Johnson’s camping trip is the same as many of his other promises – more about optics than substance
As someone who has done their fair share of camping, I’m not impressed by the prime minister’s blatant attempt at headline-grabbing, says Janet Street-Porter
I’m writing as 50 miles an hour gales lash the Norfolk coast – far too windy to put my laundry out, let alone consider camping. The dog is having a funny turn as lumps of twigs fly past his ears and apples thump off the trees every two minutes.
Looking at the tent Boris Johnson has chosen for his holiday – pitched on a slope above rocky cliffs in northern Scotland, only one phrase comes to mind – YOU’RE HAVING A LAUGH!
The man in charge (and I use that word loosely) of the country seems to prefer performing for the cameras to delivering. He loves popping on a medics’s coat, a hard hat, a baker’s hair net or even rubber gloves. Anything to get on the front pages of the papers, generally accompanied by his favourite catchphrase “world-class”.
But for the last few days, headline-loving Johnson was conspicuously absent, on holiday with his partner and their small baby, until he cut it short for security reasons after his location was revealed in several newspapers.
While he was there, Johnson let it be known he was “camping” – an activity which implied he was enjoying a staycation like normal folk. But the true story (as with everything in his world) is a little bit different.
People either passionately love camping or tolerate their time in a tent because it’s cost-effective, offering the freedom to move around after months of incarceration. But Johnson’s “camping” holiday is like so many of his gaudy promises – the reality doesn’t live up to the billing. That bell tent was a political gesture, not a statement of personal taste signifying a love of fresh air, burnt sausages and the wind through your flaps at night.
His temporary “home under canvas” reminds me of the kind parents erect in their gardens for the kids. Mum has to pretend it’s a big exciting deal to sleep out in the backyard on hot nights. She might also hope for a bit of privacy and (she can but dream) possibly – a spot of sex without interruption from the sprogs and the dog.
Johnson’s tent could have housed his security men – three cars were said to be permanently parked nearby. It could contain his bed, useful as a retreat to escape from baby wailing to read Catullus in peace, pondering on what tricks to devise to stem the downward spiral of his popularity ratings.
Or it could be the Boris and Carrie love nest where they go for intimacy while baby is cared for by somebody else indoors. Whatever, a tent outside your holiday house isn’t exactly a committal to hardcore camping, is it? Johnson hasn’t had to dig a toilet trench. He has not erected the tent – it was included with the rental. He doesn’t have a primus stove, or even a campfire, all catering will happen inside the snug whitewashed holiday cottage a few yards away.
Popping on a beanie hat doesn’t turn you into a crofter either.
It’s hard to think of a more challenging environment for a small baby than camping in Scotland at the height of the midge season – Malaysian jungle, perhaps? I love Scotland to my core, visiting every year to fish, walk and to spend time in glorious isolation with no wifi. I’m off on the sleeper very shortly (with the dog), hopefully after Johnson has packed up his rucksack and tried to stow the tent in its canvas bag. He’ll find they never fit back in after a few days of rain.
Camping is for the committed – but we’ve come to realise that Johnson isn’t committed to anything except the burnishing of his own persona. He’s turned out to be an arch ditherer. A man who held off on lockdown for too long, who told us track, test and trace would be “world beating” – when it turned out to be rubbish. Only 28 per cent of those currently tested get their results within 24 hours.
Ministers are still dithering about how to allow testing at airports so that people could enter the UK and not quarantine for two weeks. Grant Shapps has said a meeting has been scheduled in “a month” to advance that plan. God help us! Johnson dithered about social distancing, until he caught the virus, and he refused to follow his own guidelines by supporting his closes aide, Dominic Cummings, who flagrantly broke the rules.
Camping also requires perseverance – in short supply in Borisworld. His rules regarding quarantine chop and change and are so muddled most of the country has no clue whether it’s OK to travel or not. We don’t know if we are “flattening the curve” – reducing the level of infection to one we can live with and go back to work and saving the country from bankruptcy. Or are we “eradicating the disease” with hastily imposed lockdowns at the drop of a hat (Birmingham may be next) all over the country, causing chaos for schools, shops and local businesses? Which of the two options does Johnson favour in the long term? No one really knows.
I have camped all over the world, usually on long walks. It’s not something I often do in the UK. I like a soft bed, hot showers and a toilet that flushes. Yes, that might be feeble, but I’ve put in my time under canvas and don’t need to prove anything. I’ve camped in the Himalayas for two weeks, at 15,000ft on Kilimanjaro, in the searing heat of the Australian bush 100km from Alice Springs and in snowstorms in New Zealand. I’ve got the equipment, and I have proved I can do it. One look at Johnson in his Highland mufti however confirms he’s still overweight – not ideal campsite material.
Did Johnson opt for a camping holiday because he saw trouble looming? If so, it was a drastic move – he’s enraged parents by remaining silent throughout the A-level and GCSE grades cock-up – and he stayed silent during the sudden imposition of lockdown on France, where a large number of his Tory pals would have been holidaying.
Silence, in the current circumstances, wasn’t a good choice. Johnson did not place anyone else from his lacklustre cabinet in charge either, which says a lot about his ego. He has not sacked Gavin Williamson, or even commented on Matt Hancock’s curious decision to get rid of Public Health England right in the middle of a health crisis.
If Johnson had one ounce of the charisma and leadership skills of his hero Winston Churchill, he would have emerged from his tent and addressed the nation on Skype or Zoom a week ago. He could have sacked Williamson. He could have moved Hancock somewhere else.
Instead, Johnson chose a tent on the edge of a cliff. Is that supposed to send us a message?
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