This Side of the Pond

Getting Boris Johnson out of 10 Downing Street has proven to be a lot like trying to persuade a wasp out through an open window. It doesn’t want to go and its main skill set involves dipping and diving past your rolled-up newspaper as though it hasn’t noticed it doesn’t belong indoors.

I used to be a fan of Boris, back when he was mostly notable for hanging on zip lines waving flags, the hair of a madman and a policy that introduced bicycles for hire to Londoners. Unfortunately, it turns out that being lovably ridiculous is not actually the main quality one wants in the leader of one’s nation.

We liked him because he had flair – you got the sense that there would never be a dull moment as part of his team. He seemed as bored of “business as usual” as the rest of us, and that was nice.

We were taken in by his “buffoonery” and managed to excuse the ever-lengthening list of behaviors that each should have been enough of a warning sign. It surprised me when I came to this realization, because the Brits are traditionally quite good at separating personality from ability to do the job.

Usually, when we roll our eyes and forgive a politician having an extra-marital affair or living large on the government’s dime, it’s because we recognize they are valuable in the role they’ve been performing. We don’t like it, and we might still decide we want them gone, but overall we tend not to make political decisions based on a person’s social life.

However, we do have our limits – usually. Boris’s rise was a masterclass in charming the populace – he won his first election in a historic landslide, after claiming the mayorship of London twice, despite it being a stronghold for the opposing party.

His ability to win people over was evident early – but so were his flaws. He won a scholarship to the most prestigious private school in the country, Eton, and was president of the union at Oxford University, and then managed to jump straight into a job at the Times newspaper.

But then came the first scandal: he falsified a quote in one of his articles and was summarily dismissed. He moved on to the Daily Telegraph, where he became the correspondent to Brussels.

He did this by making fun of everything the European Commission did, and was criticized for, to put it simply, making stuff up. This wasn’t what got him in the most trouble, though – that telling-off took place when he supplied a friend with the personal address of a fellow journalist, despite knowing it was because his friend wanted to have the poor guy beaten up.

He clambered into the House of Commons at the turn of the millennium and the Conservative Party was hopeful they could make use of his charm to win back the affections of the public. Unfortunately, Boris insulted the entire city of Liverpool by suggesting the Hillsborough disaster that saw 94 people killed in a crush at a football stadium was… their own fault.

He did go to Liverpool to apologize, calling it “Operation Scouse Grovel”, but then he lied about claims he’d been having an affair and was sacked.

A couple of years later, he was put forward as the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London and was surprisingly successful in the job. I liked him – he seemed to be doing good things and was always game for a laugh. I probably should have been looking more closely.

We should all have been listening more carefully when his opponents tried to tell us what he was really like as he was appointed Foreign Secretary. The BBC recently compiled a list of the red flags that were raised at the time, including but not limited to:

Calling Hillary Clinton a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” (not sure everyone here disagrees, but still a bad move against a dignitary in your biggest ally’s government). Having to apologize to the entire population of Papua New Guinea for describing “orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing” in their country. Racist remarks about the Queen’s tours of Commonwealth countries.

But no, we didn’t listen, and eventually we made him Prime Minister, after somehow allowing him to push the Brexit vote through even when it turned out everything he’d said was a lie. He then continued his bad behavior with scandals that never seemed to stop coming, starting with the time he tried to send Parliament home because they weren’t doing what he wanted.

Many felt he bungled the pandemic – which is hardly surprising, as most countries felt the same way about their leader – and then he made the mistake of standing by his chief adviser after he was found to have flagrantly broken lockdown rules. Then, it turned out, Boris himself held a string of parties during a time when the rest of the country had been instructed not to gather indoors.

The party continued to stand by him, not just because his charisma was still working but also because he seemed to be the only one capable of actually getting Brexit done, but the public was just about done. Still, he survived a confidence vote a month ago, and his popularity got a boost from his actions to support Ukraine.

But then came the final straw: he supported a member of parliament who was accused of groping two men at a party and appears to have fibbed about knowing about it when he made him deputy chief whip. He apologized, but it wasn’t enough.

Last week, MPs stood in line to deliver letters of resignation to Boris, calling on him to step down. Still he wouldn’t go, saying he felt it would be irresponsible, and still the resignations kept coming.

Talk turned to whether it would be possible to force him out the door. It was too soon according to the rules to hold another confidence vote, so would the opposing party call for a vote of confidence in the whole government, thus potentially triggering a general election?

Before we could find out, Boris said he’d resign after all. As everyone waited for the announcement, a bloke in a van was playing the Benny Hill theme tune outside Westminster, forcing all the terribly serious journalists to give their live reports with it blaring in the background.

The song request apparently came from none other than Hugh Grant. All of which lunacy about sums up the situation.

However, Boris is still going to stay on as “caretaker prime minister” until the long process of replacing him is complete. The wasp is still this side of the window, despite it all, and I can’t say I’d be terribly surprised to still be saying the same thing in a year. Somehow, his luck has held for decades – are we really sure it’s run out?

I suppose the lesson here is clear: likeability is not a good indication of morals. I’d have to think long and hard before placing a check by Boris’s name if it cropped up one day on my ballot.

But would I have a beer with him, if he promised to just be his silly old self? Yeah, I probably would.