With eye on Downing Street, Johnson bets all on Brexit
london — With one hand in his suit pocket and the other mussing his signature blond hair, Boris Johnson on Sunday took the riskiest gamble of his career: to oppose Prime Minister David Cameron by campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union.
If the stars align for London’s eccentric mayor and the voters agree with him in a June 23 referendum, his bet could help him win Cameron’s job. But if Britons vote to stay in, he could find that he has blown his chance for good.
A natural comedian known to all by his first name, the dishevelled Boris has expertly kept the nation guessing for years as to exactly how high he wanted to climb and what he would be prepared to do along the way. But on Sunday, on the subject of the EU at least, there was no more beating around the bush.
“You want to ask my views on Europe, don’t you?” he jokingly asked a scrum of reporters and cameramen who had been besieging his London home all weekend, desperate to find out which side he would back after Cameron announced the date of the referendum. “Let me tell you where I’ve got to, which is that I’ve made up my mind,” he said, revealing that he would push for a “Brexit” and attacking what he described as EU judicial activism and lack of democratic accountability. It was his boldest move yet in a long-running game of political chess within the ruling Conservative Party, involving not just Boris and Cameron but also finance minister George Osborne, the mayor’s main rival to succeed the prime minister.
With Cameron pledging to put his “heart and soul” into the fight to keep Britain in the EU, backed by Osborne and all other serious contenders for the top job, Boris appears to have calculated that it was worth the huge risk of opposing them.
“Boris’s decision to opt for the Leave campaign means one thing - that he thinks this is his best shot at becoming prime minister,” said Sonia Purnell, author of “Just Boris”, an unauthorised biography that is critical of the mayor. —
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