Observations on Boris -

Sir Toby Belch and the Clown
Keeley Halswelle (1832-1891)
Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC BY-NC-ND]

" He is a multigrain politician in a white-bread age," a colourful character in a world of grey suits.

                                (Sir Lynton Crosby - Conservative strategist)

"Previous prime ministers have been brought down by policy disputes; Boris has been brought down by lies, parties and booze. That's not an epitaph any prime minister would want to take with him."

                                           (Former Downing Street strategist)

"Johnson is not a man driven by public service; he is the most dramatic example we have ever had of a vanity prime minister."

                                              (Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield)

"The only people who like Boris Johnson are those who don't know him."

                      (Sir Max Hastings - Johnson's editor at the Daily Telegraph)

A Mischievous Party
Horatio Henri Couldery (1832-1910)
Photo Credit:  Atkinson Art Gallery Collection [CC BY-NC-SA]

"A Heineken politician who could reach parts of the electorate that other Tories could not reach, with an optimism and energy that appealed beyond the traditional Conservative base."

                                                                     (Anonymous)

"He wraps himself in this persona of buffoonery to hide what's quite an unpleasant character inside. It's the same in his private life as his professional life. He's like an overgrown toddler and if people get in the way of what he wants he throws them overboard."

                                                     (Former Conservative strategist)

"There's a combination of bumptiousness and vulnerability. He brings out people's protective instinct because he clearly is so emotionally needy. He seems like someone you want to reassure and throw your arm around. There's something boyish and a bit raw about him. It's the narcissistic wound that is often applied to celebrities. They felt undervalued and unloved as children because of complicated relationships, so they seek affirmation and approval from large crowds."

                                       (The journalist, Toby Young who knew him at Oxford.)

"I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligations which binds everyone else."

                                                    (Teacher of Boris at Eton.)

"We had been privileged to be given the task of bringing up members of the nation's political elite. But what had we done for Boris? Had we taught him truthfulness? No. Had we taught him wisdom? No. What had we taught? Was it only how to make witty and brilliant speeches? I comforted myself with the thought that even Socrates was very doubtful whether virtue could be taught."

                   (Sir Anthony Kenny, master of Balliol, Oxford, when Johnson was at the college.)

"I'm never going to change. I am who I am."

(Johnson speaking to Will Walden, an advisor, when Boris was mayor of London.)

"The joker Boris was so much about a combination of clownishness, bumbling, deliberately playing up his incompetence, making fun out of his own dishonesty. These things are very difficult in the long run to match with anybody's idea of what it means to run a big country."

                         (Rory Stewart, who worked with Johnson at the Foreign Office.)

"He was fun to talk to at a party but not the person you wanted to drive you home at the end of the evening."

                                   (Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd.)

"The trouble with Boris is that he's not very interested in governing. He's only interested in two things. Being world king and sha...ng."

                              (Former Tory cabinet minister to the journalist Andrew Rawnsley)