Boris proves again why he’s the right man for Brexit
LAUNCHING attacks on Boris Johnson is one of Westminster’s favourite sports. The detractors of the Foreign Secretary are always eager to paint him as a bumbling buffoon whose sole interest is in the advancement of his own career. Now these critics think they have found a deadly new piece of weaponry to add to their arsenal of condemnation.
In the run-up to the EU referendum, Boris was one of the leading campaigners for Leave, his charisma and popularity proving essential to victory. But over the weekend it emerged that just two days before he declared his support for Brexit, he drafted a newspaper article in which he tried to set out the case for backing Remain.
This column was never published yet its disclosure has been seized on with relish by Boris’s enemies, while the BBC has sought to portray the manufactured row as a major political scandal.
This is all part of a concerted initiative to undermine Brexit by feeding the narrative that the anti-EU campaign was built on lies and fraud. The aim is to show that Boris is a charlatan who did not privately even believe in the cause that he publicly espoused. To this end, his unpublished article is presented as if it were a sacred text, the true confession of his real views.
BUT to quote one of Boris’s own vivid lines, this is nothing more than “an inverted pyramid of piffle”. Contrary to the claims of the orchestrated anti-Brexit hysteria, there is nothing remotely incriminating about this column. Far from providing a secret window into his real pro-EU opinions, it actually confirms the strength of his Eurosceptic convictions.
This was not an exercise in manipulative deception but in intellectual clarification. He wanted to see if he could set out on paper a convincing argument for Remain. Tellingly, he was unable to do so.
Although his draft column nominally expressed support for David Cameron’s stance, in reality it made an unanswerable case for Leave. Disillusion with the EU shone through almost every paragraph. He wrote of how “the ratchet of integration clicks remorselessly forward” and “the great beast” of Brussels is “still trampling happily on British sovereignty”.
He was just as scathing about Cameron’s agreement with the EU, describing it as “a bit of a dud” which would not achieve “fundamental reform of Britain’s position”. Even the concerns about the economic shock from Brexit, so hyped by the Remainers’ Project Fear, were downplayed. “I am sure that the doomsters are exaggerating the fallout,” wrote Boris.
Having completed the text, he emailed it to his wife and a couple of allies. But immediately he recognised the hollowness of the column’s central thesis. “This is going to make me vomit. I just don’t think it’s parliamentary good enough,” he admitted. Soon afterwards, as he came out for Leave, he produced a much more powerful, proBrexit column.
His opponents might sneer, but Boris actually comes out of this saga as a responsible, thoughtful politician. He took time to consider all the arguments over the biggest question facing our nation since the Second World War, rather than casually accepting the conventional, pro-EU wisdom like most senior Tories.
Nor was he motivated by ambition, given that at the start of the campaign Leave was expected to lose badly. Indeed his supporter, Ben Wallace MP, warned him that Brexit could damage his standing with the Conservative parliamentary party.
In the fight for British freedom, Boris showed tremendous courage and conviction, precisely the qualities that critics say he lacks.
Perhaps the most electrifying moment of the entire campaign was at the climax of the BBC debate in front of a vast Wembley audience shortly before polling, when he declared to resounding cheers that the referendum would mark “Independence Day” for Britain.
He was right. As usual, his enemies were wrong. Never has a modern politician been so erroneously derided or underestimated. Amid all the carping, Boris brings a unique array of talents to British national life. As well as serving as an MP and a popular Mayor of London in an essentially Labour city, he has been a brilliant journalist, historian and author.
He has a gift for connecting with the public that no other Conservative possesses, partly because he comes across as authentic rather than the product of spin.
IT IS precisely because he is so gifted that he provokes such jealousy. Other politicians and journalists are indignant at him because as they toil, he makes public acclaim look so effortless. They also despise his instinctive humour, failing to grasp that Boris’s creative, imaginative soul paints the world in a different light to their narrow, often po-faced outlook.
Only last week at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, one dreary Scottish Nationalist was vexed when, in response to his question about membership of the EU’s Single Market, Boris said that it was not “like the Groucho Club”.
This is the man who once described Hillary Clinton as “like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” and who declared of the many controversies that have engulfed him: “My friends, as I have discovered, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed opportunities for fresh disasters.”
Every attempt to write him off has proved premature. Many thought he was doomed when he was stitched up by Michael Gove during the Tory leadership contest, yet ultimately he emerged as Foreign Secretary. His leadership over Brexit could pave the way to the top.
‘He took time to look at all the arguments’