Boris may be a chancer — but let’s give him a chance
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Every British Prime Minister, on first arrival in office, is greeted with trepidation, sometimes edging into scepticism. That is normal in a country which has traditionally frowned on cults of personality. This time, however, many are taking their hostility to extremes. Boris Johnson is seen by them as far less worthy of co-operation than Nick Clegg or even Jeremy Corbyn. And that’s just his own side.
Has an incoming Tory leader ever been greeted with such a chorus of disapproval? The Chancellor of the Exchequer, no less, gives interviews to French and German newspapers threatening to bring down the Government. Even the late Sir Geoffrey Howe, in that devastating resignation speech that proved fatal to Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, was evidently reluctant to wield the dagger. Philip Hammond, by contrast, is already whirling his rapier like one of the Three Musketeers — before his bête blonde has even taken office.
Yet even the Chancellor’s preemptive Brutus act has been eclipsed by Sir Alan Duncan, the extremely important Foreign Office minister who seems to spend most of his working life in corridors, engaged either in Iagoesque plotting or delivering soliloquies to camera. Sir Alan attempted to organise a coup against the new leader of his party that would have ambushed him with a vote of confidence, even before he had swapped air kisses with Theresa May and kissed hands with the Queen. Speaker Bercow scotched Duncan’s cunning plan by refusing to permit such a vote, but he too has it in for the putative PM and is probably biding his time.
Outside Westminster, too, anecdotal evidence suggests that there is an unusually high degree of doubt about whether Johnson is up to the job. That is only natural. He has been elected by his party, not the country. His predecessor struggled to win an election and is widely thought to have botched Brexit. Above all, Boris has cultivated a persona which simply doesn’t fit the normal criteria for First Lord of the Treasury. In public and not-so-private life, he behaves more like a celebrity than a statesman. He makes a virtue of amateurishness in an age of professionalism. He may have had a haircut, but it’s not so easy to adopt a new personality.
Yet the sheer venom directed against the former Foreign Secretary by his colleagues demands explanation. The public will probably want to give old Boris a chance to show what he can do. He will get a short hot summer break rather than a honeymoon, but sheer curiosity will kick in. Boris is nothing if not unpredictable. After three years of a roundhead in Downing Street, many will feel that it is time for a cavalier.
Among the establishment insiders, however, there will be no such charitable impulse. In their eyes, Boris is an untrustworthy bounder, an imposter without even the decency to admit to a syndrome, an out-and-out scoundrel crying out to be exposed. He may have gone to Eton and Oxford, but their condescension could not be more crushing if, like the Leader of the Opposition, he had dropped out of a degree at North London Polytechnic. If it had been up to them, rather than the Blimps and Blue-Rinses, they would sooner have elected the Man in the Moon. Boris simply won’t do — and they will make sure that he doesn’t.
Ironically, such catastrophically low expectations offer the novice a lifeline. He can hardly fail to improve on the dire predictions of the Cassandras of clubland and the Jeremiahs of St James’s. Boris may or may not do better than Theresa, but he can hardly do worse.
So the nation should suspend judgement, ignore the media noise, listen and watch closely. His was always going to be a high-wire act, but Boris has earned his moment of glory. We may turn out to have bought a pound shop Trump, a chap who doesn’t even buy his own furniture, but expects the taxpayer to do it for him. Or we may have struck lucky and landed a real leader, one with the gumption to send the pessimists packing. Either way, the new Prime Minister deserves to be taken seriously. His sojourn in Number Ten might turn out to be the nation’s last chance saloon.
