The Princess and The Potato: Two columns — one about Kate, the other boosting ‘Boris’ — show how blatant briefing can be…
James Forsyth and Dan Wootton are both gossip columnists pretending to be more.
It’s only October 1st but with the stories about “Boris Johnson saving Christmas” coming around earlier every year, my mind has drifted to pantomime. And in the boo-hiss, call-and-response world of British media, there are few dames as dubious as desperate Dan Wootton and hard-working volunteer government spin doctor James Forsyth.
Winchester and Oxford-educated Forsyth, husband to hack-turned-government-flack Allegra Stratton, best friend of Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Spectator Political Editor and Times columnist, would, I suspect, not appreciate the comparison to Wootton. After all, the awful antipodean — who first plied his trade in the UK at the News of the World before moving to The Sun and talkRadio then coming to rest at GB News and MailOnline — is a resolutely tabloid figure.
But whatever thin veneer of unjustified respectability Forsyth derives from appearing under The Spectator and Times mastheads, he and Wootton serve the same function: They are gossip columnists who gussy up tittle-tattle as analysis, frequently acting as stenographers for lines dictated by the powerful, whether that’s their proprietors, the government, or the monarchy.
Today offers an example of this tendency from both: In The Times, Forsyth writes Boris Johnson the Gaullist puts action over ideas while Wootton offers up another desperate piece about Harry and Meghan for MailOnline (Why Kate can thank Meghan for her metamorphosis from slightly-dowdy Duchess into a new royal superstar who's leaving her wannabe sister-in-law in the shade). And both men, in their own way, write fan fiction for their faves.
Looking forward to the Conservative Party conference — ComicCon for people who unconvincingly cosplay as humans or, in the case of Jacob Reese-Mogg, the Childcatcher if he went to Eton — Forsyth writes:
This weekend, the Tory tribe will gather for the first time since winning their biggest majority in 30-odd years. You’d expect it to be a celebratory affair, one that would put the champagne supply chain in danger. But the Conservatives are going into this conference in a rather muted mood.
In part, this reflects what is happening on forecourts around the country. It is hard to be celebratory (and would be politically foolish to be so) with motorists struggling to fill up their cars. Even if the government doesn’t appear — yet — to be paying a political price for the crisis, it is no time for back-slapping.
… the muted mood in Manchester is also because the Tories are wondering what they are for. At the last election, the answer was clear: getting Brexit done and stopping Jeremy Corbyn. This gave them a sense of purpose. As normal politics begins to resume post-pandemic, many are not so sure what the party’s new mission is. Downing Street insists it is “levelling up”, but many Tories are still not quite sure what that means — or worry that it is a proxy for taxing the south to spend in the north.
Even in a series of what could be seen as “scene-setting” paragraphs, you can see the dread hand of what Slavoj Žižek would call — with a disgusting slurp — “ideology”. It’s pure propaganda to pretend that the Tories won’t whoop it up in Manchester, with not just a surfeit of Champagne but other Michael Gove-friendly substances, or that people for whom braying is a treasured cultural practice won’t indulge in it heartily.
Talk of “normal politics” is a tactic too; it suggests that things are returning to a “boring” state (which never existed) and that most people can stop paying attention and simply vote Tory when the time comes. When Forsyth — who played his own major part in the effort — writes of the sense of purpose that the Conservative Party got from “stopping Jeremy Corbyn”, he makes it sound like they took down a city-stomping monster rather than a mildly ineffectual allotment-loving democratic socialist.
And if “many Tories are still not quite sure what [levelling up] means” they join the vast majority of the world, outside of newspaper columnists willing to pretend that the hollow slogan actually represents real policy.
As he so often does, Forsyth writes a fan-fiction Boris Johnson which bears very little relation to the man we can all see slumping around in the country in high-vis and hard hats, burbling ‘boosterism’. He continues:
Boris Johnson doesn’t suffer from existential angst about what the Tory party is for. He’s eight points ahead in the latest YouGov poll for The Times and is more comfortable with an activist government than many of his colleagues.
So, Boris Johnson is not a man who makes it up as he goes along, buffeted by his desire to be popular and to please the right-wing press, then? No. He’s the Buddha of bullshit, enlightened and becalmed as the food runs short and the fuel pumps run dry. And Forsyth isn’t done:
One cabinet minister calls [Johson] “the great Gaullist”, and there is something to that description. Johnson is relaxed with the idea of a vigorous state, is a fierce defender of sovereignty and a believer in British exceptionalism.
Like Charles de Gaulle, Johnson is also a pragmatist, an adherent of what the French general and president called the “doctrine of circumstances”. His is not a set world view, more an approach.
