Unlike the PM, I won’t pay for my ignorance at the ballot box. He, however, is too uninformed to stand a chance at the next election.
So spoke Janet Street-Porter, who writes a regular general-interest column. Her remit is to be an expert on everything, except, judging by the photographic evidence, corrective dental surgery.
However, it wasn’t ignorance on that subject that, according to her, disqualifies Johnson from any public office. It’s something much worse.
In an interview on Good Morning Britain, Johnson casually and unapologetically admitted he didn’t have a clue who Lorraine Kelly is. That, explains Street-Porter, “is just another sign he is out of touch with people struggling to make ends meet.”
“A failure to know the price of a loaf or a pint of milk is a vote-losing disaster,” she continues. This made me glad I am not in the business of soliciting votes.
For I have never heard of Lorraine Kelly either. That gaping hole in my education was plugged by Street-Porter, who identified Lorraine as a wealthy star of day-time television. Learn something every day.
As to the price of daily staples, such as milk and bread, I actually buy my own, which must set me apart from Boris Johnson. But I still can’t tell you the exact price of either a pint or a loaf. On that basis, I’ll resist the temptation of standing for any public office – the humiliation of being blackballed by Street-Porter would be unbearable.
Actually, ignorance of daytime TV sounds like a feather in a politician’s cap. One would like to think that the people who run the country have better things to do during the day than to watch soap operas. One would also expect them to be sufficiently successful in life not to care how many pennies on either side of 50p they pay for a pint of milk.
Street-Porter inadvertently identified the systemic problem with rampant political populism, otherwise known as universal franchise. Voters are expected to want politicians to be just like them: ill-educated, underpaid, uncultured, not especially bright – ideally tattooed and facial-metalled dwellers of council estates.
The assumption peddled by the likes of Street-Porter is that ‘toffs’ can’t possibly understand the needs of voters who fit that description. Neither can ‘toff’ politicians understand ethnic minorities, feel the pain of cripples and drug addicts, or relate to the needs of any of the 70+ sexes other than their own.
This is ideologised tosh. A politician, especially a PM, should have a broad range of qualifications that council-estate dwellers are unlikely either to acquire or to appreciate. Some such dwellers may rise above their circumstances, and my hat’s off to them. But such overachievers represent an exception, rather than the rule.
A successful statesman should possess certain intellectual tools that are in short supply at council estates, comprehensive schools and polytechnics. A statesman doesn’t have to be a professional intellectual – in fact, it’s best that he isn’t.
But he should possess a working knowledge and understanding of history, political science, religion, economics, foreign relations, his country’s constitution, law, sociology, philosophy.
This kind of knowledge presupposes (with the odd exception here and there) at least a middle-class family background, education at a good school and decent university, ideally hands-on experience in a profession where such knowledge is at a premium.
It’s preposterous to claim that any person so qualified is unable to understand the needs of common folk. A higher system can always understand a lower one, though the reverse isn’t true. And anyway, the needs of common folk are neither astrophysics nor differential calculus.
One doesn’t have to know the exact price of milk or bread to realise that such staples shouldn’t be out of anyone’s reach. One doesn’t have to live in a tower block to sympathise with those who do. One doesn’t have to use the NHS to know that it fails most people.
It’s not that some ‘toff’ politicians find common folk incomprehensible. It’s that some politicians, whatever their wealth or social origin, don’t care about people, common or otherwise. Actually, replace ‘some’ with ‘most’. Most of our politicians are self-serving spivs who only care about power.
Now we are talking about a deficit of character, not of knowledge. Yet this failing isn’t the exclusive property of the upper classes. A potential for crass, selfish insensitivity is an essential human characteristic. And it has long been my observation that modern politics encourages this trait to come to the fore.
However, a successful politician learns how to put on a sympathetic face even if he feels no sympathy. He knows there’s a class war going on – in fact, he belongs to the professional group that’s largely responsible for whipping up these hostilities. But he intends to claim victory nevertheless.
That’s why politicians systematically corrupt voters into believing they are winning every battle of the class war. To that end most chaps on either side of the aisle profess intimate knowledge of football formations, prole music and TV, pub grub, cheap lager and other badges of the winning side.
This, unfortunately, is a two-way street. Even as they corrupt the electorate, the electorate corrupts them — such is the democratic feedback.
Before long they don’t have to pretend. They may still not know how much a pint of milk is, but they do develop proletarian tastes. I don’t think, for example, an earlier Tory Chancellor feigned an affection for a particularly revolting rap group. That’s exactly his cultural level, regardless of the number of millions his family has.
Only in a thoroughly corrupt political culture could someone like Angela Rayner rise to the top tier of politics. Whether or not she crosses and uncrosses her tattooed legs deliberately to lead Johnson astray at PM Question Time is immaterial.
What matters is that she is exactly the type of politician to satisfy Street-Porter’s stringent requirements. Angie became a mother at 16, a grandmother at 37, she did indeed grow up on a council estate, and she can’t string together a single grammatical sentence (“Was you or was you not at that party, Boris?”). And I bet she can still recite the whole price list of Asda’s goods.
