> This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of personality politics and the increasingly presidential style of leadership in the UK. A person's ideas are what's important, and personality politics distracts people from the ideas in favour of what's effectively celebrity gossip.
That's why Johnson is doing it, and it's hugely effective.
His strategy is definitely very media-centric rather than ideology-centric which in my opinion is really dangerous because it gives undue power to the likes of potentially malovelent actors, traditionally this would be press moguls like Rupert Murdoch but increasingly this means social media companies too. You can trust an ideologue to follow their ideology even off the edge of a cliff but someone buffeted about on the winds of short-term popularity is unpredictable and prone to making bad choices on the basis of "we must do something rather than nothing or we'll lose popularity => x is something => let's do x quickly and skip the checks and balances".
Populism and media-centric politics is a Faustian pact in my opinion, the baying crowd that got you into power can easily turn on you in a heartbeat. Just look at Blair, once the people's champion and now his name is less than dirt among the very "Mondeo Men" he once courted to get into power. I'm not sure how we can make democracy less personality-based and more principle-based, but I think less centralised traditional and social media industries would be a good start.
He's a media man who has a second job as PM, not the other way round, and the conservative party has little will of its own other than what the rightwing press tell it to do.
Blair has a personal relationship with Rupert Murdoch, which he rode to power: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14785501 - and an even more personal relationship with his wife Wendi Deng.
That's why Johnson is doing it, and it's hugely effective.