"Life was never better than in 1963"

According to the poet Philip Larkin “So life was never better than/In nineteen sixty-three.” It was a year when Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech and the year when the Beatles emerged to light the touch paper of the 1960s social revolution. It was also a highly tumultuous year which saw increased American involvement in Vietnam and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Here in the UK the Profumo Affair caught the public imagination in which a cabinet minister was revealed to be having an affair with a woman who was also involved with a Soviet naval attaché, thus posing a potential national security risk.

The Profumo scandal severely dented public confidence in the government and rumours swirled that senior members of the Royal Family were also caught up in this messy web (sounds familiar). The establishment attempted to close ranks to protect the status quo but something in Britain profoundly changed. The author Pamela Cooper concluded three decades later that “it wouldn't be too much to say that the Profumo scandal was the necessary prelude to the new Toryism, based on meritocracy, which would eventually emerge under Margaret Thatcher.” The historian Richard Davenport-Hines suggested that “authority, however disinterested, well-qualified and experienced, was increasingly greeted with suspicion rather than trust.”

Something similar is stirring today with a “last days of Rome” feeling to the UK public debate. Just as voters in 1963 were increasingly out of tune with politicians who had come of age during the Edwardian era, many people today are expressing outrage as revelations of the government’s behaviour during the pandemic come to light. We can even stretch the parallels a bit further. In 1963 the Conservative government was about to celebrate 12 years in office; was onto its third prime minister (Churchill, Eden and Macmillan), with a fourth (Douglas-Home) set to take over before the year was out, and had engaged in a disastrous international excursion in the form of the Suez Crisis. Fast forward to 2022 and the Conservatives are into their twelfth year in office; have had three prime ministers (Cameron, May and Johnson) and have engaged in a colossal economic gamble in the form of Brexit. History does not repeat itself; it may not even rhyme all that often, but the lessons of the past suggest that this is not going to end well.

The playwright Arthur Miller penned the line “you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.” This goes to the heart of the government’s troubles: It has lost the trust of the electorate. The same thing happened to John Major’s government following sterling’s departure from the ERM in 1992. Boris Johnson today epitomises that lack of trust. Ironically, the foreign press has always tended to see through him in a way that the British press has not. This week the European press went for the jugular with the Süddeutsche Zeitung suggesting that “Johnson does not govern: He merely plays at being premier.” Jyllands-Posten in Denmark commented that “The garden party is over for Boris Johnson” and pointed out that “it's like reading Animal Farm all over again - Orwell's satirical fable about the Soviet Union under Stalin: all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Perhaps one of the most damning pieces was that published in the New York Times which accused Johnson of something worse than incompetence: A full scale “assault on civil liberties” and an “authoritarian assault so comprehensive that once settled as law, it will prove very tricky to unpick.”

It is ironic that drinks parties during lockdown should provoke such outrage whereas constitutionally outrageous actions such as proroguing parliament or the unlawful fast-tracking of PPE contracts to those with political connections were shrugged off. Nor has the assault on civil liberties outlined by the NYT had much impact. So why now? After all, it is not like Johnson’s actions come as any surprise to those who know him. He is clearly temperamentally unsuited for the highest office. Moreover, governments routinely break their electoral promises. It is not as if this government is any worse than many others on that score.

To get to the heart of the matter we ought to draw a distinction between political sincerity and political accuracy. In this framework, voters identify with politicians who reflect their beliefs (the sincerity effect) and are prepared to overlook factual inaccuracies – beliefs after all cannot be proven. Conversely, politicians who try to make a rational case find it more difficult to get through to voters if there is no meeting of minds. This is just a formal way of saying that people will believe what they want to believe, but it makes sense. Johnson was able to use the Brexit issue to propel himself to the political forefront by speaking to large parts of the electorate which were able to tune out his obvious failings. As the old saying goes, if you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made.

On the question of lockdown parties, Johnson was way out of  tune with the electorate. Voters sincerely believed they were doing the right thing by adhering to the Covid rules and were prepared to make the necessary sacrifices, including not being able to tend to loved ones that were dying. Perhaps if the government had come clean at the start rather than trying to pretend there was nothing to apologise for, it might – just might – have been able to ride this crisis out. It would at least have had a chance of maintaining its political sincerity.

Short of a miraculous turn of events, it is hard to see Johnson coming back from this (which calls into question my forecast that Johnson would still be in office at the end of 2022). As to what happens next, your guess is as good as mine. The so-called independent inquiry into gatherings at Downing Street (terms of reference here) represents an investigation by a civil servant into the actions of people she ultimately reports to. It is compromised before it has begun. Whatever the outcome, there has been a certain amount of jockeying for position in the event that Johnson is forced out. But Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who has long been tipped as a possible successor, is not exactly pulling up trees with his approval ratings. Nor is any other candidate for that matter.

One of the things I wish for 2022 is less focus on politics and more on economics. After all, when the UK is struggling to come to terms with the joint economic impact of the pandemic and Brexit, it is important that the government is focused on its job rather than this side show. Yet for all that domestic politics is increasingly viewed as a soap opera (the media’s obsession with tittle-tattle over the years has not helped), we can take comfort from the fact that things do eventually heal. Events do not come much bigger that the assassination of JFK yet the US did (eventually) move on. Perhaps we should view recent events – both in the UK and elsewhere – as the turbulence that results from the swinging of the political pendulum. But the ride could get wilder still before the turbulence abates.