Why can’t I be shameless like a politician?

Still haunted by minor faux pas from his past, Will Gore wonders how the likes of Nadhim Zahawi can apparently be so unbothered by their mishaps

Oh, to be able to brush off mistakes like Nadhim Zahawi brushes off five million quid (Getty)

Sometimes, I would like to be unembarrassable. I would like to be one of those rhino-skinned people who seems never to worry about what they’ve done or said, or what other people think of them; who never blushes at a social faux pas and appears to sleep soundly every night, without a care in their shameless head.

Then again, if I was one of those people, I might end up in government, and that is not something I would like.

Nadhim Zahawi may, for all I know, toss and turn in his bed, worrying about the “careless and not deliberate error” that meant he had to pay five million quid to the taxman. He may in private feel the heat when he considers that a sizeable portion of this was a penalty, and he may have hidden behind the sofa when he heard the boss of HMRC say penalties are not imposed for innocent mistakes.

By the same token, perhaps, despite all the bluster, Boris Johnson cringes when he thinks about how he told the British public to stay in their homes, avoid contact with loved ones and stay united to beat Covid – but then headed off for drinks and cheese in the Downing Street garden, among other gatherings.

I suppose he might also feel a cold sweat come upon him when he considers some of the nastier things he wrote in past newspaper columns, or the quote he invented for one piece. And maybe he goes beetroot when he remembers how, one by one, his ministers deserted him in those last, sad days of his time as prime minister, till finally, he had no choice left but to quit.

I still remember the birthday bash where I made a fool of myself trying to eat a canape that was clearly too big for one mouthful, just as I tried to make small talk with a vaguely important person

As for Boris’s successors, they each have their own crosses to bear, their own apparently embarrassing moments – mauling the UK economy, for instance, or taking off a seatbelt to film a video for social media in a moving car.

So, do any of them feel shame, horror, awkwardness or humiliation? Or has this catalogue of cock-ups, mishaps and worse simply been like water off a duck’s back? I’d be happy to take a punt.

I know it isn’t only politicians who seem unbothered by their apparent mistakes or misdeeds. But they do seem particularly adept at it. There may of course be some correlation with wealth and/or a privileged upbringing: money as immunity both against embarrassment and self-awareness.

None of this is to paint myself as being free of sin or error; far from it. But I still feel mortified when I remember the party 20 years ago at which I thought someone had told me that they owned a bar, when in fact they had said they were “at the bar”. The bemusement of this prospective barrister when I told him how cool I thought that was, and asked them the location of the bar, still makes me shrivel.

Then there was the time I asked a female friend how her “better half” was getting on when I had meant to say “other half”, which left me in a fluster and her looking confuddled. Or how about the birthday bash where I made a fool of myself trying to eat a canape that was clearly too big for one mouthful, just as I tried to make small talk with a vaguely important person.

I remember too an occasion in a previous job when I took to a meeting an email I had been forwarded, which I understood to be an agenda for the get-together, but which the high-profile individual who had been the original sender regarded as private and confidential – as I was told in no uncertain terms when I placed the paper in front of him. Even though I had only been following instructions, I spent weeks wondering if I should hand in my resignation. The whole episode still makes my skin crawl.

The consequences of these gaffes and minor mix-ups were either insignificant or non-existent, at least insofar as the other people involved were concerned. And yet they continue to haunt me, as do various other embarrassments which probably had a similarly negligible impact on anyone else, but which I’m still too humiliated to share in public.

I’d like to think all this shows I have a well-developed sense of decency. But it may simply be that I am terrified of being thought incompetent or discourteous. Presumably, Bojo et al are rather less fussed about that too.