Meanwhile, writing in the New Statesman, columnist Sarah Manavis said that U.S. Democrats’ excitable response to Harris’s brat status put the entire concept in doubt. “Harris’ team is falling into an obvious social media trap: attempting to turbo-charge online hype when doing so is a guaranteed way to burst that bubble.”
Breaking point
But despite countless cringe attempts to co-opt the term in Westminster and beyond, all might not have been lost for the brat summer were it not for the pollsters.
After the major U.K. polling companies collectively got the result of the general wrong, it was a survey by Ipsos which finally broke brat, with a poll that asked an innocent public which U.K. politician was the most brattish.
While, understandably, 58 percent said they had never heard of the concept, those in the know ranked former Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the politician most clearly fitting the bill.
Of those identified as knowing a “great deal” or “fair amount” about brat, almost one in five (19 percent) pointed to Johnson as a brat politician.
Right-wing Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage was the second most brat, on 18 percent. Leftie Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Prime Minister Keir Starmer tied on 17 percent, perhaps some kind of postmodern joke given the Labour leader’s suited lawyer aesthetic and accusations of being a “political robot.”
