It very much does. Alex Johnson* embodies the persona of the brilliant but unruly younger son of a “well bred” family. He portrays the prototypical Eton boy.¹ His unkemptness, his apparent² familiarity with the Classics, his playful disdain for authority, all of these exist to project an air of adolescent aristocratic excentricity.³ Maybe more than any other Tory he relies on the fact that in the English⁴ imagination it is the class of someone that qualifies them to rule much more than their ability. So even though he is clearly incompetent the very fact that his incompetence manifests as shambolic aloofness of the kind only a public school boy can get away with associates him in the mind of the public with a right to rule.
Of course, and this hardly needs to be said, this is all an act. There is nothing charming or funny about Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He’s a very dangerous, very pitiless individual with, unfortunately, a knack for portraying himself as a harmless, even likable, fool.
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* I try not to call him “Boris” because that is very much a deliberately created persona. He goes by Alex among his friends and that says really all you need to know about the fakeness of his political persona. The fact that he persuaded the media (by virtue of being an insider) to call him by his first name was brilliant. How can you hate someone you’re on first name basis with? How could he be working against your interests? He’s your mate Boris! And the fact that it’s a fake name (or rather his middle name that he only uses for these purposes) says all you need to know about in what regard he holds his voters.
¹ Not an Old Etonian but a schoolboy still there
² But not actually real, if you ask anyone who actually knows what they are talking about
³ I know he isn’t an aristocrat, but as I said this is all about appearances more than anything
⁴ Yes, this is about England (and maybe Wales to a degree) much more than about the rest of the UK
