12 Thoughts on 12 Questions to Boris Johnson
- Odd door opening. Couldn’t help think it was the toilet. He wouldn’t be the first prime minister to be stuck in a toilet.
2. The ‘police’ posters are each juxtaposed with other comments that make them seem weirdly connected. Will those 20,000 new police officers make sure that our schools are properly funded? Interesting.
3. He has that permanently amused look, like he’s just pretending. So we have a double hermeneutic of someone amusedly pretending to be a PM in a pretend informal video. Is that a double hermeneutic? Or a triple one, if we are interpreting it as we watch?
4. In fact, Boris Johnson seems very bemused. Of course he is. He got to be PM by helping create an unnecessary crisis, undermining the person trying to sort it out, then becoming PM. Yet he is so incompetent he doesn’t know the words to the wheels on the bus. So he’s perhaps right to be bemused. But I don’t want bemusement from a PM. I want whatever the opposite of bemusement is (Google tells me the opposite includes ‘clear, alert, oriented, understanding, aware, clear-headed, clear-thinking, smart, steady, unconfused, unshaky unaffected, unsurprised’).
5. His informal ‘normal’ pose is very Bill Clinton. In fact, I have a theory that Bill Clinton set the pattern for both Johnson and Trump with his constant, shameless lying and mix of public populism and private ruthlessness. I don’t have the head space to develop this point now.
6. Lockers? Lockers? Gentleman, are there thieves in the Conservative party HQ? The only places with lockers are (i) American high schools (so you can chat with people you fancy) (ii) swimming baths (because of lack of clothes when swimming) (iii) a shop I used to work in (there was a thief). CCHQ seems very much (iii). Maybe the lockers are full of Peerages? See? Topical that.
7. Boris Johnson doesn’t like the Clash. He doesn’t. Fact. He probably wants us just to think of London. Notice how he quickly mentions it then ducks. He could just about hum along to ‘London Calling’, I suppose, but driving his family saloon while grooving to Sandinista? Even he seems to stop himself, perhaps silently calculating what would happen if a Daily Mail reader actually looked up the lyrics to White Man in Hammersmith Palais. We all know Johnson would send a limousine anyway.
8. He does like the Stones. Or ‘The Rolling Stones’ as he calls them. Note, a true fan calls them the Stones. Make of that what you will.
9. I bet his favourite song is ‘Start me up’. I don’t want to imagine when he sings it most energetically. Oh god, I just imagined it.
10. Is that semi-skimmed? I didn’t have him down as a semi-skimmed man. Just didn’t. Very centrist choice, semi-skimmed.
11. Tea making. Johnson’s behaviour clearly contravenes several of Orwell’s 11 golden rules. My only contribution is he needs a spoon to remove the bag or, as he’s tipping it up to finish it, the tea bag will slap in his face. Unless he’s one of those odious creatures that leaves half-drunk cups of tea lying about.
12. Look at that tea. How precariously it rests in his hand. That’s Johnson’s career. That’s the UK. That’s Brexit.
