Boris Johnson: So long and thanks for all the protest songs

In 2019, I wrote a poem about Boris Johnson leading up to the general election. Here is one last performance as he sods off into millionaire martyrdom.

Like me, I’m sure many people first came across Johnson through his notoriety on the panel show Have I Got News For You, where his bumbling out-of-touchness was seen as all part of the quaint, British class structure. Some speeches of Johnson show his more diplomatic, ministerial side but, more often than not he relies on performing his pomposity while arm-waving like each meaty hand is holding a Union Flag. So songs about Johnson play to his type. They indulge his bravado. Whilst Cameron’s songs are bitter and sharper, anti-Boris tunes often play on a daftness to outmatch or undercut Johnon’s own court-jester-turned-king brand. For example, Raised By Owls paint Johnson as a hideous Dark Lord bloodsucker on ‘Boris Johnson, Vampire Of London.’ ‘Never watch a documentary about Boris Johnson’ is a comedy song by Jay Foreman about Johnson invading his nightmares.

For the 2016 EU Referendum, The Iain Duncan Smiths released Borrissey, a parody album full of The Smiths and Morrissey songs reworked. For example, ‘Big Mouth Strikes Again’ became about when Johnson insulted members of a Sikh Temple by celebrating alcohol tariffs. ‘Half A Kenyan’ (based on The Smiths song ‘Half A Person’) is about Johnson suggesting Barack Obama’s heritage drove the President towards anti-British sentiment.

Commoners Choir’s song ‘Boris Johnson’ hums that his head, and hair, comes in handy as a mop, and opens with a quote from former Conservative MP Matthew Parris. Parris wrote an article against Johnson, warning: “Somebody has to call a halt to the gathering pretence that if only you’re sufficiently comical in politics you can laugh everything off … creeping ambition in a jester’s cap is not funny.”

Johnson was the subject of songs whilst he was the actual mayor of actual London. Steve White & The Protest Family’s song ‘Have I Got News For You’ is about the disbelief a million Londoners could vote for Johnson as mayor. They sang about Johnson’s attempts to take on Bob Crow and the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMT) on ‘Bad Day For Bojo’:

“Mayor Johnson is not a man Who cares much for promises Or for ticket offices Or passengers or staff He wants to axe a thousand jobs A thousand livelihoods he'll rob While ruffling his hair Oh my, he's such a laugh.”

The “ticket offices” line comes after Johnson’s 2008 mayoral election manifesto promised there would be manned ticket offices at every Underground station. By 2016, Johnson had closed all of London’s Underground ticket offices and cut 900 jobs. He wasted more than £940m on architectural projects that never saw a brick laid, including sweatbox buses, a novelty 'dangleway' and fantasy bridges. RainMen’s ‘Trash Song’ laments he can’t shrug off disgrace like John: “What I’d give to be Boris Johnson / To walk away from my mistakes.”

On 25th April 2019, Stormzy released ‘Vossi Bop,’ which became the rapper’s first number one single. It includes the line “I could never die / I’m Chuck Norris / Fuck the Government / Fuck Boris.” This was adopted by the internet with the hashtag #FuckBoris. Two months later, Theresa May announced her resignation and we all knew that the arch-Brexiteer fan-favourite Boris Johnson would inevitably finally become PM.

I asked a Conservative Party member why he was supporting Boris Johnson in the upcoming leadership contest. He believed that if May had remained as leader for any longer, she’d have been the last ever Conservative prime minister, seen as inefficient and despised by the electorate and her own party. He felt Johnson had the charisma and the drive to do what needed to be done. Clearly, his fellow members agreed and Johnson became Conservative leader, and by default Prime Minister, in July 2019.

