From Partygate to the Capitol riots, it’s the image that sticks with the public

What happens when administrations built on chaos and bashing the ‘liberal media elite’ lose touch with the salt-of-the-earth people? We’re finding out on both sides of the Atlantic, writes Holly Baxter

Both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump have been guilty of that which they have sought to accuse their rivals (PA Archive)

When I woke to a news notification that Boris Johnson was facing a vote of no confidence in the UK, I was surprised. I was also eager to find out more – but I was the only person I knew who was. In the US, the news was reported but barely registered, even among the most politically engaged people I know. It didn’t make it into “5 Things”, CNN’s daily newsletter cataloguing the five biggest news items of the day (mass shootings, baby formula and congressional hearings did instead.) And although The New York Times featured news about the vote on the front page of its website as the afternoon went on and time counted down toward the vote, most Americans I spoke to didn’t understand. What was a vote of no confidence, they asked me. Was it done by the electorate? Was it all MPs? Was it just his party? Why now? What’s “Partygate”? What’s his approval rating?

Of course, British readers will know the answers to these questions. The answer to that final question was the one that shocked the Americans I spoke to: an approval rating of 26 per cent is pretty damn awful whichever way you look at it. Here in the US, Biden’s team are panicking about his own approval rating, which is at 41 per cent. That’s seen as directly detrimental to the upcoming midterm elections. When Americans hear Johnson’s lowly percentage, they ask fewer questions about why his own party might want to publicly humiliate him – even if Boris doesn’t have an election this year (or next) to worry about.

Partygate is hard to understand without context. Americans remember that California governor Gavin Newsom survived a similar scandal, when he was found to have dined indoors at an upscale restaurant while the rest of his state was in lockdown. But Newsom is not the president, and he didn’t insult voters’ intelligence by lying to them. And each country has its own line in the sand: in July 2020, New Zealand’s health minister resigned in disgrace after taking his family to the beach during a local lockdown, despite the fact that the entire country was still experiencing zero transmission rates. It’s clear that Covid breaches can bring a governmental figure down, but usually only when you’ve pushed the envelope too far in other contexts as well.