The Prime Minister’s language about Savile and the ‘deep state’ make our politics worse: more sensationalist and less connected to reality
July 20, 2022 3:33 pm(Updated 3:39 pm)
Boris Johnson, at the dispatch box this week during the confidence vote debate, told the House that “the leader of the opposition and the deep state will prevail in its plot to haul us back into alignment with the EU as a preclude to our eventual return”. While the sentiment might be Johnson’s usual fare about protecting Brexit, the specific language is deeply troubling and shows just how little the Prime Minister cares about the cost of his political point scoring.
The phrase “deep state” gained its contemporary political weight from Donald Trump’s frequent pronouncements that the “deep state” was working to thwart his presidency. The “deep state” is loosely described by him and his supporters as liberal networks of the unaccountably institutionally powerful, mostly in the Government and the intelligence services, but with connections to business, tech and elsewhere. These assertions became particularly beloved of the adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory: which holds that Trump, a shadowy figure named Q, and a handful of others are fighting the deep state, which is controlled by elite paedophiles, for little less than the soul of America.
It matters when powerful people say things and it matters what they say. We like to think that our political system is separate to, and a little more genteel than its American equivalent. You can argue that point, but as has been deftly noted elsewhere, we nonetheless import much of our political language and discourse from the States. Donald Trump was the most powerful man in the world, he railed against the deep state and in doing so he dictated the foremost meaning of that term, around which whole cultures of belief sprang up. It was to these cultures that Boris Johnson spoke from the chamber this week, and when the Prime Minister speaks to you, you feel heard.
Johnson has form when it comes to this specific kind of sensationalist untruth. At PMQs earlier this year, he told the House that Keir Starmer had failed to prosecute the paedophile Jimmy Savile during the Labour leader’s time as Director of Public Prosecutions. Conspiracy theories about Starmer’s complicity in covering up the Savile case have circulated for years; it hits all the right QAnon-esque narrative beats of institutional complicity in paedophilia, with a rotten power garnered from wrapping itself around real and horrific events. In the days after the Prime Minister legitimated this theory in the House of Commons, the leader of the opposition was mobbed by crowds shouting, “paedophile protector”. He later clarified that Starmer “had nothing to do personally with those decisions”.
Boris Johnson made his name as a journalist, and in some ways, he was good at it. He was the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the early 1990s, and his hyperbolic reports about EU over regulation and waste bolstered a then comparatively nascent Eurosceptic movement back in the UK. He clearly retains an ear for ideas and language that can catch the public imagination. What he clearly has never had, however, is any regard for the consequences of the ideas he promulgates or the language he uses. It was true when he was fired from The Times for making up quotes; it was true when he lied his way through Partygate; it is true now.
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Boris Johnson does not, I think, believe these things. He does not believe meaningfully in a liberal elite deep state. This is because there is little evidence that Johnson meaningfully believes in anything beyond his own personal gratification. His skill is language, not sincerity. Throughout his career, he has grabbed at what is available to him, at whatever has potency.
To a degree, however, his belief is a moot point; he still said it, being who he is, standing where he stood. Online extremism expert Dr Tim Squirrell of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank is clear about the potential harms of the Prime Minister’s words this week: “Politicians, especially those in power and with the bully pulpit at their disposal, have the ability to give legitimacy to ideas, words and concepts”, he says. “That power needs to be wielded carefully, and invoking the language of conspiracy theories like the ‘deep state’ is far from a careful use of that power. It provides a veneer of acceptability to dangerous ideas that cause real damage to real people’s lives.”
The Prime Minister’s language about Savile and the “deep state” makes our politics worse: more sensationalist and less connected to reality. It damages trust in democracy too. After all, if you are being told that it is all in the hands of the deep state rather than those you have elected, why bother voting at all?
It also makes politics less safe for those who are involved in it, from staff to activists to the politicians themselves. The most disappointing part of it all is that I doubt Boris Johnson cares.
Morgan Jones is a writer and a contributing editor of Renewal Journal