A blunderer, yes. But his steel backbone may yet end the nightmare
Boris Johnson has long divided opinion. one group of people have described him as lazy, chaotic, unreliable and untrustworthy — in his public dealings as much as in his private life.
Another group have insisted he is original, dynamic, clear-thinking and possessed of an extraordinary ability to relate to people who would not normally dream of voting Tory.
i admit that at various times i have had a foot in each camp. i thought he was the right person — the only person — to lead the Leave campaign before the 2016 referendum. When he became Prime Minister nearly three months ago, though, i fastened my seatbelt.
What he certainly is not is the Trumpian half-wit characterised by his detractors. i don’t just mean opposition MPs, but sophisticated people at dinner parties who roll their eyes at the mention of his name.
Dictator. Populist. narcissist. Liar. These words are commonly used to disparage him. Virtually no one says he is as intellectually challenged as Donald Trump — his educational and literary achievements preclude that — but he has been widely dismissed as being as limited as the American President.
We were told, for example, that he was a disastrous Foreign secretary because he never reads a brief — and thus exposed nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe to danger at the hands of the tyrannical iranian regime by wrongly saying she had been teaching journalism.
so-called comedians have depicted him as an idiotic, blathering, upper-class old Etonian twit with no more brain cells between his ears than P. G. Wodehouse’s lovable but clottish hero, Bertie Wooster.
such insults will have stung Boris. i know how sensitive he is, how eager to be loved. When he was editor of The spectator magazine, and i was a columnist, we fell out after he refused to publish an innocuous item i had written. But within nine months he had invited me back. he did not want me to think ill of him.
What are his pitiless critics saying now? how do these clever people explain that, in a very short time, he has put together a deal which was judged undeliverable, even as recently as a few days ago? i lost count of the number of occasions supposedly knowledgeable BBC correspondents informed us there was no prospect of Brussels re-opening the Withdrawal Agreement. But the PM persuaded EU negotiators to do just that, and has secured the removal of the irish backstop.
oh, there have been mistakes, to be sure. The tumult over prorogation was a selfinflicted wound since the proposal that Parliament be shut down for what amounted to five or six days wasn’t worth all the aggravation from the supreme Court and his political enemies.
AFEW weeks ago, he also showed uncustomary rudeness to a female Labour MP during a marathon session in the Commons. in his defence, he had just flown back from America after a taxing schedule.
in his private life, too, he has suffered the odd puncture. There was the seemingly wine-fuelled row with his girlfriend Carrie symonds during the Tory leadership campaign. stories about his alleged former relationship with the American former model Jennifer Arcuri continue to swirl around.
so i don’t pretend Boris is a political genius, and it is beyond dispute that his private life has been a disaster zone. i’ve no doubt that if he remains Prime Minister for long, there will be further embarrassments.
But no reasonable person could deny that in recent weeks he has performed as well as is humanly possible. With his constantly repeated mantra that we will leave the EU by october 31, he has lifted the hearts of millions of us, driven half-mad by this seemingly endless Brexit drama.
he grasped, with a degree of intuition unmatched by any other politician, that huge numbers of people, Leavers and remainers alike, are united by a yearning to, in his words, ‘get Brexit done’.
in this cause, his energy, optimism and courage have been infectious — the more so because he has been hedged around by devious trimmers who undermined his negotiating position by passing the Benn Act, which effectively removed the threat of no Deal from the table.
he has also been focused and ruthless to an extent that surprised me. There’s no doubt the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has been asked to swallow a lot over northern ireland’s proposed customs relationship with the EU, though i still think it should continue to support the Government. Mr Johnson’s compromise on this point doesn’t amount to a betrayal. he came to see that there was no other option if a deal was to be struck with Brussels. That’s a mark of statesmanship.
one historical comparison is the French leader Charles de Gaulle. When returned to power in 1958, he gave the French settlers in the colony of Algeria reason to believe he was on their side. But he subsequently pulled out of Algeria because he realised it was the only way.
Boris has shown us that, beneath the charm and larkiness and good humour, he has a steel backbone stronger than i had imagined. isn’t that what we want from our leaders at a time of national crisis?
The question is whether it will work. For there’s no point in being brave and taking risks if you end up flat on your face. That is what many pundits are predicting will happen in tomorrow’s epic showdown in the Commons.
WITHOUT doubt the arithmetic is testing. it is hard to see how Mr Johnson will get his deal through if, as seems probable, the DUP votes against it. he will need the support of Tory MPs recently chucked out of the party, plus a sizeable chunk of sensible Labour members from Leave-supporting constituencies prepared to defy their party whip.
Maybe he’ll pull it off — particularly if MPs are intimidated by the idea, floated yesterday by European Commission President Jean- Claude Juncker, that there should be no further extensions if the deal is rejected by the Commons. Then the forlorn alternative would be no Deal.
By the way, the sight of that old rogue and infamous imbiber joshing with Boris Johnson yesterday was a spectacle to behold. in another encounter, President Emmanuel Macron of France beamed insincerely as he exuded false bonhomie.
in view of the PM’s determination, and his success in making things happen over recent weeks which had been declared unachievable by expert commentators, it would surely be unwise to predict defeat for him tomorrow.
however, even if he loses, that won’t be the end of it. Without breaking the law, Mr Johnson might still find some constitutional device to circumvent the extension demanded by the Benn Act. or he might wait until a querulous Labour Party led by a palpably diminished Jeremy Corbyn finally allows him to fight the General Election it so fears. Then he could go to the country promising to deliver a deal opposed by small-minded, self-interested politicians.
We’ll see. There could be many twists and turns. But Boris Johnson more and more looks like a winner and the man for the hour, whom history may one day acclaim as the Prime Minister who finally brought our Brexit nightmare to an end.