Why I’m rooting for Boris Johnson
Britain’s new prime minister has proved he can win people over. He’ll need to now.
Boris Johnson has been Britain’s prime minister for not quite a day, and the reviews are in. He’s a disaster! A fraud! A Trumpy toff and shameless showman whose ego is inversely correlated to his merit and whose tenure of office won’t just be bad for the United Kingdom, but very possibly the death of it.
Johnson might be half-inclined to agree. As he once said of himself: “You can’t rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of a blithering idiot, there lurks a blithering idiot.”
I’ve always had a vague distaste for Johnson, based mainly on his history as a journalistic fabulist, as well as the unflattering testimony of friends who’ve dealt with him personally. Also, I opposed Brexit, which Johnson recklessly championed in 2016 and which he now promises another, you suspect be But suited should, I’m that, by for to the rooting the too. see this end challenge And through, time, of for October. there’s the him, and one man reason the hard, way might hour. or as to alternatives feast I’m on rooting the are entrails for much him, of worse. first, a failed because Waiting Johnson the to premiership Party leader Jeremy are, from Corbyn the – left, a man Labour who called for closing down NATO, eulogized Hugo Chávez, and kept company with Holocaust deniers – and, from the right, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage – a man who said he’d get rid of antidiscrimination employment laws because “there should be a presumption for British employers in favor of them employing British people as opposed to somebody from Poland.”
As between (a) an anti-Semitic bigot and (c) an anti-immigrant bigot, I’ll choose (b): Boris, who has even called for amnesty for some illegal immigrants.
I’m rooting for him, second, because Britain needs a successful Brexit, and he may be the only political figure in Britain who can do it.
It would be nice to think that the UK could simply hold a second referendum and that the “Remain” camp would prevail this time. Yet there’s no guarantee it will. And even if it did, a second referendum leading to a different result would convince nearly half the country that they had been cheated of their democratic due.
That could only energize, radicalize and even weaponize the populist right, at a moment when populism is a swelling force in global politics.
Britain voted for Brexit, foolishly, but Brexit is what Britain now needs to get.
I’m rooting for him, third, because the United States not only needs Great Britain. It needs Britain great.
One of the frequent criticisms of Johnson and other Brexiteers is that, like Victorians born a century late, they have an exaggerated sense of the UK’s significance. Yet for all of its relative decline, Britain has four of the world’s 10 best universities, the fifth-largest economy, the fourth-largest navy (by tonnage), and a globally deployed military. It is second only to the US in Nobel laureates, just as London is second only to New York as a global financial capital. Its literary and artistic scenes remain fecund and globally influential, and its political leaders, until dismal Theresa May, always punched above their weight.
All this means Britain remains a pillar of the Western world. If Johnson fails badly, more than just his mandate or career go down with him.
And yet I have an inkling that he isn’t going to fail. His mistakes are many, but many of them are venial: He was sacked by The Times of London, for instance, for making up a quote concerning the love life of King Edward II (1284-1327). He has loads of enemies, but by many accounts he has a gift for personal friendship and, unlike his three immediate predecessors, a deep political base. He has a profound sense of history, and writes remarkably well about it. His two terms as mayor of London involved some harebrained schemes, but he still managed to leave office with a near-60 percent approval rating in a city that leans left. His close association with the Brexit campaign gives him a chance, as May never had, to command its allegiance.
He has charisma. He’s eloquent and disarming. He is capable of winning people over.
He’ll need to, if he’s going to bring Britain out of the political deadlock that led to the crushing defeats of May’s Brexit plan. He’ll need it, too, to negotiate a trade deal with the US, which Johnson has promised and which post-Brexit Britain cannot do without. For once, Britons should be grateful that Johnson, who in 2015 described Donald Trump as “clearly out of his mind,” has done so much to cultivate a relationship with the president.
Johnson is often compared to Trump, but it’s inapt. Trump is a lout masquerading as a political virtuoso. There’s reason to suspect the new prime minister is much closer to the opposite. For Britain’s sake, but not just Britain’s, I hope that’s true.