The news that new Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dropped the investigation into former FCO minister Mark Field’s manhandling of a female climate protestor should outrage us all.
The footage of the apoplectic-looking, dinner-jacketed MP ramming an understandably cowering Janet Barker into a wall at the then-chancellor Philip Hammond’s recent Mansion House speech was shocking in itself, but now he’s been given a free pass.
“The volte-face over the Field enquiry sends out awful signals for a PM trying to project an image of modernity.”
This inexcusably bad behaviour has been excused. The whole episode was apparently an inconvenient leftover from Johnson’s predecessor. Another good day to bury bad news it would appear – but then in the Johnson age, perhaps we are all unshockable now.
Since taking office, our new PM has energetically thrown himself into reversing everything the last one did. There was the brutal assembling of his ministerial team with no pretence of quaintly reshuffling the pack, but a hard factory settings reboot to stamp his authority on government.
The volte-face over the Field enquiry sends out awful signals for a PM trying to project an image of modernity.
But make no mistake, it’s true to form. Back in 2015 on the election trail, I found myself jeered at and roughed up by his team on a walkabout. A media scrum followed, as always seems to be the way when he is anywhere. I was not yet an MP, but approached him in my now-constituency of Acton to ask about the progress of his then-totemic, favoured policy of an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
I found myself grabbed by one of his heavies as Johnson carried on regardless. The pictures went viral, footage aired on Newsnight – many attributed this to my winning my seat from the Conservatives in a year so bad for Labour our would-be chancellor Ed Balls was defenestrated.
Much has been made of Johnson’s own personal peccadillos, which were “priced in” from the start. While his adversary Hunt was unsure which country his wife hailed from, he’s the first of the eight PMs I’ve lived through of whose oats have been so widely sown that it’s a moot point precisely how many children he has.
Boris’ supporters would say that’s part of his raffish charm but this attitude towards women has disturbing parallels with Trump who likes to boast of his British mini-me. Remember hearing the leader of the free world boasting of his supposedly irresistible powers over the fairer sex? Who could forget.
“Who knows what Boris really thinks – he flips so often. Perhaps the only certainty up to now has been that he would do anything or say anything to get into power, and it’s worked.”
Who knows what really went on in Carrie Symonds’ Camberwell flat that flashpoint night when police were called. But while Johnson was mostly muzzled from live media appearances during the leadership campaign, his most memorable utterance throughout was “get off my f**king laptop”. His nonchalant instruction to “f*** business” also seems at odds with the party who used to represent hardworking capitalist commerce.
This is a man who is at best contrary, and less charitably, a compulsive liar, from his early Fleet Street days and shadow cabinet sackings up to last week’s theatrical waving of a kipper.
I finally got my answer on the amnesty for illegal immigrants four years after my 2015 attempt. I reminded the newly minted PM last week in the House of Commons how as London Mayor he courted popularity by advocating this, with none of the burdens of national office. Even if he’d not quite made world king, now with immigration policy in his jurisdiction I demanded, in the indirect way one does in Parliament, “is he a man of his word?”
Surprisingly, the right honourable member for Uxbridge declared that he is still a true believer, citing 500,000 law-abiding people in an anomalous situation whose status could do with regularising.
The exchange made all the broadsheet press, the cover of The i paper, and far-right website Breitbart. I’m also now the toast of Bangladesh – my cousins there alerted me that they’d seen me on telly.
Migrant groups welcomed the news and my constituent Toby Young paraded Johnson’s declaration on Sky as evidence of his liberal credentials, contradicting assertions that Johnson has become dangerously rightwing.
But I reckon this is more him letting slip his true, free market mind two hours into a two and a half hour appearance, rather than a concrete policy announcement.
Then again, who knows what Boris really thinks – he flips so often. Perhaps the only certainty up to now has been that he would do anything or say anything to get into power, and it’s worked. However, if he wants to win back a city like London, where he was once the face of the 2012 Olympics, his attitude to Europe, minorities and women could do with a reset. Only a year ago he railed against Muslim women as letterboxes and bankrobbers. Now, one represents the Tory constituency he came to visit in 2015, winning 60% of the vote for Labour last time.
Whether the Johnson era is measured in weeks, month or years, my message to the PM is: Turn again Boris. The narrow calculation of the Tory leadership contest is over and the Oxford japes are long gone, it’s time to govern in all our interests now.
Rupa Huq is MP for Ealing Central and Acton