Credits: Jessica Taylor / Parliament UK
Asked once by a friend why he wanted to swap journalism for politics, Boris Johnson — then a well-known journalist at The Spectator — responded: “They don’t put up statues to journalists.” In a single sentence, the Prime Minister summed up his entire life ethos: a self-serving endeavour to pursue power and make history, regardless of the consequences for others.
Boris Johnson’s premiership has been 50 years in the making. Seeking to be “world king” since the age of five, the Prime Minister’s ascent to power has been a calculated, insidious and Machiavellian journey. It was at Eton — famous for producing 20 prime ministers –— that he first cultivated the eccentric, bumbling personality under the distinctive name of Boris, seeking to stand out from the crowd by behaving like a clown.
Despite decades spent preparing for the job, the Prime Minister has fallen flat on his face. If the past year has proved one thing, it is this: Boris Johnson is adept at acquiring power. Governing adequately has been a whole other challenge.
Ruling has not come naturally to Boris Johnson. The U-turns en masse have, in fact, revealed a foremast quality of our Prime Minister: that he is a charlatan riddled with ineptitude to the core of his being. Boris Johnson is a broken man, yes. But he is also a man out of his depth.
How has such a cack-handed man succeeded in climbing the ladder of British politics? The answer is simple. He has resided in a system that has not only facilitated his ability to get away with ineptitude, but one that has actively rewarded it. Yet the prime minister has marched on, showing to the world that he is unsinkable.
Thomas Hobbes once justified a Sovereign because he believed man was cruel, greedy and selfish. Such a man now occupies the highest office in the land. Boris Johnson is a man that prioritises nothing but a single cause: his own self-advancement. He is a man with no sense of reality, a man with no sympathy, and a man characterised by an insatiable craving for his own ambition, all at the expense of others.
Enoch Powell once said that every political career ends in failure. But this would be a mischaracterisation of Boris Johnson’s premiership. The blonde buffoon has fulfilled everything that he once craved as a young boy: to make history and be remembered for centuries to come.
True to the old adage, however, he would be wise to be careful what he wishes for.
