Seems Like a Freeze Out: A few very quick thoughts on ‘fridgegate’.
1. I didn’t expect to be writing about prime ministers in fridges today. Or any day, really. Nor in 2019 did I expect to find myself admiring John Major for his moral rectitude, or having to repeatedly point out that the President of the USA is a fascist and a white supremacist. Least of all did I foresee the shock of recognition when thinking more deeply about walk-in fridges than I have since the summer of 1999. But more of that later.
2. Johnson is used to being ‘caught’ in silly situations. His charm, if you want to call it that, is his apparent self-mockery. From the sniggering public school boy gadflies of Have I Got News For You to the zip wire, brand ‘Boris’ is ‘self-mockery’. It’s excellent camouflage and a great persona to hide behind. It lets all sort of racism float by.
3. But, I’m thinking, is the fridge different? If it becomes a thing or a trope, it’s not about being caught in a silly situation but being exposed as a coward. Hanging helplessly from a wire is funny. Hiding from plain site in a fridge reeks of cowardice.
4. The danger for a politician is when an incident reinforces, or comes to symbolise, something that is already wrong or bad. Think Neil Kinnock, the clumsy, slightly incompetent, falling over in the sea. Or William Hague on that log flume.
5. Johnson’s cowardice is part of a pattern, begun long ago, of running away and hiding. Hiding from the truth, hiding from reality, hiding from his responsibilities. Having taken a phone from a journalist instead of looking at a boy forced to lie on a hospital floor yesterday, he then hides in a fridge the next day in case someone asks him a question.
6. This is Johnson the dishonest, Johnson the coward, Johnson the unable to face reality. Perhaps even Johnson coming apart.
7. Of course, leaders don’t often matter too much in election campaigns I hear you mutter wisely, whatever the media narrative says. Yes, I reply cautiously, except when the result is close. 1970, 1974 and 2017 were all close and, the best evidence is that party leaders made at least some of the difference.
7. it’s then made worse by having to ‘deny he was hiding in a fridge’. Many people have repeated Lyndon Johnson’s famous ‘let’s make him deny it’ pig accusation. You can also have the famous Reagen-ism ‘if you are explaining, you are losing’. Either way, for a leader with his poll lead cut in half to spend the final 48 hours of an election campaign denying hiding in a walk in fridge is not where you want to be. If you ask Corbyn what he would like Johnson to be doing, I think ‘hiding in a fridge just before polling day then denying it’ would be somewhere in his top 3 choices.
8. Just as a final thought, a walk in fridge is not where you want to be for any length of time, so Johnson certainly wasn’t being briefed in there. You have literally 2–3 minutes in one of those before it gets really cold. I know this because I worked at a place where the favourite trick of the factory joker was to lock you in. He was all charm and smiles in public, but his jokes hid a dark, cruel streak and he’d lock you in a fridge and leave you to your fate.
