Boris Johnson: the bald truth

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/15/boris-johnson-bald-truth

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Boris (Johnson) dazzles in China, say the newspapers – and why wouldn't he? Shiny things attract attention from those who have little of it to spare; the Queen is rarely seen in black and white, entirely by design. And yet I sense a crumbling of the monumental Boris facade, the great artificial construct designed to make him prime minister, for reasons I have never understood. (Even the name is for display purposes only; his family call him "Al", after Alexander, his first name.)

As I have watched his ambition swell I never knew what it was for, and I don't think he does. When the Labour London assembly member Andrew Dismore accused him last September of lying about cuts to London's fire services, Johnson's considered response was "Get stuffed" – which does not bespeak a coherent political belief system, or even patience with the processes. So his politics is less interesting than his hunger, and he seems to think so; he certainly gives it less time. Why does he want to be prime minister? He can't say.

Consider the Tory conference 2012. This was the zenith of the Boris Show, on the tail of the Olympics, the jubilee and his re-election as London mayor. He was stalked by acolytes and squashed against walls by camera crews. He was even met at the station, as if he were Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. A thousand came to his fringe event, prostrated themselves – a "hot" Tory in the era of austerity! – and then he spoke to conference. Here a more substantial and humble man would have pledged loyalty, and delivered his defence of small-state Conservatism – to which I assume, from his rare political utterances, he owes his allegiance – to soothe the party members who think him irresponsible, and because he has the mind to do it well, doesn't he?

That is what he should have done, but it never came; instead he did what he always does. He taunted his rivals (Cameron is bad at Latin: who knew, who cared?) and played with his hair. Oh, that hair! He should have been a style columnist; he would have been the greatest of them all.

Which brings me to my proposition: Boris Johnson is losing his looks, and with them his opportunity to be prime minister. This is not objectification of a man who is always happy to objectify women (during the Olympics he talked about female athletes "glistening like wet otters"), but a prediction and a warning to other empty but sexually promising politicians with dirty eyes; a warning I wonder if Lynton Crosby, the cartoonish strategist who will run the Tory campaign in 2015, agrees with.

During the mayoral race he told Johnson to lose weight. Because Johnson – the hair! – is a physical brand, a self-made messiah. He once said: "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3." What is this but a prayer uttered by a Conservative messiah? And who, to put it bluntly, wants a fat messiah? Or, as the spiteful but sometimes perceptive blogger Guido Fawkes pointed out in the summer with a photograph to illustrate his scoop, a balding messiah? A messiah, in fact, who looks like his father: who, in this case, is not God, but Stanley Johnson?

Johnson was always the anti-politician, the politician made by television. He became a star on Have I Got News for You because television cameras respond to hair, and jokes, and he had plenty of both. He pretends an authenticity that is utterly bogus, and depends solely on his physical presence. I have followed Johnson on the campaign trail and marvelled at his ability to make politics seem palatable simply by rubbing it out, except it shouldn't be rubbed out. (I doubt he would bother to dispute this. He would simply say I write for the Guardian "politburo" because all Guardian writers are Communists, except they aren't.) His statement that the £250,000 he gets from the Daily Telegraph is "chicken feed" is the darkest and most truthful of his political statements because it explicitly tells us that he doesn't know how people live – and worse, he doesn't care.

Back to the campaign trail: he acts the child; he acts the toy; he works principally not with policy, but with flirtation. "Don't ever vote for anyone else," I watched him tell an elderly woman, as askers of genuine questions were physically barred from his presence. (She promptly combusted.) He even signed campaign literature.

At heart I suspect Boris is not even a democrat. But this shtick, which depends on the suspension of all belief, is an attractive man's game, even as he plots a return to the Commons. Will his ambition outlive his hair? I think not. He lives by narcissism; he will die by it.

<em>Twitter: </em><em>@TanyaGold1</em>

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