A week ago, historic allegations emerged that a once-popular British celebrity (and former politico) – renowned for his zany sense of humor, funny way of talking, promiscuous lifestyle, unconventional politics, and crazy hair (and considered by many to be a delusional narcissist) – had abused his position of power to commit a series of criminal acts.

The man in question was a comedian of sorts, one who had repeatedly expressed his aggressively misogynistic views in the national media, an entertainer who had increasingly courted notoriety as his fame had diminished.

Shortly after the news had broken as to the allegations against the media personality Russell Brand (who’d been accused of a number of assaults against women), reports appeared about another of the UK’s more infamous public figures, one whose profile might in many respects be seen to align with Mr. Brand’s (certainly in those ways enumerated above).

That man was, of course, Boris Johnson. Just as questions were being asked as to what TV bosses had known about Brand’s behaviors, it was reported that at the height of the pandemic crisis, officials from Downing Street had approached senior people at Buckingham Palace to discuss the then Prime Minister’s unlawful conduct, in relation to his multiple breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules. It appears they’d even requested that the Queen should attempt to intervene.

This was not the only appalling blast from the past to hit British news headlines at the start of last week. Former premier Liz Truss thought that the first anniversary of the announcement of her disastrous fiscal plans – which had simultaneously crashed the country’s economy and brought her brief administration to a sudden and premature end – would be an appropriate time to berate the current government’s policies and to insist that her own approach (reducing taxes for the rich and cutting welfare for those most in need) had been right all along and was still the thing that the nation needed to restore its financial fortunes.

Nothing had of course been her fault. It was “institutional bureaucracy” that was to blame.

These three individuals have one thing in common – apart from being evidently somewhat emotionally unhinged – apart from being unrepentant about their actions – and apart from the fact that, during their rise to influence and fame, various voices of sanity had repeatedly raised alarms, warnings that had for the most part been ignored.

That other thing they have in common is that they’d all nurtured an extraordinarily loyal bedrock of supporters, an unquestioning fan base whose blind faith had promoted and sustained their populist power, a power which, at the height of their success, they seem to have abused with catastrophic consequences, as they’d pursued their own unorthodox versions (or perversions) of morality and politics.

Related News

News from Nowhere: You Turn If You Want To

News from Nowhere: The death of trust

Meanwhile, the start of last week also saw the news that the leader of the British Labour Party would be visiting the president of France as the opening move in a charm offensive intended to pave the way for the renegotiation of trade arrangements with the European Union, in an ostensible bid to secure more favorable terms for the UK.

It was the same week that Labour had made the typically non-committal announcement that it wouldn’t be deciding whether to progress with the prohibitively expensive HS2 national railway-building program until the costs have become clearer. Bereft of any actual details, their EU trading plan didn’t amount to much more of an unequivocal policy landmark.

But what was most significant about the news was that the French president had granted an audience with the opposition leader. This seemed calculated both as a snub to Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government and as a tacit acknowledgment that Keir Starmer is, as things stand in the opinion polls, pretty much the UK’s de facto premier-in-waiting.

Sir Keir may have demonstrated all the capacity for policy commitment of a small wet towel and all the personality too.

Even when this month he branded people-smugglers as equivalent to terrorists, his declaration had all the rhetorical force of a provincial bank manager discussing his favorite kind of biscuits to dunk in his tea.

But it appears that the British public may at last be starting to get over its obsession with the politics of charisma, with big flamboyant characters like Johnson and Brand, and might even, after Johnson and Truss, be waking up to an understanding that insanely extravagant promises of sovereignty and prosperity do not make good leaders.

And that surely can’t be a bad thing. Mr. Starmer may be as dull as a damp weekend in Doncaster, but, faced with the prospect of political personalities displaying rather more obvious shows of panache, a bit of boring mightn’t seem such a very bad thing after all.