Johnson’s long history as a journalist provided a seam of sexist, racist and homophobic articles from across his career. It became a widely-circulated example of Johnson’s bigotry, which was dismissed and excused by his supporters. Captain SKA collaborated with Rubi Dan and used this term for their song ‘Fuck Boris’: “Lying and dishonest / This racist idiotic / Things are getting toxic / That's why we hashtag - fuck Boris!” When challenged on the BBC’s Question Time, Johnson refused to apologise, and replied: “I defend my right to speak out.” Johnson claimed “I have written many millions of words in my life as a journalist and I have genuinely never intended to cause hurt or pain to anybody.”

Even if Johnson writing within the pages of the Spectator and the Telegraph genuinely thought his shock-journalism was toothless and without harm, his reluctance to acknowledge and apologise for his misjudgement still marks out his arrogance. Johnson represents some of the worst stink of privilege. Whilst politicians campaigned during the 2021 local elections to redistribute wealth and address the climate crisis, Johnson hopped around the country in a £45 million private jet that uses £1,600 of fossil fuel an hour. The jet was registered in the Isle of Man (a tax haven) in the name of JC Bamford Excavators Ltd, based in Staffordshire. The chairman of JCB is the multi-billionaire Tory peer and donor Lord Bamford.

Commie Faggots go through a list of Johnson’s racist lanuage on ‘Boris Johnson Is A Racist.’ The list also featured as samples on dance-rock band Cabinet of Millionaires’ ‘Stop The Coup,’ a song released in protest to Johnson’s illegal proroguing of Parliament. John D Revelator also references some of Johnson’s disgusting language on ‘Boris Johnson Blues’. The song uses a traditional acoustic blues style, and employs the trope that there’s a mystery around Johnson’s children: “even he don’t know how many kids he’s got.” For years, Wikipedia listed Johnson’s children as “at least six.”

Billy Bragg would created a fresh version of ‘Waiting For The Great Leap Forward’: “No one knows how many children Boris Johnson sired Or can remember how many times his lies have got him fired But I can tell you this mate, I know how this will end When he does to Britain what he’s done to his ex-girlfriend.”

Diss track ‘OK! TORY’ by damienfarron & NIKHEDONIA was released the day of the 2019 general election. It starts with a clip of Boris Johnson from 2012 at the opening of the London Olympic velodrome. In a frankly bizarre speech, Johnson waxes lyrical about the building having been apparently “lovingly rubbed with rhubarb.” Seriously, stop reading this and go watch the clip right now. Then rewatch and keep an eye on the two young people standing either side of Johnson, one awkwardly fiddling with a small flag, the other’s smirking bemused facial expressions, channelling how many people feel about ‘Bojo’.

♫ Solidarity forever / All for one and one for all ♫ - Is Billy Elliot a Thatcherite?

Solidarity with everyone this May Day, for fellow workers around the world across borders.

I've been a bit quiet on this blog, mainly because I've been working. But I have been still working on a podcast with Natalie Quatermass about art and activism, which you can listen to here. There's some really insightful, and funny, conversations with poets and theatre-makers and Trade Unionists.

I sat down this May Day to watch a good ol' Leftie film, contemplating Pride or Bread and Roses, but went for the live version of the Billy Elliot musical which has been on my shelf for months. If 'riotporn' is a term coined for lefties who love sitting safe and secure at home applauding footage of riots and violent clashes with police, most of Billy Elliot has a similar we're-all-in-this-together indulgence for a romanticised struggle of the labouring man against the powers-that-be. I was in tears twice in the first 8 minutes, suckered in by the cries of "solidarity!" Don't get me wrong, I love both but it did make me wonder about the theatrical manipulation to 'sell' the opening act, rather than inspire action.

Solidarity forever

The song 'Solidarity' from the musical is an absolute hammer of a song, though the staging does frame the police and the strikers as two opposing factions like a Capulet vs Montague face-off, each with their "fuck you" verses and chess board staging. This is often a liberal's trap of 'both sideism'. It's worth remembering one side had the massive resources of a militarised State, and the other were normal men being starved. The Billy Elliot musical is ultimately a commercial product. It may had sympathies with the NUM, the strikers and their communities but some producers somewhere made a whole tonne of cash. The venue where the musical was filmed pay Front of House staff £10.15 an hour, whilst the Real Living Wage for London is £11.05. Once the heart-pumping refrain of "We're proud to be working class / Solidarity forever" has faded, I can't help but ask how this commodification of the class struggle into a ticket-selling product really helps the former mining communities, or those being battered by modern captialism.

