52 FT383The urbanmyths we invent about our
politicians tell us a lotabout whatwe think
of them. It’s the same with the European
Union itself, and themyths we tell ourselves
about thatmuch-maligned body. Did they
really ban bent bananas? No, but it’s easy to
imagine thiswas precisely the kind of thing
those interfering,faceless Eurocratswould
do, if theyever got thechance!The straight
bananas idea is like theur-myth template
for the whole Euro-Mythfi eld, in that while
it isliterallyuntrue, in spirit it israther
accurate.There are indeed unnecessary EU
regulationsrelating to the classification and
shape of bananas, but no demand that bent
ones be banned.^1 After all, have yo u ever
bought a ruler-straight banana? No, because
such strange fruit are nowhere naturally to
be found, any more than square strawberries.
However, to adapt thatgreat European
Voltaire’s old saying,“If straight bananas
did notexist, itwould be necessary to invent
them”. So somebody did...EUROPEAN WRONG CONTEST
The Euro-Mythwas more-or-less coinedby
our new PM Boris in aformer life as Brussels
correspondentfor theDailyTelegraph
between 1989 and 1994, under the editorship
of Max Hastings. Hastings knew fullwell
that the storiesJohnson (who had previously
been sacked from theTimesfor in venting
a quote)fi led about the EUwere basically
made-up, but theywere funny andreaders
loved them, so hekept on askingfor more.
According toJohnson, the EU intended
to officiallyreclassify snails asfi sh, ban
pink sausages and prawn cocktail crisps
and employ specially-trained snoopers to
sniff animal-dung in order to ensure it all
possessed an officially approved scent of
“Euro-manure”.This created a snowball
effect, as other newspapers, in particular
Eurosceptic tabloids like theSunandDaily
Mail, began imitatingJohnson’sexample
and concocting silly-season stories of their
own, allyear round.The basic ideawas to get
hold of a new piece of Brussels legislation
and then wilfully stretch its meaning so
that, while dull inreality, it appeared to
be suggesting something totallyabsurd
and comical. Reporters started getting
ear-bashings from editors if theyfailed to
follow Johnson’s template; and so itwas
that sowing lies became an obligatory part
of any good Brussels correspondent’s job-
description (see the ‘EU Mythconceptions’panelfor some classicexamples). Such has
beenJohnson’s influence that the European
Commission has now created itsown Snopes-
stylewebsite devoted to dispelling an
entire A-Z of such Euro-Myths. Resurrected
versions of tallJohnsonian tales still pop up
today, all across the continent; in 2010,Polish
mediareported that the EU did indeed now
intend toreclassify snails as “inlandfi sh”,
so thatFrench snail-farmers could gain
fraudulent access to EUfi shing-subsidies.^2
When, inApril 2019, Pressregulator
IPSO demanded theTelegraphamend
online archiv e editions of aJohnson
column containing patentlyfalse data, the
newspaper tried to defend its star columnist
(annual fee: £275,000 per annum, a sum
he once dismissed as “chicken-feed”)by
advancing the argument that the piecewas
“clearly comically polemical, and could not
be reasonablyread as a serious, empirical,
in-depth analysis of hardfactual matters”.^3
Boris seemed proud of his unique literary
invention, though, telling the BBC in 2005
that “Everything I wrote from Brussels,I
found Iwas sort ofchucking theserock s
over the gardenwall and I listened to this
amazing crash from thegreenhouse next
door over in England aseverything I wrote...was having this amazing,explosive effect on
theTory party and itreally gave me this,I
suppose,rather weird sense of power.”^4
In 2003,Johnson wrote an essay with the
Spike Milligan-esque titleEurope: MyPart
in Its Downfall, in which he boasted of how
he had defeated the megalomaniac plans
of Jacques Delors to, as theTelegraphhad
it in a blazing front-page headline,‘Rule
Europe’.This was in 1992, in the run-up to
the signing of the MaastrichtTreaty, which
formalised thechange of the old EEC
(European Economic Community) into
the EU (European Union), with its Single
Market in goods, capital and services, and to
preparefor which all kinds of harmonisation
regulationswere needed.Johnsonwas no w
convinced that Delors’s projectwas doomed,
an epiphanyrammed home when he sawa
Spaniardremain totally unmoved,“staring
at me with anexpression ofreal pain”, while
Boris himself laughed heartily at Manuel
falling over in an episode ofFawltyTowers. In
Denmark, the peoplewere given a vote about
signing up to Maastricht.Theysaid no (a
referendumresult laterreve rsed) after, Boris
said, theyread his articleabout Delors’s
plans,“photocopied it a thousandfold” and
“marched the streets of Copenhagen with
my storyfi xed to their banners”. Or so BoJo
liked to imagine. Infact, he admits this
was a mere “babyish” fantasy, and that his
“stunning, historic and now whollyforg otten
article”was merely tomorrow’s fi sh-and-
chips wrapper.^5
The way thatfact andfi ction quickly
mingled within therealm of the Euro-Myth
can be seen in the saga of the ‘Euro-Sausage’.
This was in vented for the 1984 Christmas
special of the classic BBC sit-comYes,
Minister, in which the titular Minister, Jim
Hacker, sees off a threat from Brussels to
standardise sausages across the continent
and re-label the Britishvariety as an
“emulsified high-fat offal tube” due to the
low-quality meat-content of theaverage
British Banger. However, in 2001 Brussels
made genuine proposals tore-label sausages
if they contained low-grade “mechanically
recovere d meat” and the storywas recycled
by theSunas if theTV show had come true–
even though it hadn’t.The thingwas, inYes,
Minister, Jim Hacker manipulates hisown
media campaign against the ‘Euro-Sausage’As Boris Johnsonfi nally achieves his childhood dream to become ‘World King’ (well, Britain’s new
PM),SD TUCKERscrutinises Brexiteer BoJo’s role in the creation of the tabloid ‘Euro-Myth’ genre.EURO-MYTHCONCEPTIONSSTRANGE STATESMEN #32LEFT:Boris Johnson – inventor of the Euro-Myth?FACT ANDFICTION MINGLEDIN THE REALM OFTHE EURO-MYTHCA
RL COURT / GETTY IMAGES