Does Boris Johnson take the population for idiots? His latest offering suggests so
What the prime minister’s served up this week was full of flummery, cliche, pointless idiom and the inevitable whopper, writes Robert Fisk
Yasser Arafat, when at his most distressed – angry, obsessive or just plain lost for words when speaking to Palestinian audiences – often left out verbs. Gaddafi likewise. So did European fascist leaders of the 1930s who shall not be further identified.
If you want to transform your audience into children, then verbs can be a complication. It’s reaction you want, not understanding. And I’ve always subjected dictators – and now the “populist” leaders elected in our own democracies – to a close analysis of the linguistic content of their speeches.
True, Donald Trump is hardly worth the effort. Naive, childish – infantile is surely the right word – there’s no analysis to be done. Twitter doesn’t lend itself to verbs. But listening to Boris Johnson’s offering to the British people (or at least, I suppose, the English people) this week was a sobering experience. Flummery, cliche, tiresome repetition and self-regard vied with pointless idioms and the inevitable whopper – along, of course, with a nasty little threat about policemen and soldiers and the unusual word “backfill”.
Downing Street had, of course, worked on the headlines they’d get the next day. But did anyone actually go over the words, read through the text, and find out what was actually going on in the mind of the Brexiteer-in-chief, at least until there’s a spot of regicide and we have to listen to the words of a different political suicider?
It was inevitable, I suppose, that the prime minister should begin by talking about himself. Covid-19, quoth he, was “the biggest crisis in my lifetime”. We can all accept that Johnson was a coronavirus victim, but the word “our” might have been more accurate.
This would then have included relatives of the 41,862 (and counting) UK citizens whose lives were the responsibility of the British leader but who died on his watch from the pandemic, which he survived. Johnson’s own “lifetime” – though no doubt the important subject of several further biographies – is worthy of further study, but not in this context.
There was a far more egregious reference to Johnson’s own life – indeed, his supposedly ethical way of life – slipped in halfway through his peroration (or “address” as we must call these wretched effusions) when he tried to cover himself from public outrage at his new “rules”. Here is the quotation in all its enormity: “And of course I am deeply, spiritually reluctant to make any of these impositions, or infringe anyone’s freedom … ”
Spritually? SPIRITUALLY, Mr Johnson? In his broadcast, I saw the desk, the union flag and the lamp in the background, but I saw no altar. Many have been the occupants of No 10 who felt themselves spiritually aware of their moral duties – or, in the case of Lloyd George, spiritually moved by Zionism – although Churchill mercifully kept away from the church, broad or narrow.
What is this “spiritual” element that our present prime minister apparently possesses? He is surely not “spiritual” about truth-telling. I suspect he meant “morally” reluctant (to call in the fuzz, etc) but that raises the question, of course, of whether morals are something we presently associate with the man who is about to drive the UK off the Brexit cliff. Clearly, if we accept that he is indeed “spiritually reluctant” to infringe anyone’s freedom, he has no such spiritual reluctance in breaching international law – which is all about freedom and human rights.
Which brings us to one word that – though few, I suspect, noticed it – occurred five times in Johnson’s oration: tougher. "Tougher measures”, “a tougher package”, “tougher local restrictions”, “tougher penalties” and again “tougher measures”. I can quite believe that it is Johnson’s inability to concentrate or his natural lack of articulacy that produced this repetition – his only alternative was “robust” – but given a far more worrying line, it makes you re-read the context.
I’m talking, of course, about his (supposed) determination to deal with “that minority who [sic] may continue to flout the rules”. Here we came across the most troubling remark about law enforcement: “We will put more police out on the streets and use the army to backfill [sic, again] if necessary.” Surely he isn’t planning to deploy riot squads against raves? And surely a solitary ministerial adviser taking his personal eye-test at Barnard Castle would not warrant so many coppers? So are we being nudged towards some kind of virus patrols, newly legalised to slap charges against anyone wearing a slipped mask, or who forgot to keep two metres from others? Yes, this is plain silly. But the army?
It’s all about the word “backfill”, not one we’ve heard before from the UK prime minister. It means, I suppose, taking over the job of a policeman otherwise employed. Or, perhaps it also means the job the British army were thoughtfully handed in Northern Ireland – to “support the civil power” – which quickly turned into military rule on the streets of Belfast and Derry. No, no, of course Johnson didn’t mean that. Unless he was unconsciously thinking of Northern Ireland after the poisons of Brexit have worked their way through the province.
Against such concerns, we must take comfort in the doggone homeliness of a prime minister who uses down-to-earth idioms. A stitch in time saves nine, he told us profoundly (it does the UK population no credit that so many had to look this old clause up on Google). He might have added that too many cooks spoil the broth (at cabinet) or that more hands make light work, in reference to the NHS – an institution, I noticed, which was given a mere, almost reluctant reference by Johnson. The frontliners, it seems, got demoted in this latest rant. I wonder why?
The foundational lie in the whole forgettable midden of words, however, was easy to spot: “I know that we can succeed because we have succeeded before.” Does the prime minister take his people for simpletons? What was this earlier success? The scandal of care-home deaths? Of testing and tracing? This mendacity was compounded when Johnson later remarked that “as for the suggestion that we should simply lock up the elderly and the vulnerable – with all the suffering that would entail – I must tell you that this is just not realistic, because if you let the virus rip through the rest of the population, it would inevitably find its way through to the elderly as well, and in much greater numbers.”
Then what happened earlier this year when the virus did indeed “rip” through both the population and the elderly? The prime minister said this would not be “realistic”. Again, the wrong word. Surely it would not be humane to lock up the elderly. But then again who exactly did “suggest” – the prime minister’s word – such an abomination. Of course, he did not tell us.
If you needed light relief from this stuff, however, there was one slab of unimpeachable buffoonery, when Johnson told his miserable citizens that “the iron laws of geometrical progression are shouting at us from the graph”. This mixed metaphor is so awful, it is impossible to parody. Who wrote it? Cummings (who knows little of iron laws of any kind)? Or is there a mathematician in the cabinet? Apart from the chancellor, I mean. In any case, the expression is “geometric progression”, not “geometrical”. I guess it was Johnson’s only way of repeating the usual mantra about “the science”.
Never mind. Our “collective destiny” depends on our individual behaviour. All we need is “discipline”, “resolve” and “the spirit of togetherness” – helped along by the constabulary, the army and the spiritual concern of the prime minister. It didn’t come close to blood, toil, tears and sweat, thank heavens.
Much better – and much more realistic, surely – to have asked the ghost of old Ed Murrow to sign us off this week with his familiar journalistic refrain: “Good night, and good luck.”