Boris Johnson: The British Prime Minister who managed to survive, but it is not known for how long

Boris Johnson is still Boris. He has the delusion of optimism and, once again, the numbers have reinforced his unrealistic spirit of him. He won the vote of confidence that will allow him to survive another year in Downing St. as prime minister, in the midst of the cost of living crisis, when inflation reaches 7.8 percent and in the midst of the war with Ukraine. On your pillow tonight you will feel Winston Churchill, your most admired hero.

Journalist and writer Johnson will remain British minister, despite the fury of the rebels in his party. no one knows how long. Until the next scandal. The fear of those who want to liquidate him is that his lies, his exuberance, his mistakes and his lifestyle, as well as the ideological deviations of his party, will cause him to lose the next political elections.

The problem of the British is to know which Boris will continue to Downing St. The Brexitier and populist friend of Donald Trump, the conservative-hearted centrist liberal who was twice Mayor of London and promoted amnesty for immigrants, or the one who supports the war in Ukraine, as Zelensky’s closest ally and can you be a pragmatist? Who will continue to be a Brexitier and / or accept a return to the European single market if the UK economy continues to sink?

This uncertainty occurs because Boris’s beliefs are “light” as a soda and he changes them, without paying costs until now. “Boris is Boris and he works for Boris,” according to former Brexit Secretary David Davis.

The father of Brexit

As during this 30-year battle between Eurosceptics and pro-Europeans that led to the referendum that divided the kingdom, Brexit is the tragedy of the Conservatives, which has now spread across Britain and threatens its very integrity. Scotland and Wales could dismember England and Northern Ireland join Ireland in the face of European divorce because their companies want to stay in Europe.

“Boris Johnson could be Britain’s last prime minister,” warned former Scottish premier Gordon Brown, who struggles to keep the UK as a whole.

The British Prime Minister has come to power in a country as fragmented as ever and a public fed up with Brexit. He went through the pandemic and the parties he threw in Downing St were supposed to keep his staff in the spirit, in the midst of horror. Today he was saved because he accepted parties in the middle of a pandemic at the government building but his problem was the same again: lying.

This irreverent reporter, kicked out of the newspaper Times when he came up with a phrase in a note from an Egyptologist who was none other than his godfather, a dyed blond tangle riding, with his massive rugby anatomy, on a black bicycle through the streets of London that the country idolizes, beyond the ideology- for his hilarious and ridiculous sense of humorwill once again be the highest British authority and the weekly interlocutor of Queen Elizabeth, her distant relative.

He never hid his desire to land on Downing St. like his admired Winston Churchill. They blame that ambition for the lack of conviction of reaching all costs. A “pragmatism” inherited from the Turkish great-grandfather Ali Kameljournalist and politician like him, who when he arrived in exile in Great Britain decided to change his surname because it was easier.

From him the Johnsons inherited the practical humor and that multiple DNA, in a family that is Boris called the “United Nations”. After the Turkish great-grandfather, a French grandmother from Versailles and another Swiss, comes an English mother and painter, liberal aristocrat, Jewish blood, Muslim, banker brothers, second half-Indian sik ex-wife, four genetically multicultural children, Afghan sister. legally.

He is fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, Serbo-Croatian and Latin. All arguments that serve to defend himself from those who accuse him of not accepting multiculturalism or of being racist.

An American in London

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York on June 19, 1964 and he renounced his American citizenship three years agonot to pay taxes even in the United States.

Stanley, his father, was studying economics at Columbia University. They were raised by their mother, who was hospitalized for depression, and her children were sent to Ashdown House, a boarding school. Without friends or family, the brothers they have become intimate, diverse and extremely competitive.

He, Rachel, Leo and Jo, his siblings, communicate with each other by speaking ancient Greek, which they learned in school and which their four legal children now speak fluently.

His father Stanley got a secure job with the European Commission in Brussels and the family moved in 1973. The Johnson’s studied at European College and know the Belgian capital like few others.

Boris returned to Brussels as a correspondent for the The Daily Telegraph. His exaggerated stories about European regulations, his satire on measures, regulations and transfer of sovereignty fueled Eurosceptics and contributed to his political profile leading the Brexit campaign. Although his public anti-Europeanism surprised his friends.

