The Week India – July 14, 2019

20 THE WEEK • JULY 14, 2019

David Cameron, his junior at Eton

and Oxford, who was leading the

campaign to keep Britain within the

European Union. Johnson’s about-

turn, however, was not entirely un-

expected. At Oxford, he had aligned

himself with the leftist Social Dem-

ocratic Party to win the presidency

of the students’ union, although he

was a Conservative and a member of

the Bullingdon Club, the two-centu-

ry-old, male-only preserve of young

patricians.

While leading the leave campaign,

which he took to the English country-

side aboard a red bus, Johnson made

several specious claims. He said

Britain was paying the EU £350 mil-

lion every week and suggested that

the money could be used to support

the National Health Service. He also

endorsed the rumour that Turkey

was about to join the EU, and that its

citizens—most of them Muslims—

would swarm Britain. Johnson’s use

of the Turkish bogey was ironic as

his great-grandfather Ali Kemal was,

in fact, from Turkey. Kemal was a

journalist and briefly interior min-

ister of the Ottoman empire. Kemal

loved his vacations in Europe. During

a trip to Switzerland, he met and

fell in love with Winifred Johnson, a

“I WOULD NOT take Boris’s word

about whether it is Monday or

Tuesday.... He is not a man to believe

in, to trust or respect.... He is bereft

of judgment, loyalty and discretion.”

Certainly not a ringing endorsement

for Boris Johnson, the odds-on

favourite to become the next British

prime minister. There is no reason

to disbelieve Max Hastings, who

saved Johnson’s career by hiring him

for The Daily Telegraph after he was

sacked by The Times for manufactur-

ing a quote.

Johnson, who is locked in a two-

way race with Foreign Secretary

Jeremy Hunt for the leadership of

the Conservative Party, has had a

checkered career in journalism and

politics, marred by constant ideo-

logical as well as personal flip-flops.

Johnson and Hunt were selected by

Conservative MPs as candidates and

the final selection will be made by

around 1,60,000 party members, 97

per cent of whom are white and 71

per cent male. The results will be out

on July 23.

This is the second time Johnson

has come close to claiming the top

post. His first chance came two years

ago during the Brexit referendum

when he ditched prime minister

British national. He married her and

had a son and a daughter with her.

Winifred died young and the chil-

dren were raised by her mother. Ali’s

son Osman adopted his maternal

surname and made his middle

name Wilfred his first name.

A successful businessman

and an aviator, he flew for

the Royal Air Force during

World War II. Wilfred’s son

Stanley was among the first batch

of British bureaucrats sent to the

European Commission headquarters

in Brussels, after Britain joined it in

1973. Johnson was born to Stanley
      and his wife, Charlotte, in New York
      in 1964.
      The editor Hastings sent Johnson
      to Brussels in 1989 to cover the EU,
      perhaps because he had grown up in
      the Belgian capital. But Johnson al-
      ways had bitter memories of the city.
      His mother had slipped into extreme
      depression while in Brussels and
      had to be shifted to the Maudsley
      psychiatric facility in London. And
      Stanley, who, in Charlotte’s words,
      “exuded an Elvis-like charisma”, had
      several affairs. The marriage did
      not survive Brussels. It hurt John-
      son no end.
      It was therefore not surpris-

His innate intelligence and inherent flaws

may help Boris Johnson lead Britain and the

Conservatives out of the Brexit mess

BY AJISH P. JOY

Boris the

Terrible

WORLD

BRITAIN