Yesterday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson returned to the dispatch box in Westminster to take his first Prime Minister’s Questions since leaving the hospital. It quickly became clear that Covid-19 didn’t just threaten his life. It makes his political future look suddenly dicey.
Before the lockdown, Johnson reveled at PMQs, whipping the Conservative backbenches into roars of cheers and gales of laughter. That storm of noise would distract everyone from the fact Johnson largely avoided the questions the then-opposition leader tried lobbing at him. But now, with the chamber all but empty and most questions coming in over Zoom, Johnson faced the new Labour leader Keir Starmer all but alone, his voice bouncing off the ancient walls of the House of Commons. He floundered at times, was subdued and conciliatory, and had no choice but to answer Starmer’s probing, difficult questions. With no wall of noise to back him up, he seemed like a scrawny schoolyard bully, suddenly abandoned by his gang after picking one too many fights.
Populists are nothing without a crowd. Their authority takes root in the belief that a noble and virtuous populace are being abused by a corrupt elite, and that only an inspired individual can save them – Donald Trump declaring when nominated by the Republican Party that ‘I alone can fix it.’ That bond between governor and governed thrives on direct personal contact. Populists don’t communicate through press releases and television appearances. They go straight to the people, over the heads of a supposedly dishonest media and elitist ‘experts,’ reaching out to them with rallies, Facebook posts, tweets and staged events before supportive audiences.
So the lockdown is a sucker-punch that leaves them winded. It’s no wonder Donald Trump wants to re-open America and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is still trying to rally his supporters in the streets. A populist without a crowd is like a movie without a soundtrack or an Instagram model without makeup or an exotic backdrop. When the music and the adornments that sustain the artifice and cue your emotional responses are stripped away, the actor stands alone on the stage. A gifted performer can still pull off a compelling performance. Someone whose style is their only substance, however, looks suddenly vulnerable, even pathetic. It’s a look that seldom wears well on them.
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