A ‘grand vision’ may have propelled the PM into office, but it’s the mundane details that really matter

The sausage row with Brussels is a perfect example of how grand political projects can run aground on the inconvenient complications of everyday life, says Andrew Woodcock

Brexit was nothing if not a ‘grand project’ (PA)

Aspirant politicians tend to enter the trade with grand dreams – to feed the world, end poverty, make their country prosperous – but in reality the job can end up being a lot more mundane. The past week has been an object lesson in that truth.

When a young Boris Johnson declared his ambition to be “world king”, last weekend’s G7 summit in Cornwall may well have been what he had in mind – presidents and prime ministers from around the world beating a path to his door, promises to vaccinate the world and solve climate change, David Attenborough beamed in by video link, the Queen cutting a cake with a sword!

Equally, while no one would wish the Covid pandemic on the world, every would-be PM must have imagined themselves taking the helm to steer the country through the stormy seas of national emergency.

All of which must make it galling for Johnson that he spent most of his first international summit as host fending off questions about sausages, and then saw the innerworkings of his government’s coronavirus operation portrayed by his former adviser Dominic Cummings as a chaotic shambles of back-stabbing, blame-shifting and expletive-laden late-night plotting.

The sausage row with Brussels is a perfect example of how grand political projects can run aground on the inconvenient complications of everyday life.

Brexit was nothing if not a grand project, driven by dreams of sovereignty and self-determination and buccaneering Brits bestriding the world in search of opportunity, rather than the nitty-gritty of how best to shift consignments of chilled meat products around the country and the continent.

And it is the people whose day-to-day job is to solve precisely those logistical problems who have been the first to be hit by the fallout from Brexit. Making it a beautiful irony that Johnson’s long-awaited moment in the international spotlight was interrupted by a succession of European leaders telling him in no uncertain terms to sort it out.

Meanwhile, any hopes Johnson may have had to project the image of a strong leader guiding his nation through the pandemic have taken rather a beating from the revelation of text messages published by Cummings this week.

The vision of a prime minister tapping out on his mobile phone in the middle of the night the judgement that his health secretary is “totally fucking hopeless” and asking his adviser “Ok, Wtf do we do?” will remain embedded in voters’ minds.

Johnson’s skill has always been to win voters over with a general feeling of cheery optimism, while encouraging them not to focus too hard on the details. Cummings revealed that when things got awkward in meetings, his tendency was to shout, “forward to victory”, do a thumbs-up and “peg it out of the room before anybody can disagree”.

The lesson from this week may have been that while a grand vision may propel a leader into office, it is paying attention to the mundane details that really matter once they have got there.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor