Some time in August 2008, before the financial crash really kicked off, before the London riots, before MPs expenses, before phone hacking, before every TV figure from my youth was discovered to have been a paedophile, before the referendum, before Jo Cox, before Corbyn, before Trump - I saw Boris Johnson at the Vue Cinema in Islington. He was there to see Tropic Thunder with what I assume was one of his five, six or seven (estimates vary) children. True to reputation he arrived late and as he made his way to his seat, the occupants of Screen One gave him a cheer and gentle applause.
This was just a few months after he'd been made the first Conservative Mayor of London and here he was in the constituency of little known socialist backbencher Jeremy Corbyn receiving a genuinely warm response from a room full of twenty something action comedy fans. I don't think I applauded (I can't be sure) but I certainly didn't boo and neither did anyone else.
In some senses Boris Johnson is the perfect politician for me. Long ago I decided that I hated political ideology. I can't stand those who feel that the answers to all problems, big or small, can come from one simple belief system. Whatever the issue - education, wages, trains - just stick it into our machine - socialism, free market, Brexit - and as long you leave our machine alone, as long as it's allowed to operate purely, the utopian solution will pop out.
What I enjoy, what's kept me obsessively watching, reading and listening to politics since I was literally 11 is the game. I like to watch the game. Boris Johnson, from what I can tell, is the game. He is nothing but the game.
Boris Johnson is our Trump - not because they've both taken advice from Steve Bannon, not because they both happily munch on nationalism for their own ends, not because they both grew up in extraordinary privilege or the frequency and ease with which they lie or their many wives or the fact that they are both roughly six feet of cunt underneath a bad haircut. Yes, Boris has a bigger vocabulary and Donald has a bigger bank balance but as politicians they are fundamentally the same man because they have no ideology other than themselves. They believe in their own aggrandisement and whatever it takes to achieve it.
It's been mentioned many times that Boris Johnson wrote two columns on Brexit - one for leave, one for remain. I've read both. His remain argument was published at the end of Tim Shipman's brilliant book All Out War. His leave argument was a lot stronger. I believe that's because it suited his writing style better. Johnson is more Wordsworth than Orwell - there's a poetry to 'sovereignty'. Pragmatism is prose. His decision on which way to go was informed by two things - which was the better column and what he knew would one day be his path to Prime Minister - the opinions of Conservative Party selectorate. It's not that he went against what he believed. I think it's very unlikely that he believes in anything other than a collage of easily discarded but comforting phrases and cliches he's built up over his lifetime and the wants and needs of his ego and his penis.
Now his penis has taken him to a flat in Camberwell, where I now (but for this brief hiatus in Montreal) live. I doubt he gets cheers there. I very much doubt he'd even get cheers at Islington Vue now. He must surely be the most viscerally hated politician in Britain and yet Conservative members are about to choose him to be Prime Minister because of his supposed popularity with the electorate. I'd suggest a lot's changed since Tropic Thunder came out. Robert Downey Jnr blacks up in that film, for example.
I watched Boris Johnson's interview with Ian Dale at a Conservative leadership hustings yesterday. It was awful. He avoided every question and appeared genuinely disgruntled and hurt that questions had to be asked of him at all - 'Can't you see I had a haircut? Can I just have the fucking job now please?' The audience were on his side - how dare you ask questions of our Boris? It's the whole Trump, Corbyn thing again but this time with the added excitement for me that I might bump into the protagonist buying condoms at my local corner shop.
Here's the inescapable reality. Boris Johnson is going to fucking hate being Prime Minister. He's going to have to live at his work. Every day he's going to wake up in a building full of people wanting him to make actual decisions. Any time he's given the opportunity to do what he enjoys - perform - he's going to make some kind of a mess which is going to bring about criticism and more questions and he's going to fucking hate it.
For his sake and ours I hope he doesn't have to do it.
Note 1: I wrote this while a little drunk so please discount the entire thing.
Note 2: I once saw Jeremy Hunt buying cheese at Liverpool St Station so please await a piece on that soon.
This was just a few months after he'd been made the first Conservative Mayor of London and here he was in the constituency of little known socialist backbencher Jeremy Corbyn receiving a genuinely warm response from a room full of twenty something action comedy fans. I don't think I applauded (I can't be sure) but I certainly didn't boo and neither did anyone else.
In some senses Boris Johnson is the perfect politician for me. Long ago I decided that I hated political ideology. I can't stand those who feel that the answers to all problems, big or small, can come from one simple belief system. Whatever the issue - education, wages, trains - just stick it into our machine - socialism, free market, Brexit - and as long you leave our machine alone, as long as it's allowed to operate purely, the utopian solution will pop out.
What I enjoy, what's kept me obsessively watching, reading and listening to politics since I was literally 11 is the game. I like to watch the game. Boris Johnson, from what I can tell, is the game. He is nothing but the game.
Boris Johnson is our Trump - not because they've both taken advice from Steve Bannon, not because they both happily munch on nationalism for their own ends, not because they both grew up in extraordinary privilege or the frequency and ease with which they lie or their many wives or the fact that they are both roughly six feet of cunt underneath a bad haircut. Yes, Boris has a bigger vocabulary and Donald has a bigger bank balance but as politicians they are fundamentally the same man because they have no ideology other than themselves. They believe in their own aggrandisement and whatever it takes to achieve it.
It's been mentioned many times that Boris Johnson wrote two columns on Brexit - one for leave, one for remain. I've read both. His remain argument was published at the end of Tim Shipman's brilliant book All Out War. His leave argument was a lot stronger. I believe that's because it suited his writing style better. Johnson is more Wordsworth than Orwell - there's a poetry to 'sovereignty'. Pragmatism is prose. His decision on which way to go was informed by two things - which was the better column and what he knew would one day be his path to Prime Minister - the opinions of Conservative Party selectorate. It's not that he went against what he believed. I think it's very unlikely that he believes in anything other than a collage of easily discarded but comforting phrases and cliches he's built up over his lifetime and the wants and needs of his ego and his penis.
Now his penis has taken him to a flat in Camberwell, where I now (but for this brief hiatus in Montreal) live. I doubt he gets cheers there. I very much doubt he'd even get cheers at Islington Vue now. He must surely be the most viscerally hated politician in Britain and yet Conservative members are about to choose him to be Prime Minister because of his supposed popularity with the electorate. I'd suggest a lot's changed since Tropic Thunder came out. Robert Downey Jnr blacks up in that film, for example.
I watched Boris Johnson's interview with Ian Dale at a Conservative leadership hustings yesterday. It was awful. He avoided every question and appeared genuinely disgruntled and hurt that questions had to be asked of him at all - 'Can't you see I had a haircut? Can I just have the fucking job now please?' The audience were on his side - how dare you ask questions of our Boris? It's the whole Trump, Corbyn thing again but this time with the added excitement for me that I might bump into the protagonist buying condoms at my local corner shop.
Here's the inescapable reality. Boris Johnson is going to fucking hate being Prime Minister. He's going to have to live at his work. Every day he's going to wake up in a building full of people wanting him to make actual decisions. Any time he's given the opportunity to do what he enjoys - perform - he's going to make some kind of a mess which is going to bring about criticism and more questions and he's going to fucking hate it.
For his sake and ours I hope he doesn't have to do it.
Note 1: I wrote this while a little drunk so please discount the entire thing.
Note 2: I once saw Jeremy Hunt buying cheese at Liverpool St Station so please await a piece on that soon.
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