This is laughable stuff but the laughs it elicits are hollow mirthless snorts. If Boris Johnson — who Keir Starmer, too afraid of a real fight, called “not a bad man but a trivial man” in his Labour Party conference speech — is any Gaul, he’s a grim mix of the two chiefs in the Asterix books, the bumptious Vitalstatistix and the greedy opportunist Whosmoralsarelastix.
With that ludicrous comparison out of the way, Forsyth gets to the point of the piece: Rolling the pitch for Boris Johnson’s party conference speech next week. He writes — with the tone and tenor of a press release — that:
Downing Street is very struck by research showing that voters hate the idea of post-Covid inertia and want government to get on with things to make up for lost time. Johnson therefore will use his conference speech to argue that instead of simply picking up where we left off in 2019, he is determined to address the big issues exposed, or exacerbated, by the pandemic.
He will point to his social care policy as an example of how he is prepared to take the tough decisions necessary to tackle problems that have gone unresolved for too long.
I understand that Johnson will name health inequalities as one of the great challenges he wants to tackle. He views it as part of his levelling-up agenda. He is very struck by the fact that male life expectancy in Blackpool is 10 years lower than in Westminster.
There is no analysis here; it is merely a recitation of government lines, an act of end-of-the-pier ventriloquism with Forsyth as the haunted dummy, attempting to persuade us that Johnson is very serious this time:
[His] speeches tend not to get written until the last minute. Not for him the David Cameron approach of starting the conference speech-writing process as soon as parliament breaks up for the summer. But in a sign of the significance he attaches to this address, the writing process is further along than usual. He used the flights to and from the United Nations general assembly to make progress on the speech.
And then there’s the floating of the lines that speech will include:
Johnson will make much of the support the government offered during Covid. Furlough has kept unemployment far lower than people expected at the beginning of the crisis, and the Tories will be keen to secure credit for that. No 10 also thinks there were announcements made during the pandemic that nobody really noticed — £12 billion into a ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution, for instance — because attention was on the virus, so we should expect a bit of policy recycling.
Whatever Forsyth claims, the Tory Party isn’t remotely confused about what it stands for: It stands for itself, its donors1, and remaining in power. The only (almost) honest line in Forsyth’s piece is…
[Johnson’s] is not a set world view, more an approach.
… but where he wants to imply flexibility and pragmatism, I see opportunism, incompetence and self-preservation.
Charles de Gaulle was a complex and often deeply unpleasant person but he bestrode French politics, rightly talked about by his old political rival, Francois Mitterand, in the same breath as Napoleon and Charlemagne. De Gaulle is a huge historical figure. Boris Johnson will be a tragi-comic footnote, the Britpop to Winston Churchill’s Beatles, a cheap copy of a cheap copy.
Head into the comments beneath Forsyth’s piece and it becomes clear that a lot of Times readers are beyond tired of his game:
Stephen Collins
This is an article of the Tory Party, by the Tory Party, for the Tory Party.Peter Armitage
I think the bottom line (in italics) should read - James Forsyth is a total crawlerDavid B
Are we supposed to believe this stuff? Boris is concerned about life expectancy in Blackpool? Does he know where Blackpool is? Maybe a potential launching site for one of his galactic rockets? Could be a big hit at the pleasure beach.
And on the subject of total crawlers2, let’s move on to the second Widow Wankey, Dan Wootton, who manages to turn Kate (aka Duchess of Cambridge) going to a film premiere into an opportunity to dump on Meghan (aka the Duchess of Sussex)3.
Wootton starts the piece already in the fifth gear of fuckery writing:
With the all-regal glamour of a modern-day Grace Kelly, a sequinned and resplendent Duchess of Cambridge swept down the red carpet at the world premiere of No Time to Die in jaw-dropping fashion.
What the hell happened to the lovely-but-just-a-little-frumpy Kate?
Even James Bond himself Daniel Craig struggled to maintain his composure, uttering with his understated British sensibility: 'You look jolly lovely.' (Translation: Va-va-voom!)
Gone was the conservative Sloane Ranger in dull outfits designed to keep her OFF the front pages and ensure she would never overshadow the Hollywood stars or other royals at whatever event she was attending.
Welcome to the world Confident Catherine – an altogether new public figure, created by four years of toil, trauma and, yes, tiara tantrums.
A. Modern. Day. Grace. Kelly.
The Duchess of Cambridge’s golden dress at the premiere (dubbed “a Christmas tree with ageing sequins” in yesterday’s Mail by haunted broomstick Liz Jones) was… fine. It was exactly the sort of dress someone might wear to a premiere but for Wootton, desperate for another hook for an article slagging off Meghan, Kate had to be “resplendent”.
