This is circulating a lot, and it's interesting, one of the best of the genre of (ex-?) Tory attacks on Johnson. Stewart admits at times being charmed or disarmed or even admiring him; and one of the unstated premises of the piece is that that's a pretty universal phenomenon. >> https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1324062567023566849

Is it, though? I wonder if it Stewart ever reflects on what makes him prone to being charmed by it, whether it's a thing that can be helped. He identifies it well by suggesting it's like you're being recruited into a Johnsonian conspiracy - you're in on his bullshit too.

And the truth you therefore share is that it's all bullshit really, all a con, every political position is really taken for personal advantage and so on. And yes, really Johnson's claims at self-knowledge - claims of akrasia and so on - are part of that fraudulent posture too.

What I'm wondering about here is a kind of internal resistance to this attempt to charm. I don't underestimate the true and strange fact of political charisma - having once been transfixed as a teenager by Blair's odd Demon Headmaster stare when intending to argue with him.

I don't know Johnson. But I've met lots of men like him. Nowhere more so than at university: lazy, entitled, didn't do the reading and wanted you to know it, timewasters bullshitters, frauds with some little skill at language. I don't find them charming. I find them disgusting.

And, yes, a preponderance of them were privately educated and upper class. I don't think it's an accident. I don't admire it. I'm not charmed by it. And I don't think you have to be either. It's worth asking why, if you are.