Boris: A Writer & A Mensch

And he should own up to his true self

So…RIP Boris. The man who wanted to be Churchill 2.0, the brilliant writer, the man with a well-known ‘woman problem’, the man who rose to power on the promise to ‘get Brexit done’, the liar, the punner, the reckless charmer: he has fallen. Stabbed in the heart by the same people he brought along and gave top jobs to, like Rishi Sunak et al. Though he dreamt of a long reign, he is near the bottom of the longevity stats dominated by the Iron Lady. Alas poor Boris: you were not made of that tough stuff. I feel like crying into my special pillow.

The media are piling in and showing just how deplorably short-sighted and bereft of intelligence they are, surfing a giant wave of Schadenfreude that may yet spit them out.  

Most big publishers joined the chorus of ‘thank God he’s gone’. The Economist did though it acknowledged that Britain’s problems go beyond Boris and cannot be blamed on him entirely. Quillette published a well written though snarky piece, Boris Beheaded, comparing Boris to Charles II and even Charles I, who lost his head not just metaphorically. Rod Liddle at the Spectator harrumphed that not only Boris but the entire British Tory party are traitors to the cause of true Conservatism and they should all be fired.

The Scroll summed him up as a ‘big personality that gravitated towards extremes’, also quoting Max Hastings, formerly Boris’s editor at the Telegraph: Johnson was a man of remarkable gifts, flawed by an absence of conscience, principle, or scruple.

Canada’s Financial Post asked if Trudeau would have been kicked out had he been the British PM. And came to the conclusion that he would have, many times over. Alas, Trudeau is our PM, running a government remotely and on autopilot. Note to travellers: don’t come to any Canadian airport if you value your sanity.

Anyway, this is a man who always did it his way. And even when he resigned, he did not apologize for his mistakes. Instead, he coined a phrase to describe his party’s behaviour: When the herd moves, it moves. That alone makes him a hero in my anti-woke-never-apologize book. And it proves the point I am working on: Boris is a writer first. Politics is a game to him, and for that he will never be forgiven.

Opinions as to his virtues as a politician range from absolute condemnation to admissions that he was kind of irresistible. In a fascinating reminiscence aired by British GBNews, Lord Black said that Boris’s chief virtue was that way back, he could call anyone in the London establishment and charm them into doing his bidding. Black should know; he once hired Boris to write for the Telegraph, on condition that he would not stand for election as London’s Mayor. Which he promised to do and then did anyway. Yes, he lied to me, mused Black, but he was really good, so I let it slide. Also, and this is rather important, Boris didn’t like following the rules. In the end, he didn’t like his own lockdown rules and evaded them with wine and cheese parties at #10 when everyone else was moping in their homes, cut off from their loved ones and certainly not throwing any parties. In this weakness for having a good time, Boris was indeed rather a lot like Charles II, sharing a “contempt for pettifogging rules and regulations” as James Starkey, the eminent British historian writes.

Boris is a classic British ‘toff’, but he understood how to get down and dirty with the folks. His empathy for them is quite rare among the elite. He notably respected their wishes when nobody else did: it’s no accident that he alone promised to ‘get Brexit done’ while every other member of Westminster resisted strenuously for as long as possible. He was, you could say, a ‘man of the people’ in the best sense of that word. And the people knew it though the party machine and the bureaucrats in Westminster disliked him for that very reason. His dishevelled charm was, however, a potent weapon against which they were powerless. Until it ceased to work, and his faults began to overwhelm his virtues. And when it became clear that someone needed to be blamed for the perilous state of the British economy. Besides, Boris, in his usual reckless way, had punned once too often. In the Affaire Pincher, whom he appointed as Whip, knowing full well that in spite of Pincher’s political talents, he was also a groper when drunk. Quoth Boris: A Pincher by name and a pincher by nature …

Yeah, it’s clever, vintage Boris, the sort of thing only a gifted, irreverent writer and wit can think up on the spur of the moment. But the timing is truly terrible. And besides, nobody gets away with taking sex lightly in our world. Groping isn’t rape, but that doesn’t matter: in our universe, all sexual transgressions are in the category of major crimes. I am with Boris on this tricky subject, but this was the moment when he badly misjudged the historic wave’s power and speed. He failed to keep up with it and it collapsed on top of him. As Shakespeare opined, there is a tide in the affairs of men, if taken at the flood will lead to victory. This time, the flood was against the man who had ridden it with panache only six years ago. Perhaps no PM caught up in the Covid disaster and the vaccine wars not to mention runaway inflation and out of control gas prices, could have survived. But that is not the agreed upon opinion.

