The UK got the news on Tuesday that Boris Johnson is the next Tory party leader and is now set to become the country's new prime minister. Rob Mudge asks how it could all go so horribly wrong.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/W. Szymanowicz
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In 1999, Boris Johnson told his boss, indeed promised, Conrad Black, the owner of the Daily Telegraph newspaper and the Spectator magazine, that he would forgo a political career and instead take the helm as editor of the political weekly.
If only. Conveniently breaking his pledge, Johnson stood as Conservative MP for Henley in Oxford and won the election in 2001.
And thus began Boris' scorched earth odyssey which has brought him to the threshold of No. 10, Downing Street.
The list of egregious lies and calamities, which come so naturally to him, is so long it beggars belief. Just to remind ourselves: This is the man who was forced to apologize for an editorial published in the Spectator under his leadership that wrongly blamed drunk Liverpool supporters for the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, in which 96 football fans were crushed to death.
In 2003, the leader of the Conservatives, Michael Howard, for reasons probably known only to him, gave Boris two shadow Cabinet positions, party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister. A year later he was sacked after allegations of an affair with a Spectator columnist, which he had described as an "inverted pyramid of piffle," proved to be true.
This is the man who described women wearing burqas as looking like "letter boxes" or "bank robbers." Or telling the electorate that voting for the Tories "will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."
Comments like these have his supporters guffawing with laughter and bolster their belief that he is the antithesis of his boring Westminister colleagues and rivals.
In 2001 he said the UK should stay in the EU because it had "brought palpable benefits to Britain in free trade and bestowing British citizens the rights of free movement and free establishment in the EU, and withdrawal would mean a potentially worrying loss of influence." Yes, I'm rubbing my eyes in disbelief too. But it gets better. In 2003 he told the House of Commons: "I am a bit of a fan of the European Union. If we did not have one, we would invent something like it."
Not entirely sure what he means by "inventing" and I don't really want to know, but at the time it appeared that even he had recognized the upside to being part of the EU.
Only kidding. In 2018 he said staying in the single market was "mad." In 2016 he said he was in favor of it, in 2012 he said he wanted to stay in it, and during the EU referendum his Vote Leave campaign literature claimed: "Britain will have access to the single market after we vote leave."
Talking of which: remember the Launching the Vote Leave bus tour in which he repeated his old allegations that the EU was setting rules on the shape of bananas? And that the UK was sending £350 million (€389 million;$436 million) a week to the EU, followed by "let's fund our National Health Service instead?" This was not true: the net figure is £137 million a week.
Boris Johnson's worst diplomatic gaffes
Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is no stranger to voicing his mind, even if the results are anything but diplomatic. DW looks at some of Johnson's worst diplomatic blunders.
Image: Reuters/T. Melville
'Hello, is this the Armenian premier?'
In May 2018, Russian pranksters managed to hold an 18-minute long phone call with Johnson by pretending to be Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. During the call, Johnson said the UK would continue to squeeze the Russian regime by targeting London-based oligarchs. The pranksters also brought up the Skripals' poisoning in Salisbury, though Johnson mostly struck to his public pronouncements.
Image: picture-alliance/Photoshot
Ireland's post-Brexit border like London congestion charge
In February 2018, Boris Johnson likened the challenges posed by the Irish border post-Brexit to the