Convenience Big Store: Will Boris bounce back?

30 April, 2021

Hello,

Here are a few highlights from this week's issue of The Knowledge, which is now live in our app and on our website.

All good wishes,

Jon Connell

Editor-in-chief

No 10's nightmare week

Will Boris bounce back?

Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have turned on each other with the "brutality" only former allies can muster, says James Forsyth in The Spectator. After No 10 accused Cummings of leaking Johnson's text messages last week, the PM's ex-chief adviser hit back. But forget the "quotable" allegation in the Daily Mail, most likely from Cummings, that Johnson said he'd rather let "bodies pile high" than allow a third lockdown. Most serious is the claim that a Tory donor secretly paid to refurbish the Downing Street flat. The PM has now paid the £58,000 bill himself, but he is skirting around the question of whether someone else did first. Emails leaked to the Mail back up the claims.

Judging by Johnson's "rant" at Prime Minister's Questions this week, "the drip-drip of sleaze stories" has rattled him, says Jessica Elgot in The Guardian. And they're only just beginning. The Electoral Commission is looking into the funding of the flat renovations, and Johnson might be required to give evidence. The probe will run for months, keeping the story in the headlines; the parliamentary standards commissioner may well investigate as well. And "throwaway comments" – like Symonds's friends complaining that Theresa May turned the flat into a "John Lewis nightmare" – could "penetrate deep into middle England".

Johnson's "sudden obsession" with expensive wallpaper matters, says Alice Thomson in The Times. His "shambolic looks" and disdain for "posh nosh" endeared him to voters. But by seeming to knock John Lewis, "the country's most aspirational and dependable shop", he looks like an "unappealing snob" at a time of national hardship. That'll "haunt him" far more than the ins and outs of the funding.

I'm not so sure "red wall" voters care, says Tom Newton Dunn in the Evening Standard. Everyone knows "Johnson is a flawed character and his private life chaotic" – a Sunderland mechanic once told me he envied the PM's love life. So far "the polls haven't moved", and a guilty verdict from the Electoral Commission "is unlikely to spell the end". The real problem is that the oft-promised "levelling up" agenda has barely got going. The by-election in Hartlepool next week will be a crucial gauge of the red wall's mood.

The session on 26 May when Cummings appears before a government committee to discuss the pandemic response will be even more risky, says Katy Balls in the I newspaper. Cummings will likely let loose about the flat funding and implicate his old boss in repeatedly locking the country down too late. One senior Tory predicts that he'll make claims, then, if No 10 denies them, publish supporting evidence to make the government look dishonest. Cummings has no incentive to "wind down" this fight, and Johnson has an awful lot to lose from it.

The big picture

Will this hurt Johnson at the polls? So far, no, says Patrick Maguire in The Times: the Tory lead over Labour is virtually unchanged at 11 points this morning, "despite days of painful headlines". And Keir Starmer's mischievous photo op in the wallpaper aisle of a John Lewis might backfire, says James Forsyth in the Coffee House Shots podcast. Emphasising the humour of the scandal plays to the strengths of Johnson, a canny political joker.

Life

Ralph Crane/LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

My back made me an overnight star

You've probably never heard of Vikki Dougan, but she was once the most sought-after woman in Hollywood, says Isabel Slone in The New York Times. The former model shot to fame in 1957, when she wore a pink backless dress to the Golden Globes. It was a sensation, and overnight she was crowned "The Back".

Now 92, Dougan lives in a rent-controlled apartment in Beverly Hills and sleeps on an Ikea sofa bed – a far cry from her glamorous youth. But recently she has been discovered by the Instagram generation. Her pictures adorn nostalgic fashion accounts, with her famous back on full display. "I don't know," Dougan says. "Maybe I'm having a resurgence."

She became "The Back" by accident: "I didn't even think there was anything even sexy about showing a back. It just didn't occur to me." Hollywood disagreed. Her back graced the cover of Life magazine and was the inspiration behind the cartoon beauty Jessica Rabbit. Leading men also took notice. Dougan declined dates with Cary Grant (he was too lazy) and Marlon Brando (she had an audition early the next morning).

More successful suitors included Orson Welles, Warren Beatty, George Getty II, Mickey Rooney, Barry Goldwater Jr, Henry Fonda and Frank Sinatra. Ol' Blue Eyes was a favourite: they went to an Italian restaurant with red check tablecloths. I said how much I'd like to make a dress out of them, she remembers. When they left, Sinatra kissed her goodbye and handed her a paper bag filled with tablecloths.

But being a sex symbol had its drawbacks. In 1859, Dougan says, she was accosted by Burt Lancaster, who kicked her in the back and pushed her into a lift. "Maybe if I had been a more dyed-in-the-wool actress I might have said, 'To heck with it,'" she says, "But I didn't think like that." And so she fell out of favour with celebrities, disappearing from Hollywood as quickly as she'd arrived.

Property

THE COUNTRY HOUSE Evelyn Waugh lived at Combe Florey House, near Taunton, Somerset, from 1956 until his death a decade later. Set in 35 acres, with a lake and views of the Quantock Hills, the Georgian manor has 10 bedrooms, seven bathrooms, an orangery, a separate three-bedroom cottage, a pool, a tennis court and a party barn. £5.5m.

Podcast

Inside Myanmar's killing machine

Myanmar's military is a "robotic rank of warriors who are bred to kill", says Hannah Beech in this podcast for The Daily. The reason they're so heartless is that they're raised in a "privileged" parallel society. The Tatmadaw, half a million people who make up Myanmar's soldier class, have their own banks, hospitals, schools, internet and television shows: by design, there's no interaction with the man on the street. The children of military officers intermarry. Unmarried soldiers even draw lots to marry the widow of a comrade who dies in battle.

The Tatmadaw is cloistered from mainstream society because the state's biggest enemies – ethnic armed groups, communist guerrilla groups, student activists – have always come from within. From the moment they enter boot camp, troops are taught that they are the guardians of a country and a religion, Buddhism, "that will crumble without them". They will fight to the death to protect it. But some rebel. Take Captain Tun Myat Aung, who was practically raised by the army – his mother died when he was 10 and his father was an alcoholic. Because he speaks English, he has had access to a digital world outside the military. He defected when he realised that he's not so different from anyone else.

Sadly, the Tatmadaw is equipped to quash such defiance. For anyone married, "their wives, their children" could be arrested or tortured if they ever tried to leave.

Listen to the podcast here.

From the archives

When Orson Welles met Winston Churchill

After a long reign as the greatest film of all time, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane this week lost its 100% rating on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes. It was replaced by Paddington 2. Here is Welles in 1970, talking to Dick Cavett.

Noted

Each morning Tom Jones hangs upside down in the bathroom, ankles strapped to a board. The singer has used "inversion therapy", usually a backache remedy, to put an extra inch on his height. At 80, he is back up to 5ft 10½in, the same as when he sang Delilah.