Hopefully, Boris Johnson’s appearance on Triggernometry represents a sad attempt to flog a few copies of his underperforming book and not the first step towards a political comeback. Johnson has his loyalists in the Conservative Party and when Kemi Badenoch is rightly shown the door, there could be an attempt to muscle him back in.
This weekend, Tim Shipman reported on attempts to “unite the right” in a Tory and Reform pact. “The assumption of many is that Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, would be likely to emerge as leader,” Shipman wrote, “Though others have not ruled out a return by Johnson.”
It is, then, the responsibility of anyone who cares about truth and justice to remind the world of the little matter of the things that Johnson has said and the things that he has done.
It is also important to be fair. I think that Boris Johnson has done tremendous harm but I’m not convinced, as many online have become, that he talked the Ukrainians into rejecting a peace deal with Putin soon after Russia’s invasion. To think that Britain has that level of influence sounds, well — very Russian.
That said, I wouldn’t want Johnson negotiating on my behalf. He tells Triggernometry’s Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin that it is preposterous to think that Putin might have been inspired by concerns regarding Ukraine’s possible NATO membership because Ukrainian NATO membership wasn’t on the table in 2022. Then he suggests that George W. Bush might have been correct to call for Ukraine to join NATO in 2008. As it happens, I don’t think that Ukraine’s potential NATO membership was the driving force behind the invasion. But it seems rather disingenuous to describe something as (a) blatant fantasy and (b) a good idea.
Johnson at least sounds vaguely thoughtful on foreign affairs. On domestic politics, he sounds like he is trying to explain why the car he sold you has caught fire outside his dealership. This is a man who was elected as prime minister in 2019 with a stonking majority. For COVID to appear was bad luck, and those of us who initially supported lockdowns cannot be too judgemental about what were at best the diminishing returns of COVID-era government policy. Still, that failure was just the beginning of the Conservative failures of the period.
Johnson always tries to have it both ways and fails. Net zero? Great! Energy insecurity? Bad! There is no essential contradiction between these two ideas, no, but Johnson juggles them without acknowledging what a disastrous mess British energy planning was during his premiership. As James McSweeney warned for The Critic, his government had a vague dream about abolishing fossil fuel consumption and no real plan for avoiding blackouts.
On immigration, Kisin and Foster are sprayed with falsehoods. What lay behind the “Boriswave” — that is, the unprecedented rise in Britain’s intake since 2021? It was the Ukrainians and Hong Kongers! Actually, Ukrainians and Hong Kongers made up a small minority of Britain’s newcomers in that period. The Migration Advisory Committee told me to let people in! Actually, to some extent Johnson’s government relaxed rules against the advice of the MAC. We needed workers! Arguable enough — but it also ignores how many dependants were allowed in. Johnson talks a lot about how ashamed and angry he was that Ukraine was invaded “on his watch”. Well, on his watch nationally transformative policies were implemented in defiance of the clear wishes of his supporters. When he repeats “take back control” on Triggernometry in a doomed attempt at Brexit revivalism he rubs into his voters’ faces how little “control” actually meant to the Conservatives.
Johnson’s shamelessness has been among his assets. “He’s very good,” smiles Kisin, after Johnson inexplicably congratulates his hosts on their “talent and enterprise” as a means of avoiding inconvenient questions. Actually, he’s not. Part of Johnson’s charm is that his bluster is not subtle or sophisticated at all. That it is so obvious that he is misleading is meant to excuse him. But bullshit delivered with a wink remains bullshit.
Johnson is a man who wanted to be a great leader but was only fit for rambling about loony lefties and brilliant Britain
Johnson’s attempts to position himself as edgily right-wing are downright pathetic. “I think that some of the things the Trump administration are doing are right,” he says, before declaring — completely out of context — “I like the Elon Musk cost-cutting stuff.” “Who doesn’t,” Kisin says, which ignores a lot of thoughtful right-wing criticisms of the Department of Government Efficiency but also the very obvious fact that Johnson only brought it up to catch a bit of Trump and Musk’s light and position himself — yet again — as some sort of scrappy and iconoclastic populist despite his years of shambling managerialism in power.
There is a revealing moment in the podcast where Kisin wants to ask Johnson about whether the numerousness of Russian oligarchs in London inspired excessive lenience towards the Russians in the years before the invasion of Ukraine. Johnson sails off on a rant about how, during his mayoralty, London had more billionaires than any city in the world, and billionaires in London are as natural as orangutans on Sumatra. It has nothing to do with anything. But I also sense a note of sadness. Johnson is a man who wanted to be a great leader but was only fit for rambling about loony lefties and brilliant Britain. That is the man’s tragedy. Yet in a far bigger sense it is also ours.
