Pivots, petulance and performance: how Boris Johnson will be remembered in Europe’s capitals
Boris Johnson’s supporters last week championed his legacy as a bullish enforcer of the British people’s will against European technocrats.
The reality of his diplomatic record over six years in office, first at the foreign office and then at 10 Downing Street, is rather different. Negotiators in Brussels found the old Etonian more malleable than they had expected.
For all that Johnson took credit for “getting Brexit done” after the difficult Theresa May years, it was clear to those sitting across the negotiating table in Brussels that the key British negotiators preferred to keep the prime minister at a distance from the actual talks.
When Johnson spoke to his European Commission counterparts, president Ursula von der Leyen or her predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, it usually led to nothing more than rhetorical encouragement to crack on with finding a deal.
But it could also, to the visible distress of his own negotiators, lead to a sudden change in British positions: Johnson would suddenly pivot to accept EU arguments, driving a coach and horses through his own team’s position.
One big moment was in October 2019, recalled Georg Riekeles, diplomatic adviser to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. Johnson had ousted Theresa May on the promise that he would rip up her famous “backstop” arrangements for avoiding a border on the island of Ireland.
But as prime minister Johnson was now floundering in finding an alternative, and parliament would not let him leave the EU without a deal. Johnson met with the Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Wirral – and folded. Johnson illustrated the political flexibility – or lack of principle – that was both his great strength and weakness as a politician.
Varadkar called back to the commission to debrief Barnier and his team and told them that Johnson understood that there had to be a regulatory border down the Irish Sea to avoid one on the island of Ireland.
“In a way [Johnson’s Brexit negotiator David] Frost learned his lesson from that moment,” Riekeles said. “You should never let EU negotiators at any level get direct access to Johnson again. Because that is very much what we saw for the rest of the negotiations. Johnson was at once both uncontrollable and at the same time controlled.”
Leading figures of the leave campaign had vowed that after the 2016 vote they would leave Brussels to one side and go straight to Berlin or Paris to negotiate a new arrangement. EU leaders rejected such advances from the outset. But Johnson proved a particularly ill-fitting choice to lead such a strategy.
A clash of political styles was vi
sually on display when Johnson met his German foreign minister counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin in November 2016. At a joint press conference, the Tory politician tried to greet the Social Democrat with a fist bump. Steinmeier, who had previously described Johnson as “irresponsible”, replied with a half-hearted and awkward fist-shake.
Johnson and his team alienated Angela Merkel when in October 2019 they briefed British journalists about a confidential phone call in which the two leaders had failed to avert a looming no-deal British exit from the EU.
A No 10 source claimed Merkel had demanded that Northern Ireland remain in a customs union with the
EU “for ever”, triggering a wave of antiGerman sentiment in the British press. Relations between Merkel and Johnson never recovered.
The Élysée, too, will not be sorry to see the back of the outgoing British prime minister. French president Emmanuel Macron was furious at what he saw as a betrayal by an ally over Britain’s participation in the Aukus debacle, when in 2021 Australia announced it was cancelling a multibillion-dollar contract to buy French submarines for a new alliance with the UK and US.
The cross-Channel mood was not improved by Johnson’s saying French officials angry at the deal needed to “prenez un grip”, adding “Donnez-moi un break”, seen as another example of Johnson’s lack of seriousness.
Macron was also said to be irked at
Johnson’s habit of clowning around and adopting a wild-west-style gunfighter’s pose whenever the pair met at international events.
Even then, there were moments that in hindsight looked like opportunities for a reset of diplomatic relations.
Jens Zimmermann, the chair of the Bundestag’s German-British parliamentary group, was part of a delegation of politicians who met Johnson as part of the then German foreign minister Heiko Maas’s inaugural visit on 12 April 2018.
At the time, the recent poisoning of former British-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury was dominating the agenda, and the meeting was moved from Oxford University to the Brize Norton airbase.
“You could tell he was in his element, performing in front of the press,” recalled Zimmermann, a party ally of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
“But in that moment there was also a real sense of closeness and solidarity. We didn’t just stand shoulder to shoulder for the cameras.”
Over Ukraine, too, Johnson and European leaders found much common ground. At the beginning of March, Johnson took time to meet German, Spanish and Italian journalists to elaborate on Britain’s stance over Ukraine.
“You got a glimpse of the friendly and approachable Johnson that Conservative supporters were once so excited about,” said Die Welt’s London correspondent Stefanie Bolzen. “On so many domestic issues Johnson zigzagged all over the place – but on Ukraine his position was solid and unshakable.”
Yet in Johnson’s repeated trips to Kyiv, and the sometimes careless rhetoric of some of his ministers towards the UK’s supposed continental allies, many European diplomats sensed an element of oneupmanship that undermined rather than strengthened their joint stance.
“Whenever we managed to find a common ground over security issues, there was always a moment soon after that left you with the feeling that Johnson was happy to sacrifice bilateral relations for domestic gain,” Zimmermann said.