Who is Boris Johnson?
Husky and blond, he’s a larger-than-
life character who spouts Shakespeare
and Latin but can’t seem to comb his
unruly hair or arrive anywhere on
time. An Eton- and Oxford-educated
Tory, Johnson, 55, is hardly the ste-
reotype of a buttoned-up conservative:
Twice divorced, with four kids by the
wife he left last year, he has another
child out of wedlock, and at least one
of his mistresses had an abortion.
When he moved into 10 Downing
Street last week, he brought his current
flame, the PR agent Carrie Symonds,
31, and the two became the first
unmarried couple ever to live in the
prime minister’s residence. A brilliant
and wildly entertaining writer and speaker, Johnson has been a col-
umnist, member of Parliament, mayor of London, and foreign min-
ister, yet his policy achievements are thin. The British regard him
either as a buffoon or as a refreshing rebel against political correct-
ness. He has written of African “pickaninnies” with “watermelon
smiles” and said Muslim women in burqas look “like letterboxes.”
Yet no matter his sins, he always manages to get a pass.What are his origins?
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York City
into a competitive, intellectual English family of five siblings. His
part-Turkish father was a European Commission bureaucrat and
novelist who moved the family to Brussels, where the bright young
Al Johnson spent a largely unhappy childhood. Always ambi-
tious, he once told his sister that he intended to become “king of
the world.” At Eton, Al reinvented himself as Boris and began to
develop his clownish persona of a bumbling yet lovable rogue,
witty and self-deprecating. By his university years at Oxford,
where he was a member of the raucous, hard-drinking Bullingdon
Club and head of the Oxford Union debating society, he had
developed a worshipful obsession with
Winston Churchill, the journalist turned
prime minister he believes he is destined
to emulate.How did he get his start?
Family connections placed Johnson at
the prestigious Times in 1987, but he
was fired after just a few months for
inventing a quote. The conservative
Daily Telegraph, though, made him
its European Union correspondent in
Brussels at age 24. Johnson livened up
the dull post by making up outrageous
stories about EU bureaucracy, taking
obscure memos and presenting them as
actual EU policy. He claimed that snails
would be classified as fish, that too-
curvy bananas would be banned, and
that condom size would be standard-
ized (and the Italians wanted smaller
ones). His first wife said he would file
stories with foreign datelines when hehadn’t left their flat. “Boris is very
charming, very plausible, but cuts
fast and loose with the facts,” says
the Cambridge classics professor
Mary Beard. His hilarious reports
stirred up resentment of the EU
across the U.K.When did he turn to politics?
In the late ’90s, he became a national
celebrity as a panelist on the comedy
show Have I Got News for You,
charming audiences with droll self-
mockery. In 2001, while serving as
editor of the right-wing Spectator
magazine, Johnson was elected
to Parliament. In 2008 and 2012,
the Conservative was twice elected
mayor of liberal London, largely on charisma. He was an effective
cheerleader for the global city, particularly during the run-up to
the 2012 Olympic Games, when he memorably got stuck dangling
from a zip line, waving little Union Jacks.Why did he champion Brexit?
During the campaign leading up to the 2016 referendum on
leaving the EU, Johnson recognized that many Britons felt deep
resentment over the erosion of national identity and unimpeded
influx of foreign labor. So he abandoned his pro-Europe, pro-
immigration mayoral persona and broke with his party leader,
then–Prime Minister David Cameron, to become the face of Vote
Leave. “Johnson’s a political chameleon,” says his biographer,
Sonia Purnell. “There are no core beliefs, no values, just instincts.”
He toured the country in a bus emblazoned with the lie that the
U.K. would save 350 million pounds (then $525 million) a week,
all going to shore up the National Health Service. But when Leave
won and Cameron resigned, Johnson appeared shocked and
paralyzed. He withdrew from the running for prime minister, and
compromise candidate Theresa May won. May surprised many by
appointing him foreign minister, and
Johnson made a mess of it.What did he do wrong?
He was a bull in the diplomatic china
shop. Johnson offended the French by
comparing then–President François
Hollande to a Nazi prison guard and
the Burmese by reciting a colonial-era
Rudyard Kipling poem. He constantly
criticized May’s Brexit negotiations
with Brussels, and when she presented
a deal that would keep the U.K.
closely bound to the EU, he resigned
in protest. That stance positioned him
as the hard-Brexit favorite to succeed
May when she resigned without an
agreement last month. With his Brexit
advocacy, Johnson “created the great-
est constitutional crisis in peacetime in
my life,” said Tory politician Michael
Heseltine. Now it is up to him to
resolve it.Briefing NEWS^11
Johnson: Can he resolve the crisis he helped create?Britain’s unlikely prime minister
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Boris’ Brexit promises
Irrepressibly confident, Johnson insists that he
will renegotiate a deal with Brussels that gets
rid of the dreaded “Irish backstop.” This is the
provision that requires the U.K. to stay in the
EU customs union as long as necessary to avoid
a hard border between EU-member Ireland and
the U.K. region Northern Ireland. The EU says
May’s deal can’t be changed. But Johnson has
always refused hard choices: “My policy on
cake,” he once said, “is pro having it and pro
eating it.” If there is no better deal, Johnson says
he will crash the U.K. out of the union with no
deal by the Oct. 31 deadline—an option many
warn would cause economic chaos and a British
recession. Political analysts, however, expect
Johnson to renege and accept some alternative.
With his “record of double-talk, about-turn, and
mendacity,” says The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins,
Johnson can be relied upon only to deliver some-
thing other than what he promised.Boris Johnson has finally achieved his dream of moving into 10 Downing Street. How did he get there?