This outlook on life is what gives Johnson his levity, the seemingly Houdini-like ability to escape the petty scandals that might have done for other politicians. As the philosopher John Gray told me, “His sense is of the passing show-that what people are bothered about now is ephemeral and that something new will come along.” You sense with Johnson his belief that we are little more than froth on the wave of history, within which only a few bright flecks will ever be seen by future oceanographers. When Johnson looks at the world, he sees not its seriousness but its inherent absurdity. As with Benjamin Disraeli, the prime minister from 1874 to 1880 and one of Johnson’s great heroes, we glimpse in the current prime minister a “mocking observer surveying with skeptical amusement the very stage upon which he himself ,” as the late professor Robert Blake put it in his biography of Disraeli. Some were more serious than others, but each held on to their own notion of morality, honor, and rectitude. At root, each of Britain’s postwar prime ministers was a serious creature who believed in the seriousness of the job and the seriousness of life. Johnson is not merely stylistically different from those who came before him, but substantially different. Just as we have never had a prime-ministerial collapse like this, never have we had a prime minister like Johnson-at least not since 1945. Johnson is left raging at the dying of his political light, powerless to do anything about it other than to pray for time in the hope that something will come up. The public has looked at the revelations about his behavior during earlier periods of the pandemic and, it seems, judged that he is unfit for office. Simply put, Johnson is being condemned because of a perceived moral failing. Even his handling of the Omicron wave of the coronavirus pandemic has been relatively uncontroversial.

The center of British politics has not shifted since he captured it in 2019. Nor is it because of an electoral defeat-Johnson is the most electorally successful Conservative leader in 30 years.

The collapse in his public estimation has nothing to do with opposition to a particular policy or some major government failure. Nothing in British political history has been quite like Johnson’s self-immolation. All the while, his poll ratings-and that of his party-plummeted. One backbench lawmaker was so appalled at Johnson’s behavior that he switched sides in the House of Commons to join the Labour Party another stood up in the chamber to tell him, “In the name of God, go.” And yet Johnson hung on, waiting for a report to be published this week that will formally lay out exactly what went on inside 10 Downing Street while the rest of the United Kingdom was in various states of lockdown. All last week disaffected Conservative members of Parliament plotted to oust him, without quite making their move. Watching him can be like watching a child, in this instance a child shuffling uncomfortably having his picture taken, desperate to grin and ruffle his hair, to mock and undermine, to play up to the inherent absurdity of the situation.įast-forward barely six months from that moment of levity and Johnson is going to need quite some skills to cover up his massacre of his own premiership, which now lies riddled with the bullets of his own failings.Īs I write this, Johnson has survived to fight another week of turmoil-barely. The scene was almost perfectly Johnsonian, capturing the British prime minister’s instinct to amuse and distract, to pull a veil of humor over anything remotely serious. “‘ Buona sera, buona sera, see what a massacre they’ve made of my son.’ Do you remember? ‘ Use all your arts, use all your arts.’”

“Do you remember? The funeral-the undertaker?” He then launched into his Don Corleone impression. “You’re like the kind-of taxidermist in The Godfather,” Johnson said, laughing. W e were in the white room in 10 Downing Street, and Boris Johnson was joking around with the photographer who was taking his portrait.

Charmas johnson