Saturday 3 August 2019 The Guardian •13Jon Henley
Europe correspondentH
e is clever, cultivated,
charming , witty, self-
deprecating, wildly
entertaining and oh
so terribly British.
Also dissembling,
dishonest, dark, duplicitous, and a
danger to his country and to Europe- a poker player whose bluff is about
to be called.
As Boris Johnson settles into his
new role, vowing, do or die, to take
the UK out of the EU without a deal
in 90 days unless the 27 nations ditch
an accord that took two years to
negotiate, European politicians and
commentators are both fascinated
and appalled.
“Like many people, I was easily
charmed by his demeanour, his
self-confi dence, his intelligence,”
said Han ten Broeke , a former Dutch
MP specialising in EU aff airs. “He’s
a pleasure to listen to. I have a soft
spot for Britain, and Boris was one
reason why.” Ten Broeke has since
revised his opinion. “The charm, the
intellect, the confi dence – it all now
looks a lot like over-confi dence,” he
said. “A promise of simple solutions
to complex problems. And it could
have disastrous consequences.”
The EU27 will give little, if
any, ground on the withdrawal
agreement, he said, and the costs
of no deal are many times greater
for the UK than for the EU. “So I can
see only one reason Johnson might
pursue it. A cynical, dark reason:
new elections, to win a new mandate- putting party before country, at a
truly existential moment.”
Another lifelong anglophile,
André Gattolin, vice-president of
the French senate’s European aff airs
committee, said the new prime
minister had carefully cultivated
a “caricatural image – the hair, the
gags, the fl ags, the zip-wire, the
provocations”.
But behind the clownish persona
was “a very smart strategist: after all,
he’s in power, and he got there from
inside the traditional structures.
Yes, he has precious little room for
manoeuvre and he’s soon going to
run into reality; he’ll have to reach
an accommodation, fi nd something
he can present as a victory.”
But his very presence in No
showed Johnson was not the
bumbler he was portrayed as in the
continental media , Gattolin said,
adding: “He pretends he’s a bull in a
china shop – but he knew how to get
in, by the front door. He’s playing a
game, and thus far you’d have to say
he’s playing it pretty well.”
Some have direct experience
of Johnson’s games. Martin Ehl ’s
15-minute interview in November
2016 with the then foreign secretary
won him brief international
fame after Johnson was quoted
dismissing as “bollocks” the notion
that freedom of movement was a
fundamental EU value.
Downing Street soon suggested
Johnson had been misquoted –
even though Ehl’s newspaper,
Hospodářské noviny , had agreed to
the British embassy checking the
interview before publication. The
Czech paper posted a recording of
the interview on its website in which
the off ending expression is clearly
audible, plus the words: “You can
translate bollocks into Czech.”
Ehl said Johnson was “a politician
and he does what he thinks is best
for him”. Ehl said he had no problem
with that, “but I do have a problem
with someone trying to undermine
our honesty and dignity ... I saw in
him a professional politician who
knew he was talking to a journalist
and that he had to say something
that would resonate and make a
good headline. But he wasn’t so
careful.”
Pascal Boniface, director of the
French Institute for International
and Strategic Aff airs, agreed it was as
much of a mistake for the French tomock Johnson as it was for them to
laugh at Donald Trump. “We sit here
jeering at them, and meanwhile they
get on with putting their plans into
action ,” he said.
There were clearly some
similarities between the two leaders,
Boniface said: both lead from the
front, taking few hostages; both are
opportunists, guided more by public
opinion than any fi xed ideology. But
as far as Europe was concerned, he
added, Johnson’s big problem was
that the UK was not the US.
“The European refl ex is still to
show some deference to the US,” he
said. “But the EU27 will not scrap the
deal for Britain. The shock of reality
will be brutal for Johnson – he may
conceivably frighten Conservative
MPs into backing him in parliament,
but he won’t budge the EU.”
Italy’s former state secretary
for European aff airs Sandro Gozi ,
now a Europe advis er to the French
government, said Johnson was “a
man who has changed his mind
about quite a lot of things” but had
been “utterly consistent on Europe
as prime minister: Britain must leave
on 31 October. Well, we must respect
that – but the question is, how will
Britain leave? We await his proposal.
The ball is in his court. A hard Brexit
will be his choice.”Reality is waiting in the wings,
agreed Salvatore Margiotta , an MP
with the Democratic party. Johnson
is “a poker player who will now have
to reveal his bluff ”, he said. “We
are facing a farce, a sort of Brexit
fake. A no deal would have dramatic
consequences, especially for the UK- and Johnson, who is prejudiced but
not foolish, knows this.”
Ulrike Herrmann , economics
commentator for the left wing
German daily Taz, concurred. It
would be “intriguing to see when
and how Boris Johnson eff ects
his about-turn. Because he has a
pragmatic relationship to power,”
she said. “He became PM by posing
as a hardliner. Long term, though, he
can only stay in this offi ce if he says
goodbye to a hard Brexit.”
Gabriel Felbermayr , president
of the Kiel Institute for the World
Economy in Germany, suggested it
would soon become clear whether
Johnson really had a plan, but “with
his provocative style, he is certainly
not the person to build a bridge
between his country, at odds with
itself, and Brussels”.
Markus Becker, Der Spiegel’s
Brussels correspondent, wondered
whether Johnson was “simply going
to let it come to no deal – in the
hope that he will, as usual, be able
to withdraw himself from the aff air
with a mix of chutzpah, charm and
luck, and then pass the blame for the
mess on to someone else”.
Franz Josef Wagner , the lead
opinion writer for the German
tabloid Bild, said Johnson had
sprung from Britain’s “black and
quirky” sense of humour: Mr Bean,
Monty Python, anti-German jokes.
“When things are bad in England,
people laugh rather than complain
about it,” he said. “I only hope they
can continue to laugh under Boris
Johnson.”
Some certainly doubt that. The
Nobel literature laureate Mario
Vargas Llosa , who lives in Spain,
recently called Boris Johnson “a liar
and a clown” and warned that he
posed a threat to “Britain’s progress,
civilisation and culture”.
But Carles Casajuana, who was
Spain’s ambassador to the UK
between 2008 and 2012 and met
Johnson when he was mayor of
London, recalled a “very intelligent,
very nice” person. That was hidden,
though, he said, behind an “air of
frivolity: deep down, I think he’s
much more calculating than he
wants to show ”.
Berta Herrero, a journalist
specialising in the EU, said that
Spaniards tended to see Johnson as
“kind of kamikaze”, and very loose
on the facts.
“He’s seen as reckless; as
someone who has built a career
on lying and convincing people of
what’s on his mind: of his fantasies,
not necessarily of the truth or the
facts,” she said. “He is trying to copy
Trump, but is more like his little
brother.”
Additional reporting
Robert Tait Prague, Sam Jones
Madrid, Kate Connolly Berlin
and Angela Giuff rida Rome‘Kind of kamikaze’
Britain’s new prime
minister appals and
fascinates Europe
in equal measure
‘When things are bad
in England, people
laugh rather than
complain. I only hope
they can continue to
laugh under Johnson’Franz Josef Wagner
Bild, Germany Boris Johnson has cultivated a
‘caricatural image - the hair, the fl ags,
the zip-wire’, according to a French
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