They talk of little else back home and it makes the papers here, too, if only because of ancestral ties, so can I put in my explanatory two-pennyworth about Boris Johnson, while he’s still in the job?
First, when I say ‘they’, I mean newspaper columnists: not so much the Ordinary Joe, who, when you mention BoJo, tends to just shrug and smile. He’s a clown and the voters know it. But he’s our clown.
His election (in 2019, with an 80-seat Tory majority) was a no-brainer because he was up against a grey loony-leftist, a pro-Palestinian, pro-Cuban, pro-Venezuelan, anti-Semite. And a vegan to boot. In other words, no fun. Jeremy Corbyn was booted out to be replaced by a man in a grey suit, a former director of public prosecutions, a lawyer: no fun.
Say what you like (and they do) about Boris but he is ‘a character’, in the positive sense. And what the scribes don’t realise is that people like people who make them laugh and are not boring. If you watched Italian TV news not so long ago, you’d see Silvio Berlusconi, every evening without fail, doing something that was plain barmy, while off-screen, he was governing the country (and, most people seemed to think, doing it quite well).
I’m not sure whether this line of thinking includes Donald Trump but the Americans also wanted something different and they certainly got it.
My reading of the situation – not only in the UK, but here, too – is that voters have become bored by politics. Oh, there is corruption everywhere and the police (in English-speaking countries) seem to be losing the battle against crime and this has to be reported and it can be because these are free countries.
But… give us a break! Give us something, give us somebody who breaks the mould. Boris has certainly done that.
When I first met him, he was in Brussels, writing about the EU for The Telegraph (did I mention that he was a journalist – what’s not to like?). Readers may remember stories about the EU planning to demand straight bananas and cucumbers and to force fishermen, because they were part of the food production process, to wear hairnets. That was Boris, bending the truth itself like a banana, over-interpreting the news, to prove his point that there were too many silly rules coming out of the EU on too regular a basis. That was Boris: daft as a brush.
Famously, when the time came to take sides on the Brexit question, he wrote two columns, one for leaving and one for remaining. He has been criticised for that. I read it, though, as a man who could see both sides but, like the rest of us, had to opt for only one. This time, it was party or country and Boris went for what he thought was best for Britain and voted Leave, even though the opinion polls were forecasting that the Tories, supporting Remain, would win.
Boris Johnson is a clown and the voters know it. But he’s our clown- Revel Barker
Recently, there was severe criticism (by the columnists) about decorating his Downing Street flat with wallpaper so expensive that he needed a friendly Tory supporter to help pay for it. The newspapers called it Wallpaper-gate. Good grief: a reminder of Watergate (a building) where a burglary eventually led to the downfall of US president Richard Nixon. And you know what? The people in the northern Labour strongholds that had ended a lifetime tradition and switched to vote for Boris didn’t give a toss about it.
Even more recently, in fact, currently, the columnists have created Partygate, no less, on the basis that, while the nation was in lockdown and old ladies were being arrested for sharing a thermos flask of tea on a park bench, the staff at Number 10 held parties (a dozen of them, or maybe 20, depending on which newspaper you read) with excuses like somebody leaving or the prime minister having a birthday. And the details are being looked into, without much enthusiasm, by Scotland Yard.
Journalists, my old tribe, are doing this, shooting down (or trying to) one of our own. We have a saying (or we used to) that ‘dog doesn’t eat dog’: in other words that we didn’t attack fellow hacks. One of my former editors said yes, but some people are dogs and some are lampposts.
Boris had a worse intro into Number 10 than any prime minister ever, having to sort out both Brexit and the pandemic (which he caught and from which he nearly died) over and above everything else. He is still battling with both.
Nothing’s perfect. Nothing ever is, nor is it expected to be. But we have had too many grey days. We need some gay days (gay in its original meaning of light-hearted and carefree). And Boris is the best chance we’ve got of getting them. I thought you’d like to know that.