This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, exclusively for Reaction subscribers.
One of the main myths about Boris Johnson among his die-hard supporters is that their hero remains popular. It is not the case and has not been the case for several years now. Yet no amount of evidence, in the form of opinion polling, will shake the conviction that Johnson is connected in some deep and almost magical way with the supposed real country, with unfashionable opinion, or what used to be termed in the US the silent majority.
The origin of the myth is rooted in something real, of course. Johnson was once popular with a substantial part of the electorate. It was because he had that special connection with segments of the electorate that his party decided to choose him as leader in an emergency in July 2019 when parliament was blocking Brexit, refusing to agree any version of it, and threatening to refuse to implement the referendum result at all. There were other voters – during the London mayoral period and the Brexit campaign – who liked his unorthodox style and cavalier swagger. Boris annoying smart, or smart arse, metropolitan opinion and winding up the puritans only made him more popular with such voters.
