IS BORIS JOHNSON A LIAR? And if he is, why don’t his supporters seem to care?
To his critics, Johnson is a liar and a fraud, and stories such as this one are taken as further evidence for their case. According to his onetime rival for the Conservative leadership, Rory Stewart, Johnson is “the most accomplished liar in public life—perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister.” Johnson, Stewart wrote last year, has “mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie—which may inadvertently be true.”
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Despite this—and despite other Brexit-related issues, from product shortages at supermarkets to a brewing crisis in Northern Ireland, to say nothing of a disastrous early response to the pandemic—Johnson has lost little ground in the polls, and the Conservative Party appears on course for another decade in power. Johnson could well become Britain’s most consequential prime minister since Margaret Thatcher.
All of this raises a question: If Johnson really is such a liar, why don’t voters seem to care?
The political scientists Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes have developed a distinction between “accuracy” and “sincerity” to explain why voters seem to care little about the lies told by politicians they support. People can be “truthful” about two things, they write in their book, The Light That Failed—facts and feelings. Of the two, only the former is falsifiable.
In the case of Donald Trump, a populist leader to whom Johnson is often likened, the former American president’s most zealous fans seemed wholly indifferent to revelations that many of his comments were factually untrue. Why? “Because they believe that these statements are sincere, and thus ‘true’ in a deeper sense,” Krastev and Holmes write. Trump’s sincerity is based on what he represents and his commitment, by means fair or foul, to realize his goals. To his supporters, Krastev and Holmes write, Trump’s lies are sincere, because he has already said that the only thing that matters to him is winning, and they believe he is trying to win on their behalf.
In Trump’s worldview, winning is the be-all and end-all—for people and for nations—and anyone who says otherwise is either a dupe or a fraud. This applies to elections and the rule of law, as well as international relations and trade. All of this makes Trump a revolutionary figure, because he is the first U.S. president to reject the American-made world as bad for America. Unlike Biden and every other U.S. leader, Trump believes the free-trading, democratic world living peacefully under the American nuclear umbrella is a bad thing, because it allows free-riding competitors to undercut the U.S. Thus, America in this view is not exceptional; it is naive.
In contrast, Johnson is boringly conservative. He doesn’t believe Britain has been a victim of the postwar American order or even, really, of European Union membership; nor does he want a new world order. He just thinks Britain—and his own leadership aspirations—would, on balance, be better off outside the EU. Unlike Trump, Johnson sees a world of natural alliances of like-minded countries, historic civilizations, shared democratic norms and threats, and, of course, Western exceptionalism. Johnson is prepared to say many things to convince voters to support him, but even his fiercest (rational) critics do not think he would attempt a Trump-style insurrection to retain power if he lost an election.
Yet he does have similarities with Trump. While Trump shares few of Johnson’s romantic visions of history—partly because he doesn’t know any—both have a deep cynicism that helps explain their appeal. Johnson, like Trump, believes many of his opponents are insincere. “He doesn’t trust anyone,” a former aide once told me. “He thinks everyone thinks like him.” To the voters who believe all politicians are essentially liars and cheats out for themselves, Johnson’s obvious mockery and refusal to abide by the usual rules of political decorum—by, for example, telling what his opponents allege are lies—have an obvious appeal.
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Johnson’s skill, it seems to me, resides almost as much in inviting the public into the game as it does in hiding his goals. In a sense, Johnson’s popularity is based on mocking everyone else’s bullshit, rather than duping people about his own ambition.
Take one telling moment in Johnson’s rise. In 2019, Theresa May was finally forced to resign as prime minister, paving the way for Johnson to realize his lifelong dream. Amid whirling expectation that he would soon announce his candidacy, he was asked whether he wanted the job. “I think … ahm … look … erm … ahm …” he mumbled, before adding: “I’m going to go for it. Of course I’m going to go for it.”
It was the of course that won the audience over. Johnson didn’t offer a declaration about a higher calling or feeling a duty to serve. He just said “of course.”
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Here we glimpse the paradox at the heart of Johnson: the slipperiness and the consistency, the embellishment and the truth, the factual error and the sincerity of the act.
The more time you spend with Johnson, the more you understand that this projection of chaos is both real and performative. It is the combination that is interesting."
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