London was swamped with protesters this weekend but not all of them saw eye to eye. Bully XL dog owners and ‘Rejoiners’ who want Brexit to be reversed stomped down Whitehall. Anti-monarchists Republic were also in town. Things ended predictably badly: one angry dog owner heckled the ‘Rejoiners’, screaming ‘Traitors’ at them as they waved EU flags; another video showed a poor anti-Brexit protester end up swept up in the wrong mob, surrounded by dog owners.

What is most striking about all three of these insurgencies is that the participants in all the groups looked exactly like you would expect them to look. The ‘Rejoiners’ were very Marks & Spencer, healthy-looking late middle aged or pensioners. A youthquake this is not: they wore blue berets and looked jolly-angry rather than actually-angry, prone to the occasional interpretive dance outside Parliament. The majority have melted away, leaving only an indissoluble rump of true believers. But this hardcore resembled something straight out of central casting.

The Bully XL crowd, on the other hand, were frankly terrifying

The Bully XL crowd, on the other hand, were frankly terrifying, and exactly the type you’d expect would enjoy the cultivation and company of super aggressive hell hounds. They were overwhelmingly male and, let’s try not be rude, somewhat unrefined. (The day before, in Wolverhampton, one of these canine fans was savaged when asking of a fellow walking weapon enthusiast ‘shouldn’t you put that on a lead?’)

The anti-monarchists were scruffy and somewhat pathetic, ‘sneaking’ into Buckingham Palace at £35 a head to spell out NOT MY KING! on their T-shirts. The selfie they took is notable for its obvious lack of rehearsal – see the big gap between the O and the T – and for the pleased look on the faces of the perpetrators. This is the same look an infant has when it proudly displays to a parent the results of its first solo trip to the potty. Thank goodness they at least lined up in the right order, or they could’ve been mistaken for Frenchmen angry about rules for exercise wear: GYM KIT NON!

Three protests, and three sets of easily categorisable stereotypes then. In Viz terms, this is the Modern Parents, Biffa Bacon et famille, and a little lineup of Student Grants. Stereotypes like this are useful. They can be handy in speeding up communication all round. We are all busy, so we prefer people who don’t surprise us very often and who do the same kind of thing again and again. Unpredictable people are confusing and they waste our attention and energy. It’s easier all round if we do the the kind of things a person like us would do, and assume everyone else is the same.

People are unnerved when you don’t fit in to a type. I know this all too well: ‘I thought you were one of those blokes who shouts ‘Are you looking at my bird?’, and then you opened your mouth,’ someone once told me.

Boris Johnson, too, must know what this feels like. Boris looks like something he isn’t. He has a funny name, funny hair and a funny voice. He has all of those in common with Donald Trump, yes, so it feels like he ought to be similarly outré.

But Brexit aside, Johnson in office was largely indistinguishable from Tony Blair. Like many parliamentary Tories, he seemed embarrassed by the new supporters of 2019. I think this stereotype syndrome is why Boris was and is so hard to understand for many of us. We thought he was different, many still do – but he only looked different. His ‘crime’, above all the others he was accused of, was being gauche. He looked wrong. Perhaps then there’s a lesson for Boris in the Whitehall protest: you can take a pop at the Bully owners and the Brussels’ enthusiasts, but, unlike our errant former PM, at least they don’t confound your expectations.