Boris Johnson – Winston Churchill reborn?
Published 30. July 30, 2019
© Georg Boomgaarden
Boris Johnson said, that the Athenian Leader Perikles is his hero, more than Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister who led Britain through the blood, sweat toil and tears of the Second World War. He has a bust of Perikles in his office.
Why not Churchill? I have a suspicion: this would have brought many journalists to read again his biography from 2014 of his great predecessor titled „The Churchill Factor – how one man made history“. And that would be too revealing of Boris himself.
My suggestion is: read Boris‘ Churchill-book again anyway and don‘t care about Perikles until Boris Johnson writes a biography of the old greek politician who lived nearly 2500 years ago. Johnson‘s book gives no new insights on Churchill, but a lot of insights into Boris Johnson‘s soul.
Taking into account the record of Boris Johnson as a journalist who loved the story even despite any facts, I am not sure if everything he writes on his predecessor is really true. But I leave that question to historians who know better than I do.
The book has a clear subtext saying: „one man can make history! – if Churchill did it, I can do it again“ – This is not far from saying: „If the Churchill Factor helped Britain to survive, the Johnson Factor should be taken into account now!“
A biography may certainly include some information on how the person was raised, about political circumstances that challenged him. The private and the public person are closely linked such that the character and even the idiosyncrasies of a person of history are relevant for the biographer.
But a biographer has a choice how much weight is given to the different parts of the personality of a great leader. And he has a choice how to put this into a context. This choice makes Boris Johnson‘s „Churchill Factor“ so revealing.
Let us study the text – and I take only some examples from the very beginning of the book:
„From his very emergence as a young Tory MP he had bashed and satirized his own party; he had then deserted them for the Liberals, and though he had eventually returned to the fold, there were too many Tories who thought of him as an unprincipled opportunist“
The subtext is: I had bashed and satirized my own party, I won the London mayoral with a Liberal manifesto, returned to the old guard and am thought of as an unprincipled opportunist. When the Tories grasp that I am a real hero, they will regret this view.
Chamberlain and Lord Halifax „had reason to regard him not just as volcanic in his energies, but (to their ways of thinking) irrational and positively dangerous“
The subtext: If anybody regards me and my volcanic energy as irrational and positively dangerous, this only proves how similar I am to Churchill. Take my volcanic energy as a positive factor, if others see me as positively dangerous they must be the likes of Chamberlain and Halifax.
„As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill had deeply irritated Chamberlain with his plan to cut business rates“
The subtext: and I will cut business rates like Churchill. Just another element of Churchill reborn.
„The press baron Beaverbrook himself had actually sacked Churchill from his Eevening Standard column, on the grounds that he was too hard on the Nazis“
The subtext: another parallel to Churchill: when The Times sacked me, it was not because of lies but because I was too hard on the EU (the Nazis of today)
„He was fighting for his political life and credibility, and if he gave in to Halifax he was finished. His prestige, his reputation, his prospects, his ego – all those things that matter to politicians – were engaged in the cause of fighting on; and this has led some historians to make the mistake of thinking that it was all about him , and not about the British interest“
The subtext: Since I am a politician, my ego and my narcissm are normal, I am like Churchill, and people who think it is all about me should know that they would only repeat misunderstanding Churchill and me.
It is by the way quite an insult to Winston Churchill to insinuate that at the time of greatest crisis he bothered about himself and his political future. He did this before, but when his finest hour came he was a man of duty and not somebody like Johnson who really believes it is all about himself and duty is just a side-effect.
„As many counterfactual novelists have spotted, there were all sorts of plans to convert the territory into a sinister edition of the European Union. … In 1942 the Reich economics minister and president of the Reichsbank, Dr Walter Funk wrote a paper calling for a Europäische Wirtschaftsgesellschaft – a European common market. He proposed a single currency, a central bank, a common agricultural policy, and other familiar ideas.“
Who are these „many counterfactual novelists“? Johnson insinuates that the fathers of the European project, the French statesmen Jean Monnet, the Italian prime minister de Gasperi, the German Chancellor Adenauer stood in continuity to a Nazi project, which is another targeted insult to denigrate the EU. But the Europe of these great statesmen, supported by Churchill (who praised the project – only did not envisage the British Empire be a member), worked for lasting peace in Europe, using the right institutions. Would Boris Johnson dare to shame British democracy, just because Stalin imposed very similar institutions like a parliament in the Soviet constitution – never intended to be observed?
The subtext: the EU and its familiar institutions are an idea of the Nazis – only somewhat less beastly. When I fight the EU I am doing the same job Chruchill did in his time fighting the Nazis.
This self-styling is just perverse and deeply embarrassing.
The rest of the book repeats underpinning the same subtext everywhere: when people see me, Boris Johnson, as a colourful personality like Churchill, when they denounce me as an unprincipled opportunist, as a turncoat, as a clown, this makes me like Churchill and proves that I am right. If you dislike the enemies of Churchill you must dislike my enemies and love ME.
I spare you the rest of this book, which is sometimes witty, sparkling, sometimes boring, but all over self-revealing an impostor. Please read it yourself, you may already get it cheaper than the original price was.
Does Boris believe in his own image? I think he does. The instruments of propaganda serving this image may change but the belief in himself seems well rooted. Since I am not a shrink I leave it to psychoanalyst to identify the roots of Boris Johnsons narcissm.
It has been said that history does repeat itself – the second time as a farce. We saw that when Hugo Chavez styled himself the reborn Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. He was elected, at least his first election was democratically rather impeccable (however just before that he was indulted for his failed intents for a military coup) and he started out as a popular populist. Now his successor Maduro is an unpopular populist of the most unsavoury kind.
So: beware of reborn heros, the farce could become more serious again and not for the good.
© Georg Boomgaarden