“Al” – as Boris call this audience at home – was never anti-European. He only worked as a journalist as such. A decision that led the former British European Commissioner, Chris Patten, to comment that “Boris is one of the leading exponents of fake journalism “.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader and fellow student at the aristocrat Eton College and Oxford University, where he earned a scholarship, ran for Mayor of London when the party was embarrassed by his unpredictability, love life colorful and polygamous and its provocative columns in The Daily Telegraphtherefore not politically correct.

Boris studied classical history at Oxford University’s Balliol College: Virgil, Aristotle and Pericles are his best friends. To be mayor, he resigned from his college of deputies, which he recovered after being re-elected mayor of London.

popular and histrionic

His popularity was achieved not only as mayor but also as a host of “I got news for you”, one of the most viewed programs on British television. Ian Hislop, who leads it, described it: “He is our Berlusconi. All other politicians are committed to being responsible ”.

His role as British chancellor under Theresa May’s rule was catastrophic and he resigned due to the Brexit deal he reached and no one approved. But his support for Brexit and his admiration for Donald Trump he questioned any traits of restraint.

The Economistthe British magazine considers him “one of the architects of the Brexit catastrophe”.

With a weekly scandal in his run for prime minister, the busiest are those responsible for protecting Boris from Boris himself, a man who does not know the details.

The kipper or smoked fish, which he exhibited in his last meeting with his Brexit voters, is the best example of his model and what he wrote in Brussels as a correspondent. He said it had been sent by an Isle of Man manufacturer, burdened by European regulations, because he had to put ice to send it to his buyers by post.

People cheered with joy. The “Boris Show” worked. Until the European Union intervened and announced that it was British and not European regulations. The island was not part of their territory.

Britain will continue to be governed by the most eccentric and irresponsible politician in its long history. Everyone doesn’t know how it will do. For Boris, the details are absolutely useless.

journalist, always

Johnson is careless and funny. A tornado of good humor in a country where politicians tend to be phlegmatic and serious, if not serious and clumsy. He loves infrastructures, especially mobile ones: planes, trains, bicycles, trams, even bridges to Ireland and airports floating on the sea.

And the photographs. It would make no sense to show action, intention and drive if no one was present to document it, in a good “photo opportunity”.

Gives Johnson the opportunity to do what he loves: put on a show, create a small riot where there is none. After he was first elected to Parliament in 2001, his colleagues told him he had to get serious to be successful in politics. To spend time with Boris is to see a politician completely indifferent to that advice.

Johnson is nothing like a traditional politician. Labor Tony Blair and Conservative David Cameron were refined and formidable. Gordon Brown and Theresa May were rigid, fearful, cautious. Johnson could also be another species.

He is lively and busy, superficially disheveled but in reality focused and alert. He is negligent, impulsive, exuberant. He is the first British leader to actually do this he seems to be enjoying himself. His conversations with the audience are filled with: “This is great!” and “You’re kidding me!” and wonderful! “and” Great, great! “

Its mission is to restore Britain’s confidence in itself, to combat the “exhausted, barren and hopeless” defeatism that characterized Britain in its childhood. She believes that if she repeats “it’s morning in Britain” over and over again, the country will believe it and then it will happen. His critics of him, however, claim that she is simply leading the country, “Sinking it between laughter in the sea”.

A multilingual clown

By now, every British subject is a Boris Johnson subject matter expert. I have an amazing gift for extramarital affairs, that he has (at least) seven children from three women, and his personal finances are a regular topic in the press.

He was fired twice for lying (once as a journalist, once as a politician); that he was the conservative mayor of the British left-wing capital; who helped plan the ousting of two prime ministers from his own party; and that he was about to die during the pandemic. For three decades we have followed his writing, his ambition, their excesses, their scandals.

For many, Johnson is a clown: the embodiment of the disappearance of public standards and the face of international populism, post-truth politics, even British decline itself.

He’s the man who was trapped on a zipline during the London Olympics, hanging above the crowd with a harness and helmet, helplessly waving British flags as people cheered below him.

the French newspaper liberation used this image on the cover, after Great Britain voted to leave the European Union, with the title: “Good luck”.

PB