Saturday 23 July 2016

#27 HALFWITTY: THE BORIS PAPERS









You may not have heard of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (née Kemal); you may simply know him as BoJo, Bozza, or Bonkin' Boris (in Private Eye), or you may have not yet emerged from an island jungle in the Pacific, in the belief that World War 2 is still raging.







Boris is a phenomenon.
He was born in New York in 1964 when Donald Trump was 18, in that same city, so that it is statistically possible that Trump is his father, something which, strangely, neither of them boasts about.

 He has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the last few years, from an unpromising start as the fat boy in the back of the class with a short attention span and a small talent for buffoonery which made people laugh. Fortunately his school was Eton College, so that a place at Oxbridge and a successful career was guaranteed however badly he did at school: in that respect he did not disappoint. His school reports were mostly versions of "He sets himself astonishingly low standards which he consistently fails to achieve". Nevertheless, he had some natural intelligence which he mostly applied to the business of self-promotion.

On the principle that 'you may judge a man by the company he keeps', Boris befriended a number of influential people while at Cambridge and was admitted to the Bullingdon Club, a society dedicated to drunken carousing and general mayhem at the expense of ordinary landlords and restauranteurs. There he met the young David Cameron, glistening with oleaginous charm and with a similar ambition: to be Prime Minister and have sex with a lot of young women along the way, though Cameron's  sexual preferences were more inclusive, leading him to develop a new form of animal dentistry. Boris and David never liked each other, and though Boris has been quite effective in chipping away snidely at DC, Cameron pulled a master stroke: calling an unnecessary referendum, losing it, resigning immediately, leaving Boris to lose the contest for no.10 and be lumbered with awful Brexit-related chores - which may clip his wings for some time.

His legendary volte face from 'Remain' to Leave in milliseconds demonstrates that 'The gentleman is for turning'. The keys that turn the lock are fame, power and self-aggrandisement. His appetite for publicity is beyond insatiable: he surely has the Press and paps numbers on speed dial, so readily do they dance attendance on his every activity. Sometimes this backfires, as when they gleefully recorded his stroll with Petronella Wyatt (and his bike) after they had spent an afternoon in her bed, probably not playing Scrabble. This was the only affair he admits to, out of the four or five that are frequently alleged.  Who ratted on him? Who knew? Only Boris and Petronella; So was this self-ratting, for image enhancement - the vital flaw - or to extend his licence for bad behaviour, through transparency?

How will he fare in the future? Being the Class Joker or the Court Jester is hard to live down. In a way, May taking the very risky course of appointing him Foreign Secretary also gave him one last chance to get serious, grow up and be a proper adult. He can rescue himself  if he buttons his mouth and padlocks his zip for a couple of years. In full flood he is an impressive speaker, if you don't care too much about what he's saying. It's not inconceivable that he may finally make it to No. 10. Blood may have to be spilled (but he can outsource that work to Lady Macbeth Gove). Churchill did it from a lower base of popularity.

If he does, I hope remembers to reward the BBC, even if they didn't mean to help. Remain and 90% of the worlds' economists and political scientists thought it would be disastrous for the UK to leave the EU. That's a majority of informed opinion. And yet the BBC gave Leave equal airtime, and therefore credibility and respect, which was objectively undeserved: from that runway Leave took off. Balance is different from equal exposure, and when certain BBC commentators - for the first time in my lifetime - let their own preferences and prejudices show - the Brexiteers got significant pro-Leave mass-audience exposure.  Impossible to quantify, but if that did not yield far more than the eventual million-majority, it would be extremely surprising.










When I was an undergraduate Psychology student
 in Cardiff we were given a pregnant rat each in order
 to study maternal behaviour. Mine was rather sweet
 and I called her Doris. When she gave birth to three
male offspring I called them Horace, Maurice and (the
star of the litter, coincidentally) Boris. This is what
passed for undergraduate humour in 1967, when
homophony was still illegal, but the affectation involved
fell well short of the Brideshead and Oxford varieties.
I mention this only to establish my bona fides as inter-
viewer: I have no prejudice against people with the name
Boris per se, if anything a slightly positive bias.








SI:   Foreign Secretary, may I call you Boris? 

