Johnson's class handicap

There’s a nice and unremarked irony about the impending end of Johnson’s premiership – that he is being brought down by the same class structure that took him to Number 10.

It is surely no accident that the vote of no confidence in him took place as soon as possible after he was heard being booed by a crowd of royalists outside St Paul’s.

Those booing him had gone to St Paul’s to celebrate a woman who knows what Johnson does not – that wealth and power bring with them responsibility, duty and discipline. Of course, the Queen is absurdly privileged, but the flipside of this is that she has spent seventy years keeping her opinions to herself and meeting some of the most absurd, self-regarding and pompous people on the planet without telling them to go fuck themselves (at least not in so many words). That’s amazing restraint – a quality alien to Johnson.

But not one confined to the Queen. For millennia, thinkers have acknowledged that privilege and power can entrap their holders: this was one theme of Xenophon’s dialogue, Hiero. Noblesse oblige and paternalism have not always been myths. In fact, they have sometimes exacted the highest price: in WWI junior officers were disproportionately killed as they led their men over the top.

For Marx, a feature of capitalism was that it constrained capitalists as well as workers. Capitalism, he thought, comprised “external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist.”

Those laws were the forces of competition, which Marx thought (not wholly correctly) forced capitalists to drive down wages and working conditions regardless of individual capitalists’ “good or ill will”.

But competition, or the threat thereof, doesn’t consist only of market forces. Monarchs and tyrants face competition from potential republics or coups and those who ignore this leave messy corpses as Charles I, Louis XVII, Mussolini and Nicholas II (to name but a few) discovered. And political leaders face competition from rivals – whether it be deadly competition for crowns or the more benign competition for political leadership.

In fact, capitalism as a system has faced competition within our lifetimes. It’s no accident that inequality declined in many western economies as the threat of communism increased, but increased as that threat diminished. Competition constrains.

Very few of those in positions of privilege, therefore, have unfettered power. They must show restraint not merely out of morality, but because it is necessary to preserve their social position and power.

Those royalists who boo Johnson, and those Tory MPs who want him gone, can see that Johnson isn’t sufficiently heedful of this fact. Even in a polity as deferential as ours, there’s a limit to how much you can take the piss.

It’s a commonplace to blame this upon Johnson’s dishonest incontinent semi-criminal character. But that’s only part of the story. A sensible PM would have stopped those parties in Downing Street not just because of good character or from obeisance to the law, but because he would have asked: “how will this look if it leaks out?” Johnson failed to do this. And he did so because of his class background.

His personal history is one of being indulged and forgiven for his many misdemeanours by his patrons and the media – an indulgence that would never be extended to the less privileged, be they the lower orders, ethnic minorities or women. Given that he had got away with so much, why shouldn’t he have thought that he could get away with wine and a few nibbles?

But there’s more. In presiding over those parties, Johnson behaved like former Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox did when he went to Brussels in a hapless attempt to negotiate Brexit only to offend his hosts by boasting of not visiting the city for 40 years and calling Sabine Weyand "my dear." Both men made the same mistake – of failing to think how their behaviour would seem to others, and so failing to change.

And they didn’t do so because their class background hadn’t prepared them. If you glide through private school to Oxford and then to many professions, you associate largely with those like yourself: sure, you’ll encounter oiks but it is they and not you who are the outsiders who need to fit in. The upshot is that when you need to adapt your behaviour, you’ll be unable to do so. Which is another example of how class traps even the privileged.

Of course, this is not to say that every posh person would have made Johnson’s error: maybe Cameron would not have, who knows? Some can escape the constraints imposed by their class, just as some from poor homes can be upwardly mobile; or some capitalists gain a monopoly position and so are freed from the external laws or competition; or some people escape from prison. The fact that some can free themselves does not mean that the cage does not exist.  

If I am right, though, what we have is a nice symmetry: Johnson’s downfall is the product of the same class system that propelled him into office.

Comments

[ltr]

This is an exceptional essay.

[aragon]

Henry the VIII did not have a TV.
The King of England did not have an idiot box, but had to make do with a Jester!

Of course technology has changed dramatically since then (1547).

But some of the idiots with idiot boxes think we can go back to feudalism.

Their is an alternative, and we are aware of it and have the means of communication.

Isn't it strange that the leaders of Russia and China, understand that physical/economic improvements for the m,ass of their populations is necessary for social stability.

After all they are just treading the path trodden by the West.

Yet in the West the equivalents wait for the 'Event' a breakdown of society.

They are withdrawing from social democracy and moving towards the kleptocracy they facilitated in former communist countries.

The high point that was say Sweden has now imported so many people with more regressive social attitudes that they have grenades in the street.

Attacks on pharmacists are apparently due to the failure of the system to meet people expectations.

Concentration of wealth (aka neoliberalism) is a failed economic system worthy of a Banana republic.

It's been said before but welcome to the Banana UK republic.

Neoliberalism only delivers for the rich, and then not indefinitely, falling living standards will trigger populism.

And the Housing plunge protection squad are visibly failing miserably as they continue to try and sustain their bubble.

Bring on the populists, perhaps we can have a new Era of populism (and dump the current sorry crowd of no nothing parasites) .
Unfortunately I have had to live through Neoliberalism.

I want my entertainment too cheap to meter (not to mention energy, which they won't deliver).

"The Punch and Judy show with Boris as Mr Punch and Starmer as the Judy/Policeman does not entertain me.

Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want...
Sorry, my dear!
And where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here."

Judy Collins - Send in the Clowns (Song).

[Jim]

Maybe the British are so used to seeing posh types as 'leaders' they suffer dissonance when they see someone more ordinary. In this sense Labour suffers as much or more from its class roots as does Johnson et al.

This points to two or three strategies, front up someone who looks just about managerial enough to get their feet through No 10 and then demonstrate success. Build on that success and gradually move the public's expectations. Alternatively go for a rather more revolutionary leader on the back of Johnson's failure and dismantle some of the power structures of the rich fairly early.

The first option looks feasible but may upset the more radical members of Labour, would be at risk of 'events' dear boy', would be at risk of a hostile media and pressure from the unions for pay rises. In addition the Tories are likely to leave a scorched earth situation - no money. This suffers from the risk of a one-term swing and a damaged reputation.

THe second route may need to look like the first initially - Trojan Horse style - and then seize the levers of power rather vigourously with a heavy tax till the pips squeak policy. Forcing the construction of houses, hospitals and roads is likely to suffer problems due to building industry opposition as well as the newt carers and the usual media suspects and establishment figures. Steamroller them.

Or for speculatively a seizure of Royal and Ducal lands for public purposes as well as a restructuring of finance and taxation. Something of a Nordic model with some extra vim. Emasculate Eton, Harrow and Winchester etc and force the more fusty Oxbridge colleges to run purely open competitions. This might be a bit much for an ex lawyer to contemplate so leave that for now.

[Nanikore]

Great post. I agree Labour cannot remove Johnson, only the Tories can do that. But the battle is far from over - so I would not write off Johnson yet. On the one hand he is discredited in the eyes of many, including Royalists, and has to get through a high inflation period which will hit voters in electorally important areas where it counts - in the wallet. On the other hand, like Biden, Johnson could be using the Ukraine conflict and ratcheting it up (instead of putting pressure on both sides to talk) for domestic political ends. Could help Johnson as the Falklands saved Thatcher.

Johnson and the newly empowered nationalistic rightwing, like Trump in America for the Republicans, poses a big problem for small c conservatives in the Tory party.

[Dipper]

If class explains Johnson attending lockdown parties, what explains Starmer and Gaynor allegedly doing the same?