Why doesn’t Boris Johnson want to meet the public?

For a “populist” politician supposedly gifted with a unique ability to commune with the British people, Boris Johnson seems strangely reluctant to meet that many of them – even when he publicly promises to do so. There are always risks as well as benefits to a prime minister listening and talking to those who’ve been affected by government policy, and sometimes it can serve little purpose in any case. The worst of all worlds, though, is to accept the obligation and then attempt to wriggle out of it on second thoughts with some unconvincing excuses.

So it is with Boris Johnson and the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group. Having, in the group’s term, “dodged” five letters from them asking for a meeting, the prime minister was confronted about it on Sky News last week. “I am not aware of those letters ... but of course we will write back to every letter we get, and of course I will meet the bereaved who have suffered from Covid. Of course I will do that.”

Except that now the prime minister has said he can’t meet the group or any representatives of the 1,600 families concerned, even though “I am acutely conscious that a letter will be of little comfort against the grief and heartache that families have suffered”.

Challenged by Keir Starmer about this particular U-turn at Prime Minister’s Questions, Johnson pleaded that the meeting was off because the families were involved in litigation, but that after that is concluded he’d be willing to see them.

This version of events the Covid families group contests. They tweeted: “The PM just said he can’t meet with us bcs we’re in ‘litigation against the Govt’. We’re not.

“Our 5 letters make clear we want to meet to avoid that.

“If he’ll ‘certainly meet with [us] once litigation is concluded,’ great: it never started.

“How’s Monday for you Prime Minister?

There was also some spin put out by Downing Street that if he met some families he’d have to meet all the families of the 41,504 victims, a transparently weak excuse.

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What the prime minister might have meant to say is that it didn’t matter what he said to them, they’re bound to sue HM Government in any case (hence the name of the group) and whatever passed between them at a private meeting could be used in evidence against him as, say, an admission of guilt. Even if that didn’t happen there was always the danger that he couldn’t resist making some flippant remark which would find its way into the media. Or there might be an on-camera scene with tearful families calling him a murderer. There were, though the prime minister couldn’t admit it, potential downsides.

It does beg a few questions though as to why this apparently self-confident man shies away from difficult encounters he can’t control, whether with Andrew Neil or Starmer, or with members of the public at public or private meetings. In the case of the Covid families, Johnson has some credibility, on a personal level, because he was himself seriously ill in hospital with it.

Other premiers have had no great problems with potentially awkward encounters. Tony Blair even went out of his way to debate the Iraq war with the public, including the families of service personnel, during the 2005 election. Reg Keys, the father of one soldier, Royal Military Policeman Tom Keys, who was killed on duty in Iraq, even stood against Blair in his Sedgefield constituency. They shared the stage at the declaration of the result, where Keys gained a creditable 10 per cent of the vote.

Blair’s political thinking after the Iraq War and going into the 2005 general election was that his critics were never going to go away, ignoring them looked bad and weak, and he had a case to make. Like today, there was much bitterness about the government’s mistakes, and calls for more public inquiries, and this was one way of showing that he, Blair, and his government had done the right thing, morally and legally, despite the loss of life. Talking direct to families in public televised forums was called the “masochism strategy”. It might not have changed many minds, but Blair did not run away from those most tragically touched by his decisions. There were no legal repercussions, as such, from these exchanges.

Of course, there are many people and their families affected by tragic events who gave no wish to meet any politician. In the 1980s, for example, the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, developed a habit of turning up at hospitals with unseemly haste after any large scale accident, to comfort the injured. Some thought it too regal, even for her, and one enterprising company printed cards modelled on the kidney donor card stating that, in the event of the bearer ending up in hospital, they did not want a visit from Thatcher.

On the whole, avoiding the moral duty of meeting those who believe they have lost a loved one because of your actions as prime minister is not a “good look”. Still less does it impress when it looks as evasive and frightened of scrutiny as Mr Johnson does now. It simply looks as though he has something to hide. Maybe he does.