In one of Douglas Adams’s wonderful novels of satirical science fiction, it is explained that the ruler of the entire universe is an old man who lives alone in a humble shack on a deserted planet at the unfashionable end of a minor galaxy. Every so often, alien starships arrive from distant corners of the cosmos, bearing interstellar voyagers loaded with questions for the man and supplies of fish for his pet cat. He answers their enquiries politely and offers his advice as well as he can, wholly unaware that he is making choices that will affect the lives and fates of quadrillions of beings many millions of light years away.

Some of today’s politicians might find Adams’s ideal mode of government strange, but the fantastical system works well enough; and the story’s point is clear. It seems obvious enough that anybody who wants to rule the universe should never be allowed to do so: those hungry for power are the least deserving of it. It should therefore also be the case that the best person in whom to invest absolute authority is someone who not only doesn’t want it but who also is not even aware that they hold it.

Certain politicians do what they do for the prestige: the pure pleasure afforded by the adulation and the applause, the joy of being fêted by the famous, the talented and the beautiful, the good and the great. Others appear to be motivated by the erotic opportunities opened by the possession of power. We often condemn those individuals as morally reprehensible, although the French hold more liberal views on the subject, and even the Americans and British can on occasion prove more than usually forgiving of their leaders’ personal proclivities, just so long as their indiscretions are conducted with a certain degree of brazen, chauvinistic panache. The public tolerance of the bedroom antics of David Lloyd George, John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton has even extended into the era of the #MeToo movement, with a surprising degree of patience for the current British Prime Minister’s history of extramarital escapades. The media have found such salacious conduct scandalously comedic; but at the extreme end of the scale lurk the likes of Andrew Griffiths, a former Conservative minister who resigned in 2018 following accusations that he had sent up to two thousand ‘depraved’ messages to two female constituents, and who on 10 December was found by a family court to have raped and physically abused his own wife.

Other politicians are clearly in it for the cash. When moneyed interests seek to influence government policies or procurement decisions – or when politicians are simply distracted from their duties by the whiff of filthy lucre – then very little good ensues. In recent weeks, a range of particularly mercenary British politicians have provoked unflattering headlines, their reputations tainted by allegations of venality, opportunism or simple greed. Following the resignation of one Tory MP who had been taking money from companies on whose behalf he had lobbied government, as well as the press outrage at the highly profitable international consultancies carried out by a former Tory Attorney General, it was announced earlier this month that both the leader of the Scottish Conservatives and the Conservative Leader of the House of Commons were to be investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog. After an abortive and embarrassing attempt to cover his colleagues’ tracks, the Prime Minister decided instead to back a campaign to ban MPs from exploiting their positions as corporate consultants and lobbyists. In the wake of Downing Street’s volte-face, a number of senior Conservatives (including a former health minister, a former Cabinet member, and a former party leader) all quit their second jobs.

Some may enter politics with an eye to their own personal profit; but, by contrast, some politicians are plainly sincere in their avowed goal to do good – to wield their public influence and institutional authority to make the world a better place. Despite appearances, these are sometimes the most dangerous of the lot. Britain’s Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, Tony Blair was an obvious enough example of this phenomenon. While the tone of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump’s political careers may seem symptomatic of their massively bloated egos, Blair’s narcissism took the form of an uncompromising Messiah complex. He famously once said that he felt the hand of history on his shoulder; but he eventually seemed to believe it was, in truth, the hand of God.

The greatest despots in the history of the world generally thought their missions were benevolent. They might have ended up murdering thousands of their political opponents or millions of those they perceived as ethnically inferior – or invading other sovereign nations in the name of peace, in order to eradicate imaginary threats – but they very rarely ever intended any actual harm. For the most part, they appeared to sincerely believe that they were on some kind of divine or destined mission to do good. Their power made them unstoppable; they had no cause to heed voices of caution or reason.

