Stanley Johnson is the father of the British Prime Minister, a former contestant on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, and a huge fan of Winston Churchill.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson grew up listening to his father recite Churchill’s famous speeches. It had an impact.
During his tenure as Mayor of London, Boris wrote a biography of Britain’s revered war-time leader, The Churchill Factor. Commentators have noted how in recent years Johnson has even taken to copying the way Churchill walked, slow and stooped.
If Boris was inviting a comparison with his hero the Tory cheer-leaders in Britain’s right-wing press were quick to jump on board.
Tim Stanley, a columnist with The Daily Telegraph declared: “It’s time critics saw Boris for the Churchillian figure he is.”
Charles Moore from the same stable went even further. After Boris landed a huge parliamentary majority with the ‘Get Brexit Done’ campaign, Moore was like a love-struck teenager. Unable to contain his adoration, he concluded: “There is something in the comparison.”
According to Moore, Boris was the man “widely regarded by political colleagues as a charlatan who saw trouble coming from the European continent and was proved right”. The “controversial untrusted man who got it right, leads, unites country, wins”.
Oh dear. How pale and insignificant that “trouble” from the European Union now seems as more than 20,000 Britons are dead and the economy is in meltdown.
Having been forced to confront a genuine crisis instead of an imaginary one, the British people might now be able to put their problems with Europe into proper context. Hopefully, they will also see Boris Johnson in his true light as well.
Churchill made his first warning about Hitler in 1930. He continued to caution about the dangers of German rearmament throughout the decade – and he continued to be ignored. Although relegated to the back benches, he correctly identified the menace of Nazism.
Boris Johnson didn’t even have to work out that a pandemic was the biggest threat facing his nation. An article in The Sunday Times noted: “The plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.”
Like Hitler, the danger of a pandemic wasn’t unknown. It was just ignored, therefore allowing it to grow stronger and even more lethal.
On December 31, when China first alerted the World Health Organisation (WHO) about an unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds were in the Carribbean resort of Mustique, a £15,000 holiday allegedly gifted by Carphone Warehouse boss, David Ross.
Then, at the end of February as the virus began to take hold and spread throughout Britain, Boris took another 12-day break with his partner at Chevening. (Churchill never greeted his wife until midday, believing all his life that the secret to a happy marriage was that spouses should not see each other before noon).
While Boris was on his working holiday, The Sunday Times reported that “aides were told to keep their briefing papers short and cut the number of memos in his red box if they wanted them to be read”.
Winston Churchill was one of the few politicians of his era who actually read the sprawling 720-pages of Mein Kampf.
While Churchill’s research left him in no doubt about the threat posed by Nazism, the health risk posed by the coronavirus failed to register with Boris.
On March 3, he boasted that he was shaking hands with people who had the virus. On March 7, he attended the Six Nations rugby game in Twickenham which drew an attendance of 81,522. The organisers of the Cheltenham Festival cited Johnson’s presence at that fixture as one of the reasons why the event went ahead.
When Boris and his cabinet of cronies finally grasped the severity of the situation and announced a series of restrictions, his powers as an orator were also found wanting.
When the British people needed to hear something along the lines of “we will fight them on the beaches,” Boris advised them to wash their hands. Again, a lack of preparation is the obvious explanation.
In contrast, Churchill’s bon mots and one-liners were usually rehearsed. “Every night,” he said, “I try myself by court martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground – anyone can go through the motions – but something really effective.”
Courtesy of The Sunday Times, we know that Boris Johnson missed the first five Cobra meetings which were called to discuss the gathering crisis. His office claimed the prime minister doesn’t normally chair Cobra meetings. Then we learned that Gordon Brown chaired every Cobra meeting that was held during the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
In my view Gordon Brown placed a greater priority on sheep and cattle than Boris Johnson did on human life.
And we thought Gordon Brown was a poor prime minister. Compared to Boris, he looks Churchillian.
