It provided Johnson with the chance to do what he loves: to put on a show, to create a little tumult where there is none. The tram was limited to three miles an hour and had an automatic-override system to protect it from reckless prime ministers, among others. When Johnson finally made it around the bend and neared the end of the circuit, he slammed on the brakes and blasted the horn. That’s £2.5 million worth of vehicle, the chief executive of the tram company told me with a nervous laugh. The tram (British for “streetcar”) inched forward, only to jerk and shudder to a halt. News photographers crowded around and men in hard hats stood by. “All aboard!” he yelled, though there were no passengers. There would be no point in displaying action and intent and momentum if no one were present to document it. He loves infrastructure, mobile infrastructure especially-planes, trains, bicycles, trams, even bridges to Ireland and airports floating in the sea. Johnson’s aide told me the prime minister had been excited about his tram ride all morning. (The limerick, I’m sorry to say, was not at all filthy.) The mayor, Andy Street, looked horrified, tomorrow’s disastrous headlines seeming to flash before his eyes. Walking in, he had launched into a limerick about a man named Dan who likes to ride trams.
Johnson was, as usual, unkempt and amused, a tornado of bonhomie in a country where politicians tend to be phlegmatic and self-serious, if not dour and awkward. These elections would give voters a chance to have their say on Johnson’s two years in office, during which quite a lot did go wrong. The prime minister was visiting a factory outside Birmingham, campaigning on behalf of the local mayor ahead of “Super Thursday”-a spate of elections across England, Scotland, and Wales in early May. “N othing can go wrong!” Boris Johnson said, jumping into the driver’s seat of a tram he was about to take for a test ride. This article was published online on June 7, 2021.
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