One person’s utopia is invariably another’s dystopia. My perfect world would be your nightmare. This may be the best argument that exists for the pedestrian processes of parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary democracy rarely reflects the direct will of the people in an effective or meaningful way; but, on most occasions, it very successfully deflects the ambitions of those hungry for the power to impose their visions upon the world without balance or check. What democracy gives us is the possibility of the triumph of reason, moderation, and compromise, the shift of power from the ideological extremes towards a common middle ground. Parliamentary democracy’s accompanying constitutional structures are often tacitly designed to afford influence to a broad range of voices and interests from across political, regional, ethnic, and religious spectra. Although this system does not always function quite as well as it might, it seems at least to reduce the likelihood of immediate lapses into national madness, barbarism, and atrocity.

The ancient Greek storyteller Aesop famously recounted the fable of the king of the frogs. Seeking leadership, a community of frogs beseeched the gods that they be granted a king. In his wisdom, the divine Zeus sent them a log of wood to rule over them. The frogs soon became bored of their new king and demanded another; and so, tired of their bickering, the lord Zeus sent them a snake. The snake promptly attacked and devoured them. The moral of the tale is evident. Better King Log than King Snake.

Progressives in the United Kingdom and the United States may bemoan the dreary time-serving careerists who have ended up leading their parties; but Aesop knew that there are far worse things than sleepy and soporific politicians. Those who dream of the inspiration of charismatic leadership should perhaps pause to consider the wisdom of being careful what they wish for.

Democracy is, of course, hardly perfect. As Winston Churchill supposed, ‘democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’.  The best we might claim for democracy is that it tends to score, on average, a lower rate of human rights abuses and avoidable humanitarian disasters than most dictatorships do. But sometimes, as they say, the turkeys vote for Christmas. Democracy after all led to the British Empire, the Third Reich, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump. When nations grow so assured of the unique and essential validity of their democratic values that they attempt to impose their systems of government upon the rest of the world – when they come to believe that democracy itself can be forced upon the people against their will – the outcomes tend to be catastrophic. Yet, conversely, it is its awareness of its imperfection that is perhaps democracy’s greatest strength.

Dictatorships come and go, but rarely persist. They even more rarely generate sustainable dynasties; and when they do, maintaining their authority through the exercise of cruelty and terror, those dynasties seem destined eventually to turn in on themselves in declining spirals of decadence and corruption. By contrast, it is democracy’s perennial precarity which makes it build solid foundations in consensus and compromise. Its endurance, based upon constitutional structures and social ideals rather than upon the magnetism of an absolute leader’s capricious personality, affords it a sense of continuity which makes patient and incremental progress, change and growth possible. Its processes of gradual evolution foster the stability of its societies and the safety of its subjects. 

There is an apocryphal belief that the Chinese once, according to an ancient tradition, cursed their enemies by wishing that they might ‘live in interesting times’ – for interesting times are turbulent and dangerous. The blessing and the legacy that democracies confer upon their citizens is the benefit of living through decades that remain tranquil, uneventful and secure. That might seem dull; but those who have survived more interesting times will testify that it is infinitely preferable to the alternative.

History is made ‘interesting’ by its King Snakes. Hitler slaughtered millions, Bush and Blair invaded Iraq, and Donald Trump attempted to overthrow American democracy. Puffed by the hubris that grows from absolute power, the ancient Roman emperor Caligula murdered his enemies, married his sister and appointed his favourite horse to a position in government. Boris Johnson’s crimes have been modest by comparison, but no less surreal.

When it emerged this month that Finland’s Prime Minister had visited a nightclub following a Covid contact, she immediately apologized. By contrast, as the revelations have mounted as to Mr. Johnson’s government’s multiple breaches of Covid-19 regulations at illicit social events last Christmas, Britain’s premier has repeatedly denied that any such parties and any such wrongdoings took place. Boris Johnson’s continuing attempts to reject clearly evidenced facts now seem rather more sinister than simply representing further proof of his capacity to bend the truth to a narrative of his convenience. This is a man who has come to believe his own PR, however ludicrous that spin may be. He appears to inhabit a world of his own fantasies. This privileged and pampered schoolboy’s version of reality has gone unchallenged for far too long, and he has become disconnected from the world in which the rest of us must live. His psychological trajectory powerfully demonstrates that those who seek power are commonly the most susceptible to its distorting, corrupting effects. He isn’t perhaps so much King Log or King Snake as he is King Chimp, a crazed ape with a Kong complex, the king of the swingers gushing forth his gibberish as he strains to sate his animal appetites and chucks his muck all over his gilded cage.

