CAN BORIS BOUNCE SAVE HIM FROM BREXIT BLUNDERLAND?
Nicholas Cecil takes a look at whether the Tory frontrunner has the ability to hold the party together in the face of a crisis and deliver Brexit
“IF THE ball came loose from the back of the scrum, which it won’t of course, it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at,” Boris Johnson told a BBC documentary six years ago when asked if he wanted to be prime minister.
At the time, Mr Johnson did not even have a seat in Parliament.
After mauling his way through an array of political rucks to emerge as the Tory leader the party believe is most likely to deliver Brexit, the keys of No 10 are within his grasp.
It is still not clear, if elected, whether he can untie that Gordian Knot which has already claimed the premiership of Theresa May.
But what Mr Johnson, 55, brings to the fray is unbounded optimism, a big-picture vision and an ability to bounce out of tight corners which would kill off many other political careers.
He entered Parliament in 2001, winning the Tory safe seat of Henley-on-Thames.
Mr Johnson’s ability to reach across the political spectrum was swiftly recognised when he was appointed vicechairman of the Conservatives in July 2003.
But he quickly found himself in trouble. In autumn the following year, the then Conservative leader Michael Howard sent him to Liverpool to apologise for a Spectator article which accused residents of wallowing in grief after local Ken Bigley was kidnapped and killed in Iraq.
Mr Johnson did not write the article but as Spectator editor he was heavily criticised for it.
Weeks later, he was sacked as shadow arts minister amid claims he had misled Mr Howard about allegations of an affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt.
However, Mr Johnson bounced back and, in 2005, was appointed shadow higher education minister under David Cameron.
He would soon face one of the biggest political decisions of his life, whether to stay as an MP or throw his hat into the ring to be mayor of London. He opted for the latter and became mayor in 2008.
Central to his campaign to be prime minister has been his record in City Hall, hailing a fall in crime, better transport links and home building.
He also played a key role in the success of the 2012 London Olympics, with the smooth running of the Tube and traffic around the city defying gridlock fears.
He famously brushed off a potential PR disaster when he got stuck on a zip wire while celebrating the UK’s first gold medal win, by waving Union Jack flags and refusing to be fazed.
In 2015, he won the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat by more than 10,000 votes.
Mrs May appointed him foreign secretary in July 2016, which he held for two years before resigning over her Chequers Brexit plan.
His critics claim he is self-obsessed and lacks the attention to detail for high office.
They point to the case of London mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, imprisoned in Tehran, where she was wrongly accused of spying.
Seeking to defend her unjustified detention, the Iranian regime seized on Mr Johnson telling a Commons committee that she may have been teaching in Iran when her family stressed she was on holiday.
Mr Johnson was also accused by Tory MP Sir Alan Duncan of recently throwing Sir Kim Darroch “under the bus” by not giving him firm enough backing over diplomatic cable leaks in which Sir Kim. as UK ambassador in Washington. described the Trump administration as “inept”.
Mr Johnson, though, did notch up some successes at the Foreign Office, including his role in persuading other nations to expel more than 100 Russian diplomats, suspected of being spies, in response to the Salisbury Novichok poisonings in March last year.
He is well positioned to further develop close ties with Donald Trump, to the approval of many and dismay of others, after the distant relationship the US President had with Mrs May.
He is also expected to take a far tougher negotiating stance with the EU, though it is not yet clear whether it will be any more fruitful.