No matter how much other white, middle-class women relate to the characters, Fleabag and the girls from GIRLS don’t speak for everyone. Yet, Boris Johnson, in real life, is pitching to do just that, he’s playing a character and using that precise quality – relatability – as his springboard.
When asked by BBC presenter Naga Munchetty why he was relatable, he classed this as the “most difficult psychological question anyone has ever asked me.” Yes, this from a man who’s been asked, live, why he won’t divulge how many children he has and about his alleged involvement in organising for a journalist to be assaulted.
“Johnson's gaffes are a decided appeal to the masses and shouldn’t be ignored.”
Of course, you’d hope that most men like Johnson – middle-aged, white guys, likely to be Brexit voters, likely to be in his crosshairs this election, especially in Labour Leave seats – haven’t been alleged to have orchestrated a criminal act. You’d also expect them to have no trouble saying out loud how many kids they’ve fathered.
Yet Johnson’s schtick, of the slapdash, odd-socked eccentric who can, at the last minute, pull it out of the bag and deliver whatever’s needed – whether that’s a Brexit deal, an election or a funny joke – has long been constructed to attract exactly this sort of man. A Workington Man, an everywhere man, who feels his earning power has been dashed by a feminised workplace as the UK shifts to a services economy. That his social standing has been toppled by rapidly advancing shifts towards equality that no longer centre his emotions. And his culture, well that’s being erased by the arrival of a slick, centrist metrosexuality that accepts immigration is Britain’s future and colonialism its dismal past.
Johnson’s approach is a soothing balm to these men, a reassurance that it’s OK not to be a preening, glossy modern man. With every mishap of his, he declares it’s OK to not have your life in order, to have a car full of empty coffee cups and discarded fleeces and scraggy bags for life, to dad-dance so rigorously you slash your hairy bare foot on a bit of glass, to slop a mop with the dexterity of someone wearing two prize turkeys as gloves, to lose your temper in a fight with your girlfriend, your ex wife, your ex-ex wife, to run out to the Cenotaph too early, to not have anything other than a ready-meal in a microwave analogy for a Brexit deal.
“The scruffy-haired, crumple-suited bloke who can, at the last minute, pull it out of the bag, is the man a lot of men see themselves in, and want to aspire to.”
And that’s why, I’d hazard, Johnson preferred to cover up the relatability question with his trademark blustering defensiveness. On the face of it, it’s a “ridiculous question!”, because why should a white, middle-aged, middle class politician have to ever acknowledge that he, with his typical politician’s background and education, might not actually be relatable to the entire country he wishes to lead? Deeper down, for Johnson to acknowledge just how much effort goes into seeming this effortless, would be to shine a light into the tactics he pretends not to have.
Along with the rumour that his 2012 mishap on an Olympic-adjacent zipwire was a planned stunt, I recently heard this anecdote: Johnson was a scheduled speaker at a fancy event, turning up within minutes of his slot, drenched in sweat from the cycle over. He apologised profusely, scribbled some notes on a napkin before delivering an entertaining, witty and smart speech. And then the exact same thing happened a few weeks after, the speech recited (as he’d put it in Latin) verbatim.
I almost didn’t believe it, until I recalled the moment Johnson, as an Etonian schoolboy, couldn’t be faffed to learn the script for Richard II, so performed his own Shakespeare. That time, it didn’t quite work, as he left teachers and students fuming. It also didn’t work when he made up quotes for The Times in 1988, leading to him losing his job, or in 2004, when he lied about an affair to then-party leader Michael Howard and lost his shadow cabinet role.
In more recent years, though, as he’s galumphed closer to the power – and attention – he so desperately craves, he has built on what made him so great on Have I Got News For You and why the video of him dancing to the Spice Girls at the Olympics ceremony went viral – it’s fun for a certain type of onlooker to see a buffoon wing it to the top.
“The flung-together approach might bewilder some, but to many others, at the very least, it makes it look as if he’s got more important things in mind than brushing his hair.”
His current gaffes are less through neglect, but design. Johnson is fine with people believing he’s a mess, because that’s what so many of his core voters believe they are, too. If recent discussions about the fragility of masculinity have helped us anywhere it’s to the realisation that while middle aged men seem to have got their lives in order, they’re not as convinced of that fact. This is obvious every time their response to criticism is to play the victim.
The scruffy-haired, crumple-suited bloke who can, at the last minute, pull it out of the bag, is the man a lot of men see themselves in, and want to aspire to. He’s an essay-crisis dude who needn’t prepare, like some nagging nerd, because his blokeishness is enough. The flung-together approach might bewilder some, but to many others, at the very least, it makes it look as if he’s got more important things in mind than brushing his hair, that he’s above preening and plucking himself like the metropolitan liberal elite he truly is, deep down.
This oafishness transcends class, and will appeal to men like him – in even the smallest of ways – across the country. As Corbyn becomes more statesmanlike by the minute, shorn hair and serious frowns, Johnson is skittering wildly, like an elephant on roller-skates, like Homer Simpson eating crisps in the ISS, back into the familiar, popular territory of relatable dude. The gaffes are a decided appeal to the masses and shouldn’t be ignored.
Sophie Wilkinson is a freelance journalist.