When world compares world leaders

Alastair Campbell, The Independent

Like a lot of people, I have taken advantage of Covid-enforced home confinement to do a bit of online learning. After hearing me for so long lament the loss of so much of my German, my partner Fiona signed me up for a Goethe-Institut course.

Four decades ago, I studied French and German to degree level, but whereas I have never stopped using my French, my German has lapsed badly. I can do speeches and interviews reasonably in French; the last time I tried to do one in German, my head switched instantly to French, and I was all over the place, or “durcheinander”, as I was once able to say without looking it up.

Outside the course itself, Andrea also advises listening to German podcasts, and reading newspapers and magazines, so yesterday I found myself reading Der Spiegel, and was drawn to an article headlined “Die Albtraumtänzer”. The first section of my new course having been about sleep and dreams, I immediately recognised “albtraum”, which means nightmare, and I had hung on to enough from student days to remember that “tänzer” means dancers.

I was further drawn to the sub-head, which named the four people it had in mind for this interesting label of nightmare dancers — Trump, Putin, Johnson, Bolsanaro.

Der Spiegel is a centre-left magazine, and I guessed from the byline picture that the author, Sascha Lobo, was also on the left. Of course first impressions can be deceptive, but you don’t see that many right-wing commentators with a spiky Mohican hairstyle. I learned that his area of speciality is the social impact of technological change.

The “Albtraumtänzer” headline was a play on words on an insult often thrown at the left during the 20th century, when the right dismissed them as “traumtänzer” (dream dancers). In other words, believers in ideas and visions that were unrealistic fantasies. Lobo’s point is that it is now the right that trades in fantasy. Further, lying is a big part of the right’s armoury. Lobo argues that it is no coincidence that the US, Russia, the UK and Brazil find themselves at the top of the Covid-19 infections global league table, because all four are led by men for whom “reality is considered as optional”. All four underplayed or denied the seriousness of the virus; put older people especially at risk; were dismissive of expert evidence and advice; put their own political interests ahead of the health of the people whose interests they claim, publicly, to serve.

One thing I share with Boris Johnson is the patriotic desire to believe that Britain is one of the greatest countries in the world and most of my life, whoever has been in power, I have indeed felt that. But when you see a serious German magazine like Der Spiegel put Britain’s prime minister alongside Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Jair Bolsonaro, it is hard not to feel ashamed that this is how our prime minister is now seen, and concerned about the damage this does to our standing in the world. Lobo is far from alone. MSNBC presenter Rachel Maddow made a rather compelling video blog on the same populist quartet, titled “Trump, Europe’s Trump (Johnson) Latin America’s Trump (Bolsonaro) and Putin.”

And my column for this week’s New European is taking a look at a French opinion survey that has the UK and the US firmly at the bottom of the list of countries and leaders felt to have handled the crisis well. In a way it’s worse: while Trump is at least viewed as dangerous, a combination of Brexit, Johnsonian clownism and Covid-19 incompetence has created the widespread view that the UK is simply irrelevant. The Reputation Squad survey makes sobering, sad reading.

Lobo has a remarkable phrase to describe this quartet: “Vier Anführern der infizierten Welt.” Which translates as: “The four leaders of the infected world.” So maybe it is populism and its attendant constant soundtrack of lies, boasts and fantasies that is the more dangerous long-term virus in the world right now, unless the real virus makes the world come to its senses about the kind of leaders we are electing. The real virus, Lobo points out, does not listen to or respect the lies of these four in the way that so many people seem to.

It was perhaps especially shaming to see the author say this: “Clearly, a violent autocrat like Putin does this differently than ‘ein demokratisch eingehegter Lügner wie Boris Johnson’.” The sentence basically means that Putin gets away with more because he is a dictator, whereas “a liar like Johnson” is hemmed in to some extent by democracy. Let’s hope so, but we should beware some of the signals.

These include rarely appearing in a parliament he once prorogued after lying to the Queen, lying to the country regularly, bare-faced denials of having said or done things that are firmly on the record, and cronyism — for example, making Tory MP and staunch Johnson ally Bernard Jenkin chair of parliament’s Liaison Committee in parliament. Then there is making promises — whether that be a long-term policy on social care or the publication of a report on Russian interference in our democracy — without any intention of delivering on those pledges, and breaking ministerial rules on holidays.