Boris the man
LET me try out a few phrases and expressions on you.
What I want you to do is think of which world political or potential leader these expressions most closely describe: vainglorious, pompous, erratic, divisive, polarising. Buffoon, populist, unintelligible, completely random and worryingly unpredictable.
Now, London to a brick suggests the first person that came to your mind was Donald Trump, and you’d probably be right if it was. However, there is a potential world leader that these expressions could also be applied to, and that is the UK’s very own Boris Johnson.
By all accounts, Boris will be the next prime minister of the UK, and his detractors have already been tempted to make a comparison between the two men.
In some respects there are similarities. However, Boris, of course, is Trump-like only when considered within a very strict English framework and definition. In many ways he is the archetypal uppermiddle class gentlemen, almost to the stage of being a caricature of himself.
Born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, he came into this world not only with a silver spoon in his mouth but most of the rest of the 18-piece cutlery setting. Educated at Eton and then off to Balliol College Oxford where he read the classics. Then a gap year to the colonies where he taught English and Latin at Timbertop the outward bound-based campus of Geelong Grammar School. We do love a local connection, don’t we?
Should Boris be elected leader of the Tory party he will become the 20th English PM to come out of Eton.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel is, as mentioned, a Tory, but in fairness, with a fair amount of liberal tendencies. Still not exactly the sort of person you would expect me to back as the next prime minister of England.
Here’s me, an example of solid working-class boy. Passed the ubiquitous 11-plus exam, off to grammar school etc, but still at heart a Labor man through and through. Boris as already mentioned is a Bertie Wooster-like character whose upbringing and politics could not be further removed from my own. However, surprisingly I’m quite happy to back him in as the next PM and offer whatever support I can from a distance of a mere 12,000km.
Boris will attempt to take the UK out of the European Union and is quite happy to do so without a deal in place. Yes, I am an enthusiastic Brexiteer and, yes, I am a believer that the Government and the Opposition are morally bound to acknowledge and act on the wishes of the British people.
In case you have forgotten, on June 23, 2016, a referendum was held in the UK to decide whether to leave the European Union and 52 per cent of the country decided, yes, we want to leave. That the parliament has vacillated to the point of paralysis is down to the simple fact the “elected” representatives think that they know better than the people they represent. That is not something that sits well with my definition of democracy.
Boris Johnson has given a commitment that the UK will leave the EU at 11pm GMT on October 31. He will leave without an agreement and will not sign any ratified agreement except on the UK’s terms. Despite the volumes of opinions written about the economy, trade deals, access to and from the EU, the only argument that counts is the emotional one. English people want to control their own destiny. In fact, they want to take back control from the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.
Johnson is a flawed personality. He is arrogant and he plays on, and no doubt cultivates, the effete, eccentric English gentleman. As one commentator noted: “If the size of his intellect matched the size of his ego Johnson would be fearsomely clever, but, as the old saying goes, if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.” However he is popular with the party rank and file and strangely so with the general public, and is the only Tory who would have a chance of leading the party to, and winning, a general election. To me, I think he might well be a case of “cometh the hour, cometh the man”. So just like Churchill was that man for World War II but rejected once the job was done, I believe Boris is also just such a man. As I shall be returning to the UK later in the year I would prefer to go back to a European Free Zone.