Boris Johnson isn’t funny anymore, but he’s still the leading man in the Tory Theatre of the Absurd

For a long time, some of us observed Boris Johnson’s public experiences with the same sense of bewilderment we feel when, say, a seagull lands on centre court at Wimbledon and refuses to fly away.

On those occasions, as the crowd rises up as one to acclaim the hilarity of the bird, it seems as if the fun will go on forever and perhaps the last sound we will ever hear will be the Wimbledon crowd laughing at something that isn’t funny.

Eventually they somehow manage to carry on, even if it’s with an overwhelming sense of melancholy as they try to come to terms with the fact that life will never be this good again.

Johnson seemed to have this effect on people too, sending some into the same convulsions of laughter you might witness if you have the misfortune to go to the theatre and an actor utters a double entendre.

“Boris Johnson's speech at Tory Party conference is the one perennial delight that everyone can enjoy,” the Mirror said in 2015, before picking out some highlights which are timeless, in so much as they are as funny today as they were when he wowed the conference.

In those days, whenever Johnson appeared, a light was switched on in the eyes of those surrounding him, as they anticipated his latest zinger, which could be something about “piccaninnies”, being reincarnated as an olive, or a daring joke about exiting the second-largest economy in the world while supporting spurious claims about sending £350 million a week to the NHS with no discernible plan for how to make it work. That one always cracks them up.

This sense of anticipation about what Boris Johnson would do or say next reached its peak on the February day last year when Johnson announced that he would be supporting the ‘Leave’ campaign. As the Economist reported at the time, “the commentariat, and almost no one else, has been waiting excitedly for Boris Johnson to show his colours in Britain’s upcoming EU referendum.”

So the media breathlessly gathered outside his house on a February Sunday, something which Johnson couldn't help referring to a couple of times when he emerged from his house for the big reveal.  He is better than Trump at concealing his delight at the attention he gets, but the delight may well be the same.

Up until recently, when the public were polled on Britain’s most popular politician, Johnson invariably came out on top. Naturally this confirmed what the commentariat’s own instincts were telling them: that this was a man of staggering influence, a vote-winner with the electorate which had tired of conventional politicians.

Now, it turns out, Johnson isn’t funny anymore, at least not in the ‘funny haha’ way.  Risking accusations of being po-faced, the world has expressed some bewilderment that this figure has been chosen to represent Britain abroad, apparently based on the lolz he generates among the commentariat. 

On Tuesday, one minister told the Times that "there is not a single foreign minister in Europe who takes him seriously. They think he’s a clown who can never resist a gag.” https://twitter.com/JOE_co_uk/status/877987051471343617

This followed a series of forensic dissections from key influencers who are pointing out that he is temperamentally and intellectually ill-equipped for his job. 

In the latest Norm Macdonald podcast, Jerry Seinfeld recalled the reaction of one executive when Michael Richards arrived to read for Kramer during auditions for Seinfeld. Richards left everyone in the room crying with laughter, but the network president turned to Seinfeld and said, with deep reservations about what he'd seen, “‘Well, if you want funny.”

In a comedy, this is all you want, but Johnson was apparently cast as foreign secretary by Theresa May in the belief that the world wanted funny.

May could have felt that funny translated into an ability to connect with the ordinary voter, whoever that is. The smart people may also have still believed that his presence had something to do with Leave’s triumph, when in fact, funnyman Boris Johnson piggybacked to a victory which was achieved through capitalising on fears about immigration and the idea of taking back control.

Since then, we have been given a masterclass in what taking back control looks like as a generation of politicians make a persuasive case for faceless EU bureaucrats ruling forever.

May, of course, is experiencing her own difficulties. She emerged in Japan this week to announce that she will lead the Conservative party into the next election, startling many people in the country - including her own MPs - who had forgotten about her entirely and were now reminded in a pretty stark way that she still considered herself prime minister of the country.

It was also a reminder that when Johnson lost his ‘most popular politician in Britain’ tag, he was replaced at the top of the poll by May, who was riding her own wave of popularity at the time.

That was back in the days when MPs spoke admiringly about her “icy professionalism” and marvelled that she was “like Margaret Thatcher without the sense of humour”, a reminder that politics is not so much show business for ugly people but tragicomedy for people who aren’t funny.

In a world where Andrea Leadsom was considered a rising star not so long ago and Jacob Rees-Mogg has emerged as the people’s politician, it is not surprising that Johnson considered himself first among equals and, indeed, king of the zingers.

Rees-Mogg appeared on Wednesday to dismiss Labour’s new position on Brexit as something for “cappuccino drinkers in metropolitan areas”. Only a true member of the elite would think that cappuccino is the preserve of a metropolitan class and refer to it the way others might talk about truffle hunting in Tuscany.

No wonder he has been hailed as a contender, but while Johnson’s star wanes, he still has provided a central plank of the approach to Brexit.

Indeed, Britain’s negotiating position with the EU still revolves around the magical thinking outlined in his hilarious “pro-cake and pro-eating it” crack, even after it was dismantled forensically by Donald Tusk when he proposed a simple experiment - “Buy a cake, eat it, and see if it is still there on the plate.”

Britain sees it differently. Despite smashing the plate in the first place, the UK's negotiators are now emphasising their more ‘flexible’ approach to the negotiations with the EU. The capacity to be flexible is one shared by all fantasists. It's an advantage those who live in an absurdist world will always have over the rest of us who are doomed to live in the real one.