Johnson, Fox and the search for freedom in a time of crisis
Commentators have always been too quick to compare the Prime Minister with his hero Winston Churchill. This is forgivable, on one level. Both belong to that rosy-cheeked, rotund tradition of clever, scruffy public figures. Both relied on their rhetorical powers to persuade and inspire and were equipped with charismatic characters that beguiled their followers and enraged their opponents. But, to me, the Prime Minister resembles another leading personality from out our rich lore of eccentric leaders – the Whig Statesmen Charles James Fox.
Johnson and Fox led unorthodox and at times controversial private lives. Both became the champions of anti-establishment movements, whilst being exponents of the status quo, and both appear to have put personal loyalties to friends over public loyalties to politics. But these days the Prime Minister has been forced to emulate Fox’s arch-rival William Pitt the Younger instead of his spiritual ancestor, Charles James Fox.
The English Whig dilemma of the 1790s in many ways encapsulates our current conundrum of preventing the spread of covid-19 while protecting and promoting an unimpeded course of freedom. Across the Channel, the French Revolution eliminated every traditional impediment to republicanism. The political legitimacy of monarchy was overtly undermined when the people of France saw fit to execute their King and Queen. English Whigs, who were naturally inclined towards a progressive programme that would reduce the influence of inherited authority, watched the bloodshed of Robespierre’s terror with an understandable contempt. The other danger of despotism growing at home to ostensibly prevent the spread of revolutionary fervour also irked those who subscribed to the ideals of the Glorious Revolution over a century before, when the godly designation of kings was rejected and the sovereignty of parliament in collaboration with the crown was established.
Freedom loving people had to choose between two evils: the tyranny of a government trying to control a crisis and that crisis spreading and claiming more causalities. Pitt was Prime Minister when concern of a domestic insurrection began to determine government decision-making. He dispersed public gatherings and suspended habeas corpus, which provided extraordinary powers to judges to punish those who seemed to threaten the stability of the state. This intrusion on the civil liberties of British people provoked Fox in the Commons. He argued that Pitt “had uniformly pursued the plan of throwing all power into the hands of the crown, to spread a false alarm of danger from one quarter to cover a real danger from another.” That other danger was of course an insidious encroachment of individual independence for those who did not adhere to the values of the government.
This week the Prime Minister articulated his reluctance to impinge on our civil liberties: “Mr Speaker, no British government would wish to stifle our freedoms in the ways that we have found necessary this year.” When he was Mayor of London, he often described himself as a “liberal internationalist” and espoused a whiggish sense of historical progress, but it is the supposed preservation of liberal values which has unified one camp against the government (those who wish to see a relaxation of protective measures). The opposing argument of a need for even more rigorous safeguards to prevent a proliferation of covid-19 deprives the government of much needed support. The Prime Minister now nervously walks a tight rope between these two divergent beliefs because in principle he agrees with both premises – the annihilation of this virus and the unconditional conservation of freedom.
Like Boris, Fox loved the adulation of live audiences. He saw the convocation of free people as an example of collective emancipation. As he once said in the Commons: “It is the energy, the boldness of a man’s mind, which prompts him to speak, not in private but in large and popular assemblies, that constitutes, that creates in a state, the spirit of freedom.” The infringement on citizens to convene as they choose must disturb this libertarian premiership. In their previous careers, many of the Prime Minister’s top advisers advocated a new emphasis on freedom in political discourse. The berserkers of an ideological vanguard never like to be accused of being conveniently hypocritical or disingenuous in their views. This incarnation of government is itching to liberate but these egregious circumstances have arrested their instincts to reform.
Another libertarian, but of an entirely different ilk, the former Labour leader, Michael Foot, once wrote of Fox “he was reared in the narrowest of oligarchies and lived to enlarge the meaning of freedom for all Englishmen and women thereafter.” I’m sure it’s an epitaph our present Prime Minister and his team aspire towards, but the occlusion of sudden obstacles has made this goal a much harder one to score. Sadly, this latter-day Fox has fallen into a proverbial pit. As soon as he finds his freedom, the people of Britain will surely find theirs.