Woody Allen observed that 80% of success is just showing up. Boris Johnson does not subscribe to that particular wisdom. If there is a strategy to his election campaign, it would seem to be that the prime minister does his best work in absentia.
Our fearless would-be leader has cancelled bakery visits in Glastonbury and pub meet-and-greets in Rochester (citing security concerns about the five protesters outside). He sent his old man along in his place to the Channel 4 leaders’ climate debate and has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the gauntlet chucked in his direction by Andrew Neil. The Tories began this campaign calling Jeremy Corbyn chicken. They have gone quiet with that taunt now.
Johnson appears to have been particularly tricky to locate in his home constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. The empty chair in Neil’s BBC studio was mirrored on Thursday night at the planned hustings event in Yiewsley Baptist Church. Sitting prime ministers usually take a degree of pride in their commitment to their constituents – even Theresa May felt duty bound to face up to the heckles of hunt saboteurs in Maidenhead Methodist hall in 2017. Not this prime minister. The hustings debate had been rearranged in an effort to accommodate Johnson’s diary. He was a no-show anyhow.
The arrogance may yet bite him. One of the things being tested in this campaign is the idea that our leaders can pick and choose the kind of scrutiny they subject themselves to. The intention was well-illustrated on the final Saturday of campaigning in the Tory-leaning South Ruislip side of Johnson’s constituency, where the prime minister’s principal opponent in this campaign, Labour’s Ali Milani, was once again out on the stump with 40 or 50 volunteers, the first of his day’s three shifts.
While Milani was talking to the voters who could overturn the prime minister’s 5,034 majority, Johnson was 200 miles away saving penalties in a photo opportunity with the under-10 girls team from the Seashell Trust special needs charity in Cheadle, near Stockport. While Milani was presenting the arguments about a £165m shortfall in funding for Hillingdon hospitals trust and laying out exactly how every child in the local Newnham infant school was £500 worse off in terms of funding compared with five years ago, Johnson was trying to wriggle out of explaining why he had failed to publish the report into Russian interference in our politics.
In the course of this campaign, Milani, 25, who grew up in a council house in the constituency, claims that he and his team have rung nearly every doorbell in Uxbridge and South Ruislip; Saturday morning, an estate of solid semi-detached houses, most with two or three cars in the drive, represented his last knockings.
Johnson’s canvassing, meanwhile, seems to have been restricted to a walkabout with his ubiquitous father. (The pictures of that event reminded me of an interview I once did with Stanley Johnson when he recalled his efforts to be prospective parliamentary candidate in Ramsgate. “Mr Johnson, tell me one single thing you know about Ramsgate,” the panel asked. “I looked at this chap for a moment,” Johnson senior recalled, “and then had to say, ‘You know, I’m afraid you’ve got me there’.”)
There is little Milani doesn’t know about Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He went to local schools and has been treated in the local hospital. Speaking to his followers in a car park, wrapped in a Manchester United scarf and a Labour bobble hat, he apologised for his croaky voice and welcomed volunteers from far and near, including a couple who had flown from Copenhagen to be part of his campaign. “We need a 5% swing to make history!”
In the neighbouring streets, there is already an arms race of Christmas decorations. Sleighs and snowmen and reindeer perch on double-glazed porches. None of the Tory voters I speak to on the doorstep has set eyes on Johnson in this campaign, though some claimed, with undimmed faith, that it was perhaps just that he had called while they were out. “Like Santa,” I suggested.
Milani has not clapped eyes on his opponent this time around either, though they have some history: while he was at the local Brunel university in 2015, the Labour candidate organised student protests against Johnson. He jokes with his volunteers that victory on Thursday would not only make history – it would also be proof that poetic justice does exist: “A young local working-class Muslim defeating this prime minister!”
It’s fair to say that most of the voters Milani engages with in these streets are not persuaded of this particular irony, but there seems to be no great love for Johnson either. Derek Banforth is hosing down his black cab on his front drive. He’s always voted Tory, he says, but not this time. “Not after what Johnson did to taxi drivers when he was mayor: he made promises then rubbished us.” So will he be joining the movement to unseat him? “No I won’t vote at all,” he says. “I couldn’t vote for Corbyn either.”
That particular phrase dogs Milani’s progress. Wendy Townsend has retired from a career in palliative care. She tells me that she voted to leave the European Union “for the sake of my family”. She doesn’t trust Johnson with everything but trusts him, inevitably, “to get Brexit done”. Jag Patel, an IT consultant, listens attentively to what Milani has to say before suggesting that he wouldn’t necessarily vote for Johnson if he felt there was an alternative.
A few, though, are persuaded. At each street corner, Milani’s team regroups to tally the numbers of the converted. In search of his miracle, Milani can also now call on intergalactic help, he says. Lord Buckethead, also a candidate, has urged his supporters put Monster Raving Loony loyalties aside and vote tactically, because “some things are more important than electing an intergalactic space lord to parliament”. As Milani understands, they all count.
