The Waugh Zone Monday July 1, 2019

As for Boris Johnson, he will float above the fray today, safe in the knowledge that his strategy for wooing Tory MPs and then members is paying off. It’s not so much that he is avoiding media scrutiny, but more that he actually ignores it even in an interview. His session with SkyNews’s Sophy Ridge yesterday was a case in point, where he shrugged aside EU threats of a sudden imposition of tariffs in a no-deal Brexit, suggesting Brussels would agree a ‘standstill’ arrangement.

There’s a growing mood among the EU27 and at Westminster that a Halloween no-deal exit is inevitable. This is partly because parliament, for all its anti no-deal majority, may not find a way to force Johnson’s hand. It’s partly because there just aren’t enough MPs (Tories or independents) willing to back a no-confidence vote. And it’s partly because some in Brussels think the Dover gridlocked chaos of no-deal (even with an EU-imposed tighter border in Northern Ireland) will force Johnson back to the negotiating table with his tail between his legs.

One reason for the difficulty British politics finds itself in right now is not populism, but (as Ian Leslie coined it recently) ‘simplism’: the belief that very complex problems can be solved with deceptively simple solutions. That ranges from the complex sense of disenfranchisement in English towns being solved by cutting ties to the EU and spending ‘£350m a week on the NHS’, to the brain-scrambling problem of the Irish border being solved by ‘technological’ magic.

In the 2005 Tory leadership race, David Davis and David Cameron often stole each other’s policies and in 2019 Johnson and Hunt may well end up doing the same. They both certainly think that technology can soon sort the Irish issue (Hunt even said recently the tech was nearly ready), despite all evidence to the contrary.

When Johnson was interviewed by a junior journalist Elijah Maxwell this weekend, he was asked how he’d tackle seagulls plaguing the school. Johnson’s reply was characteristic, as his brain scrambled for an answer. In the end he went for a fleet of hi-tech drones that would mimic hawks’ deterrent shrieks. Stopping seagulls is far from simple and requires a mix of cutting food waste, and real hawks, but he went for the eye-catching (and untested and expensive) option. 

Yes, it was a half-joke, but as with other expensive Johnson follies (his unused cable car and his over-heated buses), it was a telling glimpse of how he’d operate in government (he cut fire stations too in London to save cash). The fact is that lots of Tories watching that Elijah interview loved it, not least as Johnson showed a real human touch with a question that would have left Theresa May in full robot mode, complete with a sensible but socially awkward and boring answer. And don’t forget Elijah’s response: ‘that’s amazing!’