Okay, so someone tipped a pint over his head, but my night out with Boris proved his fondness for Scotland
AND with a wave, he was off. The last time I waved goodbye to Boris Johnson was on George Street, Edinburgh, in January 2006. It was about 1.30am, and he was trying to cram himself into an ancient Mini Metro packed with excitable students. He looked like an elephant squeezing into a clown car.
Back then, Johnson was deep into his ‘cuddly TV personality who did a sideline in politics’ persona. He was shadow minister for higher education, a regular on television panel shows and, for reasons I was never quite clear on, running for Rector at the University of Edinburgh.
The night I joined him on the stump, things were not going smoothly. Earlier he had been booed at a hustings, before a member of the university’s Scottish Socialist Society had generously poured a pint of beer over his head. Johnson seemed perplexed, but ultimately decided the whole thing was a jape, telling me later: ‘It was the first of many drinks I received one way or the other over the evening.’
His tour of Edinburgh student haunts ended at a nightclub named Po Na Na, a murky underground sprawl whose occupants seemed utterly enthralled that ‘the bloke off Have I Got News For You’ was suddenly within their midst.
He both loved and seemed embarrassed by the attention. At one point he gripped my hand and shouted over the din: ‘It’s mad. This is mad.’ When a hen party approached and asked if he had any advice, he said, in his usual blustering manner: ‘Don’t get married.’ Ho ho.
By the time we emerged into the freezing Edinburgh night I was exhausted. Johnson, however, seemed energised by the experience, and was driven off to a spartan hall of residence where, if the rumours were to be believed, he was not even provided with an en suite room.
Over the years, as Johnson has crawled, inexorably, towards power, I have mused occasionally over that evening. His bluff and bluster. His complex relationship with his own celebrity. The unanswered question of why, when he was on a bit of a roll both at Westminster and on the BBC, he’d bothered to run for this politically obscure role in the first place.
THE only answer I have ever been able to come up with is that aside from the fact that he simply loves attention, Johnson actually rather likes Scotland, and enjoys spending time here. Whatever people might think of him – and there has been much venting of spleens in recent days – Johnson is a Union man through and through. He is a Brit who loves Britain, something made clear by the fact that one of his last acts before standing down was to write to Nicola Sturgeon and tell her, once again, that she could not have a second independence referendum.
That steadfast refusal and iron grip on the Union has been one of the few unpickable seams throughout Johnson’s tenure at Downing Street. While he has flip-flopped on a number of issues, and indeed with the truth, on the Union, at least, he has always been clear.
But there has always been that personal affection, too. In the summer of 2020, while still recovering from the bout of Covid that almost cost him his life, Johnson and his then fiancée Carrie Symonds retreated to a cottage in Applecross, Ross-shire, with their baby son Wilfred for their first holiday as a family.
Some rampant nationalists may have gnashed their teeth but the tourist board were delighted: within weeks the cottage was booked up for almost a year ahead, while staycationers forced by the pandemic to ditch their foreign holiday plans flooded to the area to see what the fuss was about.
I’m not saying any of this makes his behaviour excusable. Like many, I believe Johnson should never have been Prime Minister. His is a personality that does not suit the rigour of the role, and his failings in recent months, not just to himself but to the citizens of this country, are utterly unforgivable. But he is also, ultimately, a human being, just like the rest of us. I suspect there will be a part of him that will feel deeply wounded that although he has fought hard for the Union, he will forever be portrayed as a Prime Minister who became toxic in Scotland, a Brexit bogeyman who fuelled the nationalist cause.
So where now? Whoever takes over from Johnson had better be ready for a scrap when it comes to Scotland’s future. In Westminster, Ian Blackford and Co are spoiling for a fight, while north of the Border, Sturgeon is doing an excellent line in twisting every cough and spit of the week’s shenanigans into yet another argument for independence. Before Johnson and May, we had a long line of Prime Ministers with clear Scottish links, from David Cameron, whose father was Scottish, through to Kirkcaldy man Gordon Brown, and Scots-educated Tony Blair. The same cannot be said of the current runners and riders.
Rishi Sunak talks a good game when it comes to Scotland, but I’ve yet to see evidence that his heart is in it. The same goes for Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab.
Liz Truss went to primary school in Paisley but has rarely spent time here since. Penny Mordaunt would appear to have the backing of the Scottish Tory vote, probably more for her ability to eviscerate Blackford in the chamber than for sentimental reasons. Michael Gove, an actual Scot, appears to have ruled himself out, although only time will tell.
INTRIGUINGLY, the contender with the most robust Scottish credentials is Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who not only served with the Scots Guards, but spent four years as a Tory list MSP for North East Scotland between 1999 and 2003 and served as the Scottish Conservatives’ health spokesman. He’s also a former shadow minister of state for Scotland. The idea of a Prime Minister who has worked at both Holyrood and Westminster is, it must be said, a tantalising one.
I am not in the slightest bit sorry Johnson has gone, but whoever takes his place had better be prepared to put in the work. If they don’t, Scotland’s Union-supporting majority will never forgive them, nor their party.
Johnson didn’t win the University of Edinburgh rectorship, by the way. He finished an embarrassing third, after Scottish Green Party politician Mark Ballard and a former newspaper editor.
Instead, he started eyeing up the London mayoral seat, and announced his candidacy the following year.
I’ve always wondered what might have been different had Johnson won. Not much, I imagine.
Somehow, it always seemed destined that one way or another, he’d end up being booed, with a pint over his head, trying to bluster his way out of it.