BJ:  Everybody calls me Boris, except my relatives who call me Al…

SI:  Yes, an interesting choice as Boris is short, distinctive and memorable, punchy, a bit odd and funny – in fact very much like you, yourself…

BJ: Kind of you to say so…

SI:  Maybe you have something in common with other famous Borises: the guile and cunning of Boris Spassky, the literary ambition but not the ability of Boris Pasternak, the drinking habits and recklessness of Boris Yeltsin and the ability to cause fear and loathing familiar from Boris Karloff films...

BJ: Well that’s not all bad, is it?

SI: In a Foreign Secretary? The most sensitive and ‘diplomatic’ of all the top jobs? As it stands you won’t be allowed into the US by either Trump or Clinton, you’ve offended them both, plus the entire black population, the ‘watermelon smile’ and ‘picaninny’ countries are already planning lynching parties and Putin wants to kill you with his bare hands. Not exactly diplomatic behaviour, so why did Mother Theresa make you Foreign Secretary?

BJ:  Dunno. I have lots of foreign contacts, my family is spread all over Europe, I speak a few languages, and maybe she thought it would discipline me.  Then there’s the LBJ principle: better to have me inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in. Just glad she didn’t give me the Brexit negotiations, that’s a real pig’s ear of a job.

SI: Talking of pigs, were you actually there? Did you actually witness Cameron doing to a dead pig’s mouth what he subsequently did to the rest of the country?

BJ: Indeed I was…

SI: And yet you kept quiet when it all came out, you didn’t stick the knife in…?

BJ: Well the Press did that for me; and there was a virtue in keeping one’s powder dry, there is so much more I could have spilled out if the need arose. But principally it was about Bullingdon Club ethics, in which loyalty is prized above all else. You may not like a chap, but you don’t rat on him to the oiks.

SI: We may take it that Michael Gove was not a member?

BJ: Who? Oh that loathsome little turd, it’s almost a badge of honour to be stabbed in the back by him.

SI: Let’s talk a bit more about loyalty. You claim it for yourself, but I put it to you that it’s a delusion.  Two weeks before you defected to Leave you were a pro-Europe Remainer. Almost overnight you became a convinced Leaver, as you spotted the wave of anti-Europe support growing and thought you could surf it all the way to Downing St. I’m not wrong, am I?

BJ: I prefer to think of it as flexibility, the capacity to change one’s mind: Damascene conversions are rather well thought-of in the Bible, as are light bulb moments in contemporary times. And before you ask, I use old-fashioned light bulbs, I don’t want my imposing hall lit by an incandescent squeeze from a toothpaste tube!

SI: Now your brief is ‘foreign affairs’ – do you intend to have any?

BJ: Sorry?

SI: Well you’ve had plenty of extra-marital affairs here, what about when you’re offered some sexual activity, on a German visit, say, far away from the media’s prying eyes, and unknown to your wife.

BJ: It depends what you mean by affairs: if you mean a real love affair, then I haven’t had any. If you mean a grown-up arrangement between two people to have sex-without-strings every Tuesday afternoon, then I admit to one. But if you mean when a brainless deb offers you a quick leg-trembler behind the gazebo at a country house party that might up the numbers a bit, but that’s so trivial it doesn’t really count.


Petronella Wyatt


SI: I can only say that my sources suggest that there have been five non-trivial dalliances, which suggests a man with a large appetite and probably an ego to match. Does this not suggest that the Prime Minister has made a serious error in nominating a man who will be right in the firing line as far as temptation and opportunity is concerned. And that therefore you will be a serious security risk?

BJ: Are you suggesting that I would betray my country somehow or other?

SI: No. but your temperament in itself is dangerous to our interests. Ken Clarke said that if Gove were PM we would be fighting at least 3 countries at once. Pro rata, you would make it double figures. The intelligence security risk comes through your habit of blurting the first thing that comes into your head. Plus, your behaviour, you consider normal and acceptable, but others don’t; these would put make you vulnerable to blackmail by foreign interests, risking international disgrace and humiliation. As with torture, no-one knows how they would deal with that pressure.

BJ: You’re becoming as aggressive as that slug Piers Morgan. I’m not a big fan of Stephen Fry – too clever by half – but I did like his definition of ‘countryside’ as ‘killing Piers Morgan’. I digress; I thought we were just going to have a nice chat to amuse a few people on the Interweb.

