Boris-bashers should be ashamed
LONDON
Throughout this fractious summer, one thing has united all the warring pundits and politicians. Left, right; Leave, Remain, everyone at least agrees that it was crazy to leave the country in Boris Johnson’s hands. He’s not serious, they say, looking, as they make this pronouncement, jolly pleased with their own relative gravitas.
They should instead be ashamed. The endless jeering at Boris isn’t justified — he was a decent mayor of London — and it is not in good faith. What purports to be considered criticism is almost always just sour grapes.
I don’t mean that Boris doesn’t have flaws. Who knows what sort of foreign secretary he’ll make? Who knows if he has the determination or the will to beat back against the civil service? I suspect he’s best motivated by a deadline, like most journalists, which isn’t ideal. But the carping isn’t proportionate.
Boris-bashing was popular long before it could feasibly be thought of as a response to his political skills. He employed me 15 years ago to work as a reporter on this magazine. Soon after that I went to the first of many dinner parties at which his old Oxbridge buddies spent the evening cutting him down to size. It was, maybe still is, a sort of parlour game for them. The trick was to claim great friendship with Boris in the breath just before taking him down. “Oh yes, I know Boris very well… of course he’s totally immoral, a sociopath.”
Many of his peers hopped with indignation over his affairs, especially the one with Petronella Wyatt, the then deputy editor. To my shame, as the years went by, I got stuck in too. I was forever holding forth about his moral character — not because I thought him so very bad but because people were so very interested. They wanted to hear about Boris. But if his wife forgives him, if Petronella does too (she wrote a very sad and touching piece about him recently), then what business is it of ours? Lust, as a vice, is less significant in a politician than greed. If more column inches are devoted to Boris’ sex life than to Liam Fox’s cash-for-access scandal or Jeremy Hunt’s tax avoidance, it’s simply because Boris isn’t boring.
“But Boris isn’t a serious person.” It’s often MPs who take this line — the likes of Tim Farron, who compared him to the Chuckle Brothers, or our new home secretary, Amber Rudd. What they mean, I think, is that Boris doesn’t take them seriously. Unlike, say, George Osborne, who spent his entire adult life forming political alliances in preparation for power, Boris doesn’t have many Commons pals. He doesn’t hang out with MPs for fun, which makes them uneasy. In some ways it’s daft for an ambitious politician not to have a circle; not to play the schmoozing game. In other ways it makes him the perfect politician for this age — for a public mistrustful of Westminster insiders.
Boris, when I worked for him, was all for confrontation and debate. We argued ceaselessly over Iraq: Boris was pro; the rest of us, led by his deputy, Stuart Reid, anti. The world is still waiting for Cameron to admit he might have misjudged Libya. Boris has publicly said he was wrong about Iraq.
Columnists often write about Boris’ popularity as if it’s an unearned talent — a dangerous gift in the hands of an unscrupulous maniac. But he’s popular not just because he’s funny, but because for all his Wodehousian ways he doesn’t see himself as part of a superior, more serious class. He communicates to British people still smarting from the recession, whose wages haven’t risen in years, that he’s one of us. He cheers us up. If he holds fast on Brexit, we might even trust him. It’s very foolish of anyone to dismiss him as a joke.
Columnists often write about Boris Johnson’s popularity as if it’s an unearned talent... But he’s popular not just because he’s funny, but because for all his Wodehousian ways he doesn’t see himself as part of a superior, more serious class.