In fact, everyone now says they knew all along he was unreliable, disorganized and the opposite of a ‘detail man’. That he said one thing to the Red Tories and another to the London bunch. That he had no ideas and was bereft of vision. That is a lie.

His ‘levelling up’ agenda, still in its infancy, is a serious attempt to improve on the highly uneven social playing field in Britain. Though he came from privilege, he understood that the growing inequality in Britain was a danger to the very foundation of the democratic state. Not a single other leader in the West has made a similar attempt. He might have lived up to the promises made when he swept into power had it not been for that thing called Covid. It not only nearly killed him; it also derailed his own best instincts, which have always been firmly on the side of liberty.

By listening to his authoritarian Minister of Health before finally firing him, and the now infamous SAGE modeling team, (always forecasting the very worst outcomes that never happened), Boris betrayed himself and the British public. He and his team passed and viciously enforced draconian, damaging Lockdown Rules. But when he was found to have broken his own rules, who weren’t so much pettifogging as insane and unequally enforced, it was too much. One law for the toffs and another for the common folk—the very ones who hoisted Boris to the top job--- that was the beginning of the end for Boris.

Whatever you may think about the British, they are united in their hatred of ‘unfairness’. Above all, this is what finally brought Boris down. And while there is elation in the corridors of Westminster, there is even more confusion and apprehension. The old order has collapsed, Boris is gone. But does that mean Brexit will never get done and the ordinary people hoping for more of a voice in their own affairs are back to square one? Who will represent them now? Is the WEF and their henchmen, the same people who fought against Brexit, going to win this battle after all? And how can we find a new, better version of Boris?

Freddie Sayers over at Unherd has already made a brave attempt to get a handle on those vexing questions. The conversation was not one to lift anyone’s spirits though the lone woman on the panel did say that there needed to be more open discussion and a recognition that things are rather chaotic in Westminster just now. That maybe the old party system no longer worked for anyone, least of all the people of Britain. The same sentiment that big changes are afoot was voiced on other British news outlets. So in killing Boris, the Tories have thrown a bomb into the cracks plaguing British democracy. I believe they’ve not only blown up Boris, but themselves.

Despite all this, Boris has admirers even now. How is that even possible? The answer is simple: he was a Mensch, both inside and outside of Office. What that means, exactly, is in a story the Spectator published recently. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-boris-johnson-gave-me-a-hand-in-life

In this rather personal confession, the author, Sean Thomas, tells a hilarious story about Boris that I suspect isn’t a one off. It’s a somewhat embarrassing tale about a man who got so addicted to Internet porn that he literally ‘wanked myself into hospital’. He wrote about it for the Spectator when Boris was the editor and fully expected him to strike that particular sentence. But no. Boris, being Boris, left it in. And it was that sentence that launched the Thomas career because it made a talented book agent laugh out loud and contact him. Years later, with Boris suffering from repeated scandals in the middle of a pandemic, this same author, now a successful novelist, wrote Boris a thank you note for leaving that sentence in and also, saying buck up. You’re okay. To his great surprise, Boris answered with a signed, handwritten personal note.

Dear Mr Thomas

Thank you for your kind and amusing letter. I am very glad that I have played some small part in your literary success and will look out for your novels with interest!

Best Wishes,

Boris Johnson

Only a Mensch does something like this in the middle of the worst crisis in our lifetime when Boris likely had a few other things on his mind. Of all the stories I have heard and read about Boris, the blonde bête noire of British politics, this is the one that rings true. Because this is who he truly is---a serious writer who cares about other writers, not a lousy politician.  

Boris is a young-ish 58, so my guess is that he will make a comeback. But not in politics. I’m hoping he will first reflect and then write a tell-all, explosive political memoir. After getting rich on royalties, he could decide, once and for all, that he is a writer first. As a writer, all his faults—the punning, the jokes, the clever lines, the bonhomie and the chutzpah— turn into virtues. And he could just keep on writing bestsellers and having a great Second Act.

I for one hope he does. Because if we want to win against the technocrats in Brussels and Davos, the soulless woke zealots who know exactly what’s good for us, we need a Mensch on our side. A Mensch who can write, who can frame the dreadful times we live in for us, the frightened and confused masses. We need someone with a sense of humour and a sense of how imperfect human affairs always are. Someone who has imbibed the Classics and learned from them. Someone who has survived the steepest fall from grace in modern British history, learned from it, and returned with a different, stronger identity. As a bestselling author, he could wield more power and influence than he ever did as a politician. And make more money.

Boris, are you listening? I finally understand why I have such a soft spot for you: It’s because you’re NOT a politician. You’re much more interesting than that. You’re one of us, the hapless, derided but very necessary tribe of wordsmiths. Welcome home.