She understands common folk, in other words. Yet every time she opens her mouth, it’s clear she understands nothing else. An ideal politician, as far as Janet Street-Porter is concerned.
Well said! When I read that Mr. Johnson did not know some television actress, I was thinking exactly what you wrote – before I read it. I don’t need my PM or President to watch television programming, especially during the day. I need him figuring ways to reduce the size and burden of government. Ha!
I used to enjoy the television show “The West Wing.” It was about the people behind (or under) the president. I did not agree with their politics of course (no successful show could promote true conservative values). My sister, knowing this, once asked why I liked the show. I told her that, as it was written, every character on the show was smarter than I am, and well spoken. I want my political representatives to know more about government in general and the issues affecting us than I do. That’s their job. But few seem to understand little other than getting elected or re-elected.
My sentiments exactly.
Lorraine Kelly interviews people, usually celebs and everyday folk, but sometimes politicians. She’s been doing it for about 30 years, so it’s pretty impressive never to have heard of her!
She’s the Robert Peston of idle gossip.
I’m glad you are impressed. I recall my young advertising colleague being amazed that I had never heard of some tattooed pop celebrity whom she described as a ‘great English musician’. I asked her if she had heard of the great English musicians Byrd and Gibbons, which she hadn’t. “You see,” I said. “We are both ignorant of something.”
The name Lorraine Kelly is vaguely familiar, but that’s about it.
I do watch Coronation Street and occasionally East Enders. Soaps like that are an education in how popular entertainment is a vehicle for leftist propaganda. They are intended to subvert those who watch them and normalise politically correct attitudes.
Characters spout politically correct formulae as if they were gospel truth.mOr, in a more ‘subliminal’ approach, they represent political correctness in themselves. There have been occasions when there have been no less than three story lines in Coronation Street involving ‘ gay’ characters, all cast in a sympathetic light.
I recall an episode in East Enders where a recently married woman left her husband for a lesbian relationship. This was greeted with approval by all, except one curmudgeonly character who was made to change his opinion.
The latest episode of Coronation street had a black female as a judge. It is normal to have female &/ or ethnic minority people, usually black, in positions of authority over whites.
Black people in general are omnipresent in soaps , notwithstanding that they represent just 3.4% of the population. Black/ White couples figure prominently, the males usually being a black man, although in reality such couples are not common. They are certainly common in advertising. One can watch an evening ‘s worth of TV ads and not see a white couple represented.
It is noticeable that Islam is treated with more or less reverence, while Christianity scarcely gets a look-in. The sole Christian character in EastEnders for a long time was a somewhat flaky old woman, while a Muslim family was depicted as normal.
And so on.
What you are saying about soaps applies equally to TV advertising. A visitor from Mars might get the impression white Englishmen are a minority (which in London they are). I’d say that at least a third of all actors in commercials are black, possibly more. So much for proportionate representation.
Here in Australia , Africans are THE dominant people in almost all tv ads . the rules are , white wife smarter than dimwit white husband , black woman the smarter or moral superior to her white friend , any minority smarter or more compassionate than the white male. The govt funded “Scold” ads feature any number of white men beating their wife, drunk driving , burglarizing , or just being a boor . The news will never reveal the race of perps , even though reading between lines we suspect Aboriginal or African suspects depending on the nature of the crime . And the percentage of Africans in Australia couldn’t be more than 1%, judging by tv and print ads , 40%. One would think the Indigenous , Asian and Indian members of society would be up in arms , but … crickets.
Similar garbage in the U.S. One of my sons used to like “The Big Bang Theory”, a situational comedy about four “geniuses” who work at Cal Tech (California Polytechnic University – a short drive from where we live, actually). Three of those four “geniuses”, despite their social awkwardness, had as their life’s goal to engage in as much sexual intercourse as possible. The character who was driven more by the quest for knowledge was constantly ridiculed. His mother, a devout Christian, was made to look the fool for believing in some invisible being. While they did manage to survive 12 seasons without a character suffering from same-sex-attraction, the standard messaging was clearly anti-Christian.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit recently. Why do you think it is that when people want to do away with Judeo-Christian morality they seem to start and stop at fornication? We do not see many activists for murder or thievery or general dishonesty.
Young people want to have as much sex as they can get — to this law of nature there are no known exceptions. Judaeo-Christian morality imposes some checks on this powerful impulse, and when that’s no longer the case, what will? People’s role models come from films and TV shows, and you know what they are like. Incidentally, films rated 10 in France would be 15 in the UK and 18+ in the US. God knows I’m no prude, but I watch some of those scenes wondering if I’d like my hypothetical 10-year-old to see them. When my English wife was a teenager, the only two film she was allowed to see in the cinema were Oklahoma and To Catch a Thief.
Recalling the lyrics to “All Er Nothin'” makes we wonder if even “Oklahoma!” was truly acceptable. (ha ha)
I know two films I won’t forget from my early years ;”Age of Consent” with a nubile Helen Mirren fimed here in Oz , and another filmed here with Jenny Agutter , “Walkabout” , both have great water scenes to affirm those laws of nature !