It’s part of a renewed press campaign from the Cambridges. In yesterday’s Sun — Wootton’s former home — pictures of Kate and William holding a spider and a snake respectively were accompanied by speech bubbles that read, “I think I’ll call her Meghan” and “…this must be Harry.”
The story about the royal couple’s visit to Derry — stubbornly called Londonderry by The Sun — had absolutely nothing to do with William’s younger brother and his wife but the paper forced the connection in the most snide way.
Wootton’s column continues, like Forsyth’s, with lines given to him by people ‘close to’ its subject(s). He writes:
Friends and advisers of Kate believe the thoughtfully planned appearance at the highly anticipated new Bond movie is the culmination of a project designed to quietly elevate the princess from cautious wife to potential saviour of the monarchy.
This is classic Wootton stuff: Stenography on behalf of the Cambridges in service of slagging off Meghan and Harry when the Mail, which continually claims it doesn’t want to hear from the Sussexes, is desperate for another story about them. Wootton, whose columns read like someone threw alphabetti spaghetti at the side of fridge, goes on:
I agree with Kate's allies who have no doubt she will soon be regarded as one of the most iconic women in the world – mature, graceful and every bit a future Queen, while still being daring and stylish when the occasion requires.
But there's an intriguing reality behind this transformation that no one will acknowledge publicly: None of it would have been possible without a certain Meghan Markle.
Kate, royal insiders insist, would never have had the confidence to make such a high-stakes appearance BM (that's Before Meghan).
For someone who cannot stop going on about the Royal Family, Wootton doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. Kate will not be Queen when/if Prince William finally makes it to the throne, she’ll be Queen Consort. Similarly, what Wootton calls a “butterfly-like emergence” is quite literally just a rich woman putting on an expensive dress and some slightly more showy makeup.
Like Forsyth, Wootton repeats the lines given to him uncritically, albeit with an added streak of bitterness and cruelty. He writes:
When she saw the lengths Meghan was going to in order to destabilise and unsettle the monarchy that she had willingly agreed to devote her life, a previously hidden determined streak emerged from Kate.
'She knew she was going to have to up her game – and she did. Now she's a royal Rockstar – everything Meghan should have been,' a senior royal insider tells me.
… Every major US fashion magazine, including Meghan's favourites like Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Vanity Fair, are battling to get Kate for a cover shoot, although she is so far refusing the offers.
And just as Forsyth gives us the fanfic Boris, so too Wootton tries to persuade us a rather unremarkable woman — elevated to celebrity by marriage to a former royal heartthrob who increasingly resembles a novelty painted egg — is, in fact, a “rockstar”.
To sell that hyperbolic line, Wootton has to put Meghan down. He writes…
Meghan's fashion was widely criticised as crass, as she donned an eye wateringly expensive kaftan-like designer suit to read her own critically panned picture book at one of New York's most underprivileged schools and a succession of ludicrously weather-inappropriate outfits.
… attacking a woman who only gave birth to her second child four months ago with a series of fashion critiques that he claims have been made “widely” while quoting no one but himself. He also pretends that Kate’s outfits are not also “eye wateringly expensive”.
This cartoonish criticism of Meghan makes his relentless praise of Kate look even more ludicrous. The only thing stopping Wootton’s column from being the most ridiculous piece of royal coverage this week is that The Sun yesterday placed a picture of David Beckham in his prime delivering a free kick next to a photo of the Duchess of Cambridge with the caption: “Kate kicks a football just like England great David Beckham.”
Wootton waging war on behalf of the most boring of the Windsors and Forsyth playing booster for Boris Johnson are not outliers. The British media is full of columnists who play these transparent games on behalf of their friends and favourites but Forsyth and Wootton4 are simply two of the most embarrassing sycophants. “Oh no, they’re not!” Oh yes, they are.
Boris Johnson just elevated one to the Lords to stick him in government after his attempt to be elected failed.
I’m mildly hungover here, not all transitions can be peanut butter smooth.
Extremely normal to be writing about a pair of allegedly feuding duchesses in 2021 rather than 1821.
Sounds like a tailor’s staffed exclusively by desiccated old men who spend too long on your inside leg.
Hi Mic, regarding your first line: do you think Johnson’s obsession with Saving Christmas is purely for tabloid consumption or is it more than that (i.e. his own hobbyhorse)? Last winger he, at a conservative estimate, got an unnecessary 20,000 people killed in his effort to ‘save Christmas’. This year he’s been creating all these visas expiring on 24 Dec, focused purely on delivery drivers and…turkey pluckers. And there’s been quite a few stories on government efforts to secure turkeys in Brazil, France and elsewhere. What is going on? Don’t they have bigger fish to fry? Living abroad it seems insane, but is it rational in terms of themes tabloids like to write about?