SI: You almost require aggressive questioning: much of your behaviour is so extreme that it can’t be an accident that you did this or said that: it’s a campaign for permanent public visibility, with one end in view:  number 10. And you’ve picked up on a bit of Psychology – that people like their leaders to be slightly flawed, not perfect. You’ve played the maverick clown up to the hilt, but it’s out of control and alienates people when you should be serious. Clowns are good in circuses, not in Peace Conferences.

BJ: Let the record show that the defendant is nodding, sagely and contritely.

SI: There you go again…

BJ: No, it’s just that you’ve had a real pop at me. But however much you try and depict me as a giddy toff, the ordinary people like me: they do like me, don’t they….

SI: Yes, they do, for now. But no one falls faster than a comic who’s not funny any more, and you won’t be allowed to be.

Finally, you have been accused, many times, of being ‘economical with the truth’: is this fair?

BJ:  Oh come on, everybody lies from time to time, from little boys trying to impress their friends to billionaires, massaging their tax returns, it’s only human.

SI:  But the difference is scale: individual lies are one thing, but lies by accomplished political speakers via the mass media to a whole nation are very different. You and your colleagues lied through your teeth about the consequences of Brexit (without a shred of evidence), got what you wanted and then headed for the hills the next day…

BJ:  Oh that’s just politics, par for the course, people expect it. Who was it said “ If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” That is correct, it's an accepted part of British political discourse. Let’s face it, politics is a mucky game, you can’t avoid getting splattered sometimes and it often ends in tears…..

SI:  Indeed. And by the way,  the quote was from Hitler. 
Thank you for your time.

BJ: Welcome: now go away and edit it to make me look bad!

SI: That won’t be necessary.























THE U.S.

The Washington Post publishes a round-up of "undiplomatic" things Mr Johnson has said during his time in public life.
"To be sure, Johnson is an unusual candidate for the job. The former journalist is known for his deliberately provocative manner, ruffled appearance and penchant for sometimes-insulting commentary," it says.
It reminds its readers that just two months ago (of)  "a poem he concocted about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan having sexual congress with a goat...).
FRANCE
In comments to Europe 1 radio, Mr Ayrault said: "I am not at all worried about Boris Johnson, but... during the [referendum] campaign he lied a lot to the British people and now it is he who has his back against the wall."
Newspaper Le Figaro says Mr Johnson "gives the impression of being guided by opportunism".
The newspaper says the UK's new foreign secretary's political career has seen him change his mind on gay marriage and on Turkey joining the EU.
Pierre Jova writes in the paper: "Although, he has a 'clown' image which delighted the tabloids with his antics and punchy statements, he was a comrade of David Cameron at Eton and Oxford and is a pure product of the British conservative aristocracy raised to govern."

"Boris Johnson is nicer than Trump but just as divisive," says Kenneth Clarke.
Ian Hislop on Boris:   People always ask me the same thing about Boris. They say, “Is he an incredibly clever bloke pretending to be an idiot?” My view is no.



HANG-GLIDING?
















Privilege begets privilege. In many ways Boris's back story is a kind of stereotype, almost a caricature: from moneyed, upper class stock he rises effortlessly through Eton, Oxford and the Media to political prominence as The Joker in the grey and stultified World of Westminster. Not content with being a back-bencher and unlikely to be elevated  soon to The Cabinet, he takes all-comers on the outside by becoming Mayor of London, transforming the post into a vehicle for personal political capital accumulation: Boris puts the con into icon. The sheer daily manifestation of his cult of personality in the media becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: famous for being Boris. The comic persona, the carefully-ruffled straw thatch, the unprepossessing physique but above all, the self-confidence which comes not from achievement but from the DNA of his distinguished roots, all combined with a boundless energy and lust for power, makes the meteoric rise seem inevitable. But boom or bust? No.10 or bitter failure? Incandescent stellar success or premature return to earth, bitter burn out, disintegration?. Can he keep his trousers on and his tongue in check? Can even his ebullience survive a scandal that turns the public against him: political machiavellianism and backstabbing exposed, lies revealed, financial skullduggery, or a 'used' ex-lover with neglected child sells her story to The Sun, suitably embroidered. Tough call.




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