Fraser Nelson Why Boris is lying low: the three theories
His chance of getting the top job may have come and gone, but he could still be a decent foreign secretary
There was a very unusual item on the morning news earlier this week: a story starting with the words “Boris Johnson”. It’s one of those events whose occurrence reminds you of its rarity. We hardly ever hear from the Foreign Secretary nowadays unless there’s some tragedy unfolding overseas, or an off-colour joke has backfired on the other side of the world. This week, he has been in the British Virgin Islands trying to explain why British troops took so long to arrive – and not saying anything particularly memorable. At times he looks like his own ghost, a memory of someone who once was. It’s all rather baffling.
When he left The Daily Telegraph, readers more or less forgave him. He’d entertained us all for years, with thoughtful and original points and a sublime, sparkling writing style. But he had just been made Foreign Secretary, so his skills were needed on the world stage. As he pointed out, there was no shortage of people keen to psychoanalyse the Brexit vote and impute the worst possible motives for it. It was an inspired appointment: he’d use his skills to explain to a sceptical world that this was not nativism or populism, but a vote for a global Britain – one that wants to lift its sights to more distant horizons.
But then – nothing. Boris has kept out of trouble, to be sure, but seems to have kept out of world affairs, too. There have been a few inspiring speeches, but delivered to think tanks, or in Sydney while Britain slept. And ask yourself: how would you describe his foreign policy? It’s surprisingly hard to answer. This is odd, given how good he is at crafting arguments and phrases that stick in the mind. We can all recall how he named Jeremy Corbyn a “mugwump”. But about his agenda? It’s all a bit of a blur.
There are three theories about why Boris Johnson is so quiet. The first is an unkind one: that he is doing his best but he just struggles with politics at this level. So he is simply suffering from political altitude sickness, a local politician who has risen too high on the national stage.
Then second theory, advanced recently by Lord Harris of Peckham, is more unkind still. Boris, Harris says, is a genius – but lazy. This is difficult to reconcile with Boris’s habits: if anything, he’s a workaholic whose weakness is taking on too much. During eight successful years as the undefeated mayor of London – a Labour city – he churned out two books, a weekly newspaper column and presided over a renaissance in Europe’s greatest capital.
That he did all this while giving the appearance of being a disorganised mess is, for those of us in similar trades, deeply annoying. But his record speaks for itself.
This leads us to the third theory: that he is playing dead. That he only entered politics to be prime minister and knows that the Conservative Party always chooses its leaders for who they’re not, rather than who they are. The frontrunner is always doomed, so he is out to sabotage his own chances, trip himself up in interviews and generally look hopeless. Then he’ll wait for the frontrunners to destroy each other and the Tory party to beg him to return as leader.
Quite a few Tories subscribe to this last theory, and think Boris is craftily waiting for everyone to panic about Jeremy Corbyn winning – so they are forced to call him up, fighting a populist with a populist. But this assumes that he is sitting in the Foreign Office with a detailed five-year plan for an assault on No 10, his every word calculated to fit a multi-layered strategy. To anyone who knows Boris, this mental image is laughable.
I have my own theory: that he is being a bit too shy. He worries about being seen as a plotter, and that his every public utterance is examined for signs of a leadership bid. So he keeps quiet, and does his best to protest loyalty to the Prime Minister. Not that even she believes him: since appointing him she has treated him like her biggest threat. I once watched as she compared him to a dog put down by its owner when it was no longer useful. He did his best to laugh but looked hurt, and a bit bewildered.
His shyness isn’t helped by a sense of isolation in his job. Some of his allies talk about him having been under “departmental house arrest” at the Foreign Office – served by a civil service opposed to Brexit and a junior minister (Sir Alan Duncan) who loathes him and briefs against him. Worse, the role of Foreign Secretary is now split three ways – with Liam Fox and David Davis talking about Brexit, Boris has felt that he should avoid the topic, lest he steps on their toes.
But the Government needs all the help it can get to make its case – and as Foreign Secretary he can hardly avoid the single biggest foreign policy question. Theresa May lost her ability to terrify ministers when she lost her majority. If Boris doesn’t speak much about Brexit now, it’s because of his own paranoia.
Even when Jean-claude Juncker vindicates his warnings about the EU’S federalist ambitions, Boris says nothing. He could start to talk about the optimistic, globally minded vision of Brexit that he so successfully sold to the British public in last year’s referendum. But he doesn’t, still worried about upsetting colleagues, and taken aback by how many enemies he made during the EU referendum – and about how many in parliament are still out to destroy him.
But what did he expect? Without Boris, the Brexit campaign would never have triumphed, and those defeated in such a way will never forgive him. Crushed politicians never do forgive. Even now, George Osborne is talking about storing Theresa May in his freezer. Westminster is the place where grudges never die.
So it might well be that, in a doomed attempt to placate his enemies, Boris will squander his time as Foreign Secretary: commanding an awesome stage but being too afraid to use it. All the while, Brexit is defined by those who campaigned against it – and the ambassadors are short of verbal ammunition because the best writer in Westminster is refusing to supply it.
I’d have liked to see Boris as prime minister, but I suspect his chance came and went last year. The question now is whether he will be remembered as an effective Foreign Secretary. It would be tragic if his own misplaced caution denied him even this.