BORIS: 5 WOMEN WHO’VE MADE ME WHO I AM
He praises Kate Bush and granny – but no mention of 2 wives or Carrie!
Boudicca was a ‘proto-Brexiteer’, Boris Johnson claimed yesterday in naming the five women who most shaped his life.
He said the British queen’s bravery in taking on the Romans was an inspiration, adding: ‘What a woman.’
Boudicca joins singer Kate Bush and campaigner Malala Yousafzai in his top five. Political aide Munira Mirza and his grandmother irene Williams complete the list.
Mr Johnson, 55, who announced his engagement to his girlfriend carrie Symonds on Saturday, said the Queen and Margaret Thatcher only narrowly missed the cut for his nominations to mark international Women’s day on Sunday.
He told Grazia magazine he had struggled with the decision, but had chosen women who had made a personal impact on him and had ‘stirred my emotions’.
THE FORMER COMMUNIST
as a former member of the Revolutionary communist Party, she might seem an unlikely inspiration for a Tory prime minister. But Miss Mirza, 41, has become a key member of Mr Johnson’s inner circle since she first joined his team 12 years ago while he was London mayor.
The daughter of Pakistani immigrants, she grew up in oldham and went to a comprehensive before winning a place at oxford university. Now head of the downing Street policy unit, she was credited with helping to shape the manifesto that won the conservatives their majority at the last election.
Mr Johnson told Grazia magazine: ‘Munira is capable of being hip, cool, groovy and generally on trend. She hates cant; she hates frippery; she hates political correctness. She has, all told, the most powerful nonsense-detector i have ever seen.’
MUSIC LEGEND
Mr Johnson said that with Wuthering Heights Kate Bush had written ‘one of the world’s greatest ever pop songs, part of the soundtrack of my adolescence’.
He added: ‘There are moments when i simply can’t understand what she is saying; moments she is staccato, birdlike, and then sometimes she produces a crashing bow-wave of noise unlike anything written before or since.’ it is not known if Miss Bush, 61, returns his admiration. She praised his predecessor Theresa May, saying she was ‘wonderful’ and ‘the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time’.
SUNNY GRANNY
descended from royalty, the Prime Minister’s grandmother irene Williams lived on an Exmoor hill farm with no central heating or mains electricity. Known to Mr Johnson and his family as ‘Granny Butter’, she was related to King George ii through her German great-grandmother, Karoline von Rottenburg. She won a half-blue for judo while studying at oxford and would use a knife and fork even when eating potato crisps.
Mr Johnson said: ‘There is a simple reason why my grandmother ranks as a heroine of mine: her sheer unconquerable optimism ... for Granny Butter the sun was always shining, or about to shine, and everything was pretty well marvellous.’
ANCIENT RULER
The Prime Minister may have had his own relationship with the Eu in mind when he praised Boudicca’s refusal to bow down in the face of Roman aggression.
The British queen led a revolt against Roman rule in the first century, vowing to ‘win the battle or perish’. The uprising failed and she is thought to have killed herself. Mr
Johnson said: ‘What a woman. The Romans have just beaten her up, raped her daughters and seized her kingdom. and what does she do? She attacks. Boudicca was driven by a simple desire for freedom. She was a Romanosceptic, a proto-Brexiteer ... who can say her spirit is not alive in the country today?’
TEEN ACTIVIST
Mr Johnson met Malala in 2014, two years after she was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for speaking out against a ban on girls attending school in her native Pakistan. She was brought to Britain for surgery and has since started a global campaign for equal access to education, and has won a Nobel prize for her activism.
Mr Johnson said: ‘She was unlike anyone i had met. She was so brave, so right and so luminously idealistic that i could see i was in the presence of a modern-day saint.’
Mr Johnson added: ‘Her campaign – for female education – is the fastest and best way we could change the world... men in suits: listen to Malala.’