Boris plays on rhetoric in ambitious bid for No. 1o

London’s mayor understands that democratic leadership can only succeed if the speaker is himself, as a character, convincing

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n 2002, Boris Johnson, then Member of Parliament for Henley, made a speech at the Mayor of Henley’s annual dinner. A Labour councillor present took against the political tone of the speech, and threw a bread roll at him. As the then editor of this paper, I commissioned Boris to write a piece about the occasion. He is, among many things, an expert in the arts of rhetoric as developed in ancient Greece and Rome.

He began by describing the bread roll as it took off across the banqueting tables of Henley Town Hall. Leaving the roll in mid-air, he devoted the bulk of the column to whatever it was he was wanting to say about (so far as I remember) Tory policy. Only as the article drew to its close did he revert to the trajectory of the bread roll, identified by a witness as “a mini French baguette”. It hit him, he reported, in the face. As he admitted when I asked him, Boris was consciously using an ancient rhetorical device. The fact that the roll took off, but then did not land, kept his readers in suspense.

Wanting to know what happened to the roll, we read the rest of the article with amusement and interest, waiting for the mini-baguette to find its mark. Unlike Boris, I am no classical scholar, but I believe this technique is called digressio, and was practised by Cicero. Perversely, it achieves its main aim by diverting from it. As we consider the current excitement about whether Boris could ever lead his party, this concept of digressio may hold the key.

Let us use it ourselves. Let us start with the fact that at Oxford, Boris made a decision about where to channel his huge ambition. Born in America, he had the possibility, he thought, of being the president of the United States. But he also thought he could be the prime minister of Great Britain. Reckoning that he had more chance with the latter, he chose the road to Downing Street.

Now let us leave that decision hanging, mini-baguettelike, in the air, and consider the rest of the story. First there is Boris the Bullingdon blood who marries a beauty as soon as he goes down from Oxford. Then there is the young rapscallion reporter in Brussels. Next follows the brilliant columnist, witty after-dinner speaker, novelist,

guest, Don Juan and family man (yes, both), editor. All part of the digressio. Then there is Boris Johnson MP, and for a brief period there is a real danger that our hero is straying from his own rhetorical device and returning too quickly for his own good to the real theme of his life.

Sure enough, Boris did not do very well in the House of Commons. He was not assiduous. His fame provoked jealousy. He was considered too bumptious or exotic. He encountered the disfavour of his party’s leadership, for lying to it. He began to look seedy. In 2005, David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party. Boris was getting nowhere. But then, in 2007, the Tories could not find themselves the right candidate to take on Ken Livingstone for the London mayoralty election the following year.

Suddenly, Boris saw his chance. He was selected, and then elected, thus becoming (as he remains) the only Tory since 1992 to have won any important political contest outright. Last year, he won again. Last week, in Hyde Park, the mayor welcomed the Olympic torch with a speech of such gusto that the crowd chanted “Boris! Boris!” Again, Boris has deployed the digressio. You cannot, in practice at least, be prime minister unless you are in the House of Commons: Boris is not, and cannot be until 2016 when his current term of mayoral office ends (though one would not put it past him to find a way of getting out earlier). This looks like a disadvantage, but it isn’t. As conventional Conservative politicians are tangled in the tentacles of coalition and mired in the slough of economic despond, Boris is somewhere else.

Wrong place at the right time

Digressive, transgressive, subversive, Boris is in the “wrong” place at the right time. The crowd is loving it, and watches with increasing eagerness to see how he will return at last from the digressio to the main subject with which his adult life began. Sensing this, Boris’s critics are getting as excited as his fans. Articles argue the impossibility of his being prime minister with a vehemence which shows their fear that it is all too possible. His supporters insist that democratic leadership can only succeed if it speaks in a way which persuades people to listen, and if the speaker is himself, as a character, convincing.

Of whom else, in politics just now, could this be said? Under the leadership of David Cameron, the Conservatives have devoted themselves to modernising. Much of this was necessary, but modernising itself now feels rather out-ofdate, rather Millennium Dome. We are ironical, eclectic, genre-subverting and fusion-cooking. We are high-brow and low-brow at the same time.

The only politician who “gets” any of this is Boris. Cameron is the moderniser, but Boris is the post-moderniser.

It could well be that Boris’s great digressio ends with no more than a bread roll in his face. All I would say, though, is that conventional politics is now failing more comprehensively than at any time since the 1930s, and that Boris Johnson is the only unconventional politician in the field.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012