. It is an illusion; a post-hoc justification for our actions. Others – in line with what we all intuitively feel – furiously contest this.
There is a sort of Kantian middle ground, where some people maintain that there are things that, whilst they cannot be proved or may in fact even be false, it is useful or essential to believe in. Because we are rational creatures, we attempt to rationalise. And perversely, that can make us irrational.
Further experiments have shown that when people were encouraged to doubt free will, they were much readier to behave in immoral ways. That’s not an argument for the existence of free will, but it’s quite a powerful one for the utility of the idea.
Political judgments are notoriously prone to similar effects. How we vote or feel about politicians seems often to be fairly distantly related to the facts. Anyone who has consistently voted for the same party for 20 years, for example, is almost certain to be voting now for policies that are the direct opposite of ones previously advocated by it.
This can include some quite major U-turns; until the late 1980s, the SNP was Eurosceptic, but by the same token, Tony Blair opposed the EEC when he was first elected as an MP. The Liberal Democrats were, until very recently, the only party that advocated a referendum on leaving the EU. Both Labour and the Conservatives completely reversed their historic positions on devolution.
Of course, people do genuinely change their minds, or altered circumstances make it reasonable for them to reverse their positions. But the evidence suggests that voters are also much more tribal and inclined to superficial judgments than we would like to admit. When we do change our minds, we seldom admit it, and the traffic is almost always one way. Someone can always disappoint you, but we find it harder to come round to admiring a politician whom we have previously taken against.
Winston Churchill was unusual in having gone from general disapproval to universal acclaim (though his reputation now seems to be travelling in the opposite direction). The US president who got the biggest share of the popular vote – a whopping 60 per cent – was Warren Harding, now deemed the least popular and least successful ever.
There is sometimes a doubling-down in a position – Donald Trump lost support, but his most ardent fans became prepared to ignore basic points of fact in order to defend him. But it’s also true that there are levels of denial and derangement that infect the opponents of some politicians or policies. We all know people whose views (on either side) on Brexit or independence have left them literally incapable of acknowledging reality. I find it hard to say much in favour of Mr Trump, but it doesn’t follow that every single thing he believes, advocates or does is by definition wrong.
In general terms, like the second law of thermodynamics, the trajectory of everything is downwards. Enoch Powell’s remark that all political lives (unless cut off at a happy juncture) end in failure seems to be true in terms of voter approval and contemporary judgment.
Historians, in it for the long haul, are supposed to be able to make more measured appraisals. We ought to be able to, too, if we looked objectively at things such as levels of tax, debt, cost of living, individual prosperity or less easily totted-up notions such as freedom or wellbeing. We seem, however, not to be very good at identifying things in media res. Few of us can recognise good times until they’re in the past.
But there is one measure by which we ought to be able to make judgments, and that is when a politician has outlined an objective and achieved it. The independence referendum, and the Brexit one, were both clearly won – even if you think that the choices were catastrophically wrong, or achieved illegitimately, or that what followed was a disaster.
So consider this, even – no, especially – if you think that Brexit is a calamity, that Boris Johnson is a buffoon and a charlatan and that the Tories are evil. Forget about the rights and wrongs of political propositions and about how history will judge this period or prime minister and ask just this: has Mr Johnson done what he set out to? By any objective appraisal, he has. He has at every step confounded his opponents and done what they said he a) couldn’t do, because it was impossible, undesirable or because he wasn’t up to it and b) didn’t want to do.
Twenty-five years ago, when Mr Johnson was Brussels correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, Euroscepticism was a fringe interest pursued by monomaniacs like Sir Bill Cash. Mr Johnson was central in making the EU a major issue, something that people talked about down the pub. He led the Leave campaign, which very few people expected would win, and which I think probably wouldn’t have without him.
He saw off Theresa May’s bizarre interpretation of Brexit, and Mrs May herself and became, contrary to expectations, party leader. He won a substantial majority in the election, including diehard Labour seats.
Then, after nearly dying during a pandemic, he got a deal that had plenty of opponents in his own party, across the country, and in the EU, and which – it was confidently asserted – was impossible, something that he didn’t want, and something he had no intention of doing.
It may be that you disapprove of all those things. It may be that history will judge them all to have been a disaster, or find Mr Johnson was a terrible PM. But on the basis that he set out to do the apparently impossible, and has against all expectation done it, Mr Johnson must be judged a quite extraordinary success.
Has Mr Johnson done what he set out to? By any objective appraisal, he has