When the people of London re-elect the Conservative Boris
Johnson as their mayor on May 3, as is now almost certain, they
will inadvertently be voting for a brand of politics that is so new
to Britain that few commentators, not even Boris himself, have yet
recognized it. It’s not compassionate conservatism of the George W.
variety. It’s not responsible conservatism of the David Cameron
sort. What Boris unknowingly represents is cool conservatism, and
it’s taken our surprised capital by storm.
American Republicans are used to their leaders out-cooling their
Democratic rivals. Think Bush versus Kerry and Gore, or Reagan
versus Carter and Mondale. But in Britain the reverse is true. The
left has out-cooled the right for an astonishing six decades. You
have to go back to the 1950s to find Conservative leaders
(Churchill, Eden, and Macmillan) with more charisma than their
Labour opponents. The four Conservative prime ministers that
followed (Home, Heath, Thatcher, and Major) rose to the top
despite conceding a coolness deficit to their main Labour
rivals. Tony Blair, who politically demolished John Major, even
invented “cool Britannia.”
This succession of uncool Conservative leaders, often backed up
by charismatically-challenged foot soldiers, is one of the many
reasons it has become so culturally unacceptable to admit to being
conservative in Britain. Most British people have conservative
instincts on issues like the economy, crime, welfare and family
values, so, by rights, the Conservative Party shouldn’t lose a
national election. But it has lost, frequently, in large part
because that same conservative electorate has tended publicly to
disown the party that espouses conservative policies. Even the
electorally attractive David Cameron only scraped into Downing
Street two years ago after an election that he should have won by a
landslide. It just isn’t cool to be conservative.
Boris Johnson is the massive exception. He is not only cool but
hilarious. His shock of unruly blond hair looks like a wig chosen
and fitted by a toddler. He admitted that he once tried to snort
cocaine, but sneezed and failed (beat that, Bill Clinton). He has
the kind of face, even at rest, that makes people giggle. He could
quite easily be a game-show host — in fact he’s occasionally been
the guest host on Britain’s leading TV satirical news quiz, and
it’s compulsive viewing. At last count, a YouTube video of him
tripping himself up then inadvertently rugby tackling an astonished
opponent in a celebrity soccer match between England and Germany
has attracted half a million hits and thousands of delighted
comments.
Boris is a bizarre combination of posh scholarliness, gaffes
(including a very public extra-marital affair that would be
career-ending for ordinary mortals, but only strengthened his
appeal), bumbling ineptitude, and startling political insight and
ambition. Beneath it all he’s a conservative to his fingertips. He
edited the UK version of The Spectator with great panache
between 1999 and 2005 and now stands a good chance of succeeding
Cameron as Conservative leader, when the time comes.
Just before the last mayoral election, in 2008, I saw Boris at a
hustings in London in front of a couple of thousand people. He was
in his mid-40s, and very overweight, so I was astonished to see
young women whooping and shrieking with delight, Beatles-like, as
he came into the room. Boris is so cool I don’t think he
noticed.
His voter appeal is like no other. If the Conservatives should
never lose Britain, then by the same token Boris has little right
to win London. The capital is, by and large, a Labour city, with
over half of Londoners saying that their natural sympathies lie
with that party. This is the one city in Britain where it’s
possible to be anything, do anything, sleep with anything. That
Boris has not only won in London, but looks like doing so again is
nothing short of political magic.
Many Conservative supporters are desperately hoping that their
party take note. They have been driven to distraction and despair,
for the past quarter century, by its political ineptitude. This has
been lapped up with glee by the self-styled “progressives,” led by
Tony Blair, who have successfully shoe-horned a liberal agenda onto
an instinctively conservative electorate, and governed for 13 years
out of the last 15. Even now, Cameron has to share power in a
coalition government with some of his liberal opponents.
And yet in this year of elections, not least in America, Boris
Johnson has demonstrated something vitally important to
conservatives everywhere. If you want to win, even against the
odds, if you want to drive back the liberals and progressives and
re-establish conservatism as a dominant political force, you need
to pick your leaders with great care.
In short, make sure that your leader is the coolest dude on the
block.
