From Partygate to the Capitol riots, it’s the image that sticks with the public

What happens when administrations built on chaos and bashing the ‘liberal media elite’ lose touch with the salt-of-the-earth people? We’re finding out on both sides of the Atlantic, writes Holly Baxter

Both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump have been guilty of that which they have sought to accuse their rivals (PA Archive)

When I woke to a news notification that Boris Johnson was facing a vote of no confidence in the UK, I was surprised. I was also eager to find out more – but I was the only person I knew who was. In the US, the news was reported but barely registered, even among the most politically engaged people I know. It didn’t make it into “5 Things”, CNN’s daily newsletter cataloguing the five biggest news items of the day (mass shootings, baby formula and congressional hearings did instead.) And although The New York Times featured news about the vote on the front page of its website as the afternoon went on and time counted down toward the vote, most Americans I spoke to didn’t understand. What was a vote of no confidence, they asked me. Was it done by the electorate? Was it all MPs? Was it just his party? Why now? What’s “Partygate”? What’s his approval rating?

Of course, British readers will know the answers to these questions. The answer to that final question was the one that shocked the Americans I spoke to: an approval rating of 26 per cent is pretty damn awful whichever way you look at it. Here in the US, Biden’s team are panicking about his own approval rating, which is at 41 per cent. That’s seen as directly detrimental to the upcoming midterm elections. When Americans hear Johnson’s lowly percentage, they ask fewer questions about why his own party might want to publicly humiliate him – even if Boris doesn’t have an election this year (or next) to worry about.

Partygate is hard to understand without context. Americans remember that California governor Gavin Newsom survived a similar scandal, when he was found to have dined indoors at an upscale restaurant while the rest of his state was in lockdown. But Newsom is not the president, and he didn’t insult voters’ intelligence by lying to them. And each country has its own line in the sand: in July 2020, New Zealand’s health minister resigned in disgrace after taking his family to the beach during a local lockdown, despite the fact that the entire country was still experiencing zero transmission rates. It’s clear that Covid breaches can bring a governmental figure down, but usually only when you’ve pushed the envelope too far in other contexts as well.

Then there’s “what the public cares about”. That usually means what people who don’t work inside newsrooms discuss on a day-to-day basis, what breaks through on an emotional level. “Taking back control” was a rallying cry that broke through for Brexiteers who felt like they’d lost control in every other part of their lives. Now, in the UK, the thing that really gets people is the idea of someone unable to say goodbye to their dying grandmother in the ICU while Boris and his cronies partied in a backroom in Westminster, warm plastic cups of wine clutched in their rule-flouting hands. That image doesn’t go away easily. And when a Conservative is getting booed by jubilee-celebrating royalists, I told the Americans, that’s when you know things have really gone wrong.

There are many policy-based reasons to dislike Boris Johnson, of course, but everyone knows that it’s the image that sticks. And on this side of the pond, as the 6 January hearings begin in Congress, politicos are poised to see how much blame Trump and his associates will take for the insurrection on the Capitol. The story of the hearings is a fascinating but dense one, with a number of characters whose names and connections to the crimes are often obscure. It’s unlikely that, even if explosive things are said, they have a material effect on the midterms, never mind the next general election in 2024. The best we can hope for is that the findings might end up disqualifying Trump from running again.

What does stick is the price of gas, rising interest rates, and a cost of living crisis. People in the US are being squeezed and many are disinclined to tune in to a committee hearing when they’re struggling simply to get to work in the mornings. Right-wing social media accounts are currently sharing a cartoon of a mother standing outside a petrol station with her child, pointing to the prices, and saying, “This is why we don’t steal elections!” Again, it makes for a powerful image, even if the premise is entirely flawed.

Politicians like Trump and Johnson are fond of saying that the “liberal media elite” have no connection with salt-of-the-earth people on the ground. The truth is, of course, that conservative politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have done precisely what they want everyone to believe that “liberal media elite” has done, and lost touch with the electorate. Imperial measurements and culture wars about critical race theory are all well and good, but they don’t capture the imagination.

Towards the end of Trump’s premiership in 2019, he turned up at rallies and stopped delivering his easily repeatable lines and his bite-size insults thrown at Democrats and socialist boogeymen. Instead, he started veering off into DC territory, ranting at length about minor administrative problems and bureaucratic processes he found difficult as president. It wasn’t exactly relatable shtick. The crowds often deflated and became disinterested. I often think of those rallies, and how they’re a good visualisation of what happened with Boris Johnson. You can only be the everyman for so long, and then your forced folksy rhetoric seems suspect. You’re faced with a number of options: you can keep casting yourself as an outsider, and risk making yourself sound like a fool who shouldn’t have taken the job; you can shape yourself into a would-be dictator, claiming that you’ve seen how everything should be done and now you’re taking the reins entirely; or you can try genuineness and honesty, and pulling your followers along with you into a regenerated but functioning democracy. That last option doesn’t feel very tempting when you know you thrive in chaos. And so, eventually, the chaos takes you.