It's about our history, it's about our rights

When Billy's Dad, Jackie, scabs in order to get the money for Billy's school fees, his older son, Tony, is distraught. Yes there's a streak of homophobia throughout these characters, but Tony's issue is also ideological. "It isn't about one kid, it's all of us, it's everybody's chance!" he sing-bites to his Dad. "it's everybody's future, it's everybody's past, it's not about a bairn who wants to dance!" For Jackie, he desperately wants to give Billy a chance to escape his working class life and 'do better', egged on by the dance teacher Sandra who calls the village dying. There's the edge of Thatcherism. Thatcher wanted to crush the miners and the Unions not only to economically make the case for a privatised nation at the whim of the richest and the markets, but she wanted to prove anyone could flourish under captialism. Thatcher wanted to break the cycle of men born into mining families working in mines until their songs take over in the name of social mobility and give everyone a chance to do better. Of course it means sod those left behind, sod community, sod, solidartiy and celebrates the I'm-alright-Jack mentality of 1980s individualism.

And this for me is a difficult angle for Billy Elliot, both musical and film. Billy is given a chance to 'get out', to 'do better' in a notably bourgeoisie artform at the London-based Royal Ballet School. Sod the rest of the working class, sod the struggle and sod his family...Billy can climb the ladder. Jackie says "He could be a star for all we know." It's also telling Tony has been dressed in a Che Guevara t-shirt, he represents a more ideological radical Left-wing, one the show seeeeeems to be saying: "Know your place." In the end, Jackie doesn't scab, and it's up to the united community to give "all that we can give."

Flying like a bird

It's a tried-and-tested 'boy done good' story, the hero who strives against the odds, almost a Luke Skywalker or mythic King Arthur. Compare to Brassed Off where the band are all shoulder-to-shoulder at the end, or The Full Monty where the characters are still mostly trapped in their post-Thatcher world, just maybe with a few quid in their wallets after the show.

Now, I'm not saying in the context of the story, Billy should give up on his dreams. I fundamentally believe ballet (and opera, theatre and all forms of art) should be for anyone. If young Billy wants to do ballet, there should be a ballet school in County Durham. If you're sick of your life, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. But there's something strangely off about a show rooted in anti-Thatcher characters ironically pooling all their energy to one individual. The bitter kick is that a scab comes and gives Billy the necessary funds, which seems the boy scrambling on the floor to desperately gather the notes together under a Tory propaganda 'Labour isn't working' banner. Naturally, Tony is broken. Though he is eventually supportive of Billy, he does bitterly remind us all "we can't all be fucking dancers." I actually booed in the scene where dance teacher Sandra advises Billy to never look back and start afresh. That would be the ultimate Thatcherite victory.

A core principle of socialism and working class solidarity is (as the song says): "all for one, and one for all." I'd like to read Billy Elliot as a story how capitalism fucks over the working class and casts us money-making tools. Whole villages are ground down, made extinct as dinosaurs at the mercy of the State. The final scene sees Billy isolated as his community "all go together" back to work, into the mine, unified faceless blots of light in the clanking dark. But a Tory could watch this film and cheer on Billy's 'escape'. They might see the scene of the striker's cheering on Thatcher's death at the start of the second half painting these characters as the bad guys, especially with their frequent homophobia. I think the push-pull between these stances is interesting for these characters living in dire circumstances, though sometimes the messaging did make me squirm in my seat.

It's made me relfect on working in the arts, a middle class institution, and what it means to come from a working class background, still have fuck all money and try to be true to my roots, values and anger. Solidarity forever.