Boris Johnson: committing to Kyiv

The PM confounds his denouncers with an act of solidarity and flair

Moral courage isn’t something you would normally associate with Boris Johnson, but his surprise visit to Kyiv and walkabout with President Zelenskyy showed something along those lines I think.

Defence of Ukraine @DefenceU

At a handshake distance. @BorisJohnson and @ZelenskyyUa walked through the center of Kyiv and talked to ordinary Kyivans. This is what democracy looks like. This is what courage looks like. This is what true friendship between peoples and between nations looks like.

After the walkabout Boris gave a good speech alongside Zelenskyy. However this trip wasn’t so much about words and statements as the gesture of solidarity, backed up by the gift of more weapons to help in Ukraine’s freedom struggle against Putin and Russia. As one Ukrainian government adviser told French TV, the Prime Minister didn’t come ‘empty-handed’.

It showed commitment and the power of action. I care, the visit showed. We care. I trust you. Me and my country are on your side.

Boris the Liar

This was politics rather than philosophy or ideology. And its power completely confounded Boris’ loudest opponents – those who spend their days and nights on social media denouncing him in the strongest terms, most commonly as a ‘liar’.

These people aren’t just a handful of cranks on the fringes of politics, but include many of our leading public figures: politicians, journalists, actors, comedians, historians, scientists and sports figures. Indeed, through constant repetition and dissemination the narrative that Boris is an untrustworthy deceiver has become a sort of truism in mainstream public life, not just in Britain but across the European Union and in progressive North America. President Macron and his colleagues in the French government have been particularly enthusiastic promoters.

Gary Neville @GNev2

Proven Liar 👇

In this framing lying apparently defines Boris’ whole character. He appears as someone who we should not merely dislike or disagree with but as someone who is false. He is wrong in an absolute sense – not about a single thing or in a single action but fundamentally, as a person, as a human being. He is guilty. Indeed for many he is a criminal and should be locked up for his lies and for the consequences of them: especially in the form of Brexit and all the terrible things that have supposedly happened or are going to happen because of it.

Of course this narrative and the rage that swirls around it arose largely in response to Boris’ leadership of the Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum campaign. It particularly fixated on the big red bus which Boris and his campaigning colleagues went around the country in. Opponents have claimed this bus was lying by 1) stating that we were giving £350 million a week to the EU; and 2) promising to give that money to the National Health Service if successful.

Look at the bus and you will see that it didn’t make a promise; it rather suggested we should do this. The £350 million number was not correct in net terms but it was in gross terms, before the UK’s budget rebate. Maybe there was a little dishonesty there, but this is classic campaign rhetoric that all sides engage in. It was designed to provoke and draw attention – and that it certainly did.

I think this example leads us into a more general point about how these denunciations of ‘Boris the Liar’ work. They typically take something political – in this case a slogan which was trying to attract attention and maybe some votes – and turn it into something else; in the case of the bus, into a statement of absolute fact and an absolute promise.

Boris’ denouncers interpreted – and continue to interpret - the bus, six years later, as something that it wasn’t. If these standards were binding on themselves, their own campaigns (24 Hours to Save the NHS, Only the Lib Dems Can Win Here) would grind to a halt.

Boris the political animal

Boris is nothing if not a political animal. He negotiates the vicissitudes of public life with a sort of shambolic skill: disarming, humouring and dissembling his way from day to day – with the odd moment of flair thrown in as in the Kyiv walkabout with Zelenskyy.

He tends to avoid the sort of concrete statements and commitments that might come back to bite him later (albeit the opposite was the case in Kyiv). For the most part, he is a flexible politician with few solid philosophical commitments except to a sort of liquid libertarianism which helps him escape from his regular missteps and gaffes.

His humour is characteristically public school British in its blundering, self-mocking bluster – and is largely incomprehensible to foreigners and rationalists alike. For a stern, serious French rationalist like Macron, Boris’ persona seems to provoke an extreme allergic reaction.

He operates more or less beyond the normal rules of politics. He’s a bit like one of those footballers who drifts around the game not doing very much, but then pulls out a moment of magic when you least expect it.  

I can’t say Boris’ persona particularly appeals to me most of the time.

His bluster sort of wears thin after a while. But in Kyiv, he showed something – certainly commitment; maybe moral courage like I said at the top.

Perhaps his heart is in the right place, despite everything?