He was officially a dual U. The man bought them plane tickets back to the U. Even the Johnson is less English than it might seem. His half-English, half-Swiss wife, Winifred, gave birth to their son Osman in England, but died soon after.
Osman was brought up by his English grandmother—maiden name Johnson—and went by the name Wilfred Johnson. In , at the age of 55, Boris Johnson named his new baby boy Wilfred. In , Charlotte had a nervous breakdown while the family was living in Brussels.
The next year, Johnson and his younger sister, who were then 11 and 10, were sent to a boarding school in England, traveling there each term unaccompanied by their parents. Before leaving for school, the young Alexander was a quiet, introspective boy. At school, he transformed himself into the confident, insouciant extrovert we see today.
Throughout, Johnson has stood apart from any clique, whether the modernizers who have sought to remake the Conservative Party or the Thatcherite resistance against them.
Johnson has, in fact, tended to avoid the formal ties of obligation that come with being part of any group. In many ways he himself is the definition of deracinated. A friend of his once told me he suspected that Johnson subscribed to a pre-Christian morality system, with a multitude of gods and no clear set of rules.
I put this to the prime minister, but he dismissed the notion. The one group he is associated with are the Brexiteers. If he were to preside over the breakup of the country, whatever else he did would forever be overshadowed. He would be the Lord North of the 21st century: not the prime minister who lost America, but the one who lost Britain itself. Within hours all six had pulled out, and the league had collapsed.
Keen to squeeze more political capital from the episode, Johnson stopped by a soccer stadium in town. I grew up only a short drive from Hartlepool. The region was once rock-solid Labour Party territory, but Conservatives have been making inroads there.
It was heavily in favor of Brexit, and it has a long tradition of contempt for the political establishment. The man who wore the costume served the term and was twice reelected. When Johnson arrived to be interviewed by the regional press, I showed him the Gazzetta article. Grabbing my phone, he read the headline aloud in exaggerated Italian as an aide urged him to get to the business at hand, which was to ensure that the town moved into the Conservative column.
After the interview, Johnson joined a group of players passing a ball around. He added that he knew how to play the wall game, an obscure sport played only at Eton. Johnson and his team then set off to knock on doors on a quiet suburban street.
At one home, a retired couple told him they were furious about his handling of the pandemic, especially his failure to close the border as emerging strains of the coronavirus ravaged India. Before the virus was brought under control in the spring, Johnson had overseen one of the worst responses in Europe; more than , Britons have died.
At the other houses, however, the prime minister was treated like a lovable celebrity, and it was almost taken for granted when he asked people if he could count on their support. Two women came out clutching toddlers. Johnson elbow-bumped the little ones and asked how old they were, then struggled to remember precisely when his own son would turn 1. The mothers laughed as he fumbled for the right date—guessing three times before he got it right. He said as much in an interview with CNBC in , when he was asked whether his performative incompetence was typical in a politician.
As prime minister he has erected a trade barrier within his own country as the price of Brexit—subjecting Northern Ireland to EU regulations while the rest of the country is free to do its own thing.
That nothing ever seems to stick drives his opponents mad. He won the biggest parliamentary majority in a generation despite breaking promises over when and how he would secure a Brexit deal. Time and again, when controversy has engulfed him, he has emerged unscathed. Read: Boris Johnson keeps defying gravity.
Part of his electoral genius lies in his ability to stop his opponents from thinking straight: In their hatred for him, they cannot see why he is popular, nor what to do about it. In the end, Johnson himself gave the green light. PM Modi, Boris Johnson connect to discuss vaccine certification, trade, climate. Princes Charles urges action, not words at UN climate summit. Boris Johnson hailed by his party despite UK's economic woes.
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Jason Douglas June 9, Max Colchester April 28, Page 1. Next Page. Servility did not spare Buckland the sack. Does anyone in the court of King Boris think they would be treated better? They weighed that qualm against his mesmeric campaigning prowess and the absence of any better ideas. The gamble paid off. But it offends Conservative self-esteem to admit that the party took a mercenary punt on a charismatic scoundrel. So a respectable plan has been retro-fitted on to the leadership.
Johnson did not discover that strategy. He inherited it from May, who had failed to pull it off in
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