It has been said of Mr. Johnson that he appears to like the idea of being Prime Minister rather more than the actual experience of being Prime Minister. He clearly enjoys the kudos and the limelight but often seems distinctly uncomfortable with the effort and responsibility of office. Unable to face the weight of that responsibility, he now flails desperately around the truth, unable to grasp a decent hold on it, a man drowning in his own lies, lies which have become real to him, the only reality he knows, like Narcissus or Dorian Gray consumed by his own reflection, his own monstrously twisted image of himself.

On 14 December, ninety-nine of Mr. Johnson’s own MPs voted in parliament against a key part of his Covid-19 response strategy. Although that exceeded by twenty seats his majority in the House of Commons, his new regulations were passed thanks to opposition support. This rebellion within his own party was in part, as the BBC’s political editor put it, a ‘demonstration of the Tory anger with many recent mistakes’ made by the Prime Minister, from his eccentric speech to business leaders which diverted from his script onto the topic of a cartoon pig, through his mishandling of (and his personal complicity in) his party’s ongoing financial scandals, to what has become known as ‘Partygate’, the reports of a number of government Christmas parties last year which breached Covid rules and which key members of his administration have since been filmed joking about.

Three days later, on 17 December, the results of a by-election in a safe Tory seat (a seat that had remained Conservative for almost two centuries) saw the Liberal Democrats overturn a majority of nearly 23,000 votes gained in 2019 by Owen Paterson, the MP who had resigned from parliament in disgrace following the revelation of monies he had taken to lobby on behalf of private companies (which in turn had resulted in Boris Johnson’s embarrassing and failed attempt to dilute the rules on standards of conduct for MPs). The winning candidate heralded her victory by declaring that the electorate had ‘said loudly and clearly’ to the Prime Minister that ‘the party is over’.

There’s a sense that Boris Johnson has always viewed the burden of high office as something of a jamboree, a glorification and celebration of his own preening ego, the most prestigious and profitable way he might party the years away. The news that, during peak periods of the pandemic crisis, he and his cronies broke Covid regulations on multiple occasions to host parties – in government ministries, at Tory headquarters and in Downing Street itself – has doubtless shocked many but has perhaps surprised few. Even when, on 17 December, the country’s most senior civil servant, the Cabinet Secretary – who had been tasked by the government to investigate the party allegations – was obliged to step down from the inquiry after it was reported that his own office had also hosted a party last Christmas, this latest insane revelation appeared pretty much par for the course.

On 19 December, it was reported that one of Boris Johnson’s most trusted lieutenants, the Brexit minister Lord Frost, had resigned, citing concerns over the direction of government policy. By this point, it appeared that the Prime Minister’s authority was unravelling faster than a cheap scarf at the claws of an angry ocelot. The shameless superciliousness of his administration’s insistence upon its own unique version of reality reached a new level of farce when, on 20 December, Mr. Johnson’s team claimed that a photograph taken during lockdown of the Prime Minister, his wife, seventeen colleagues, a selection of cheeses and several bottles of wine in the garden of his Downing Street residence showed a ‘work meeting’.

These events have yet again exposed Mr. Johnson’s overweening arrogance, a sense that he and his friends are somehow above the law, that they operate beyond the reach of ordinary social expectations, ethics and morality, a belief in his own superhuman infallibility propagated by his perceived capacity (thanks to a large electoral mandate) to exercise power with minimal limitations or inhibitions. Absolute power may, as Lord Acton famously said, corrupt absolutely, but it sometimes also appears to corrupt with a certain degree of absurdity. Indeed, it has in this case transformed the UK’s Prime Minister into a duplicitous, prattling caricature of himself, a figure of mirthless fun who seems in imminent danger of turning the country he claims to love into the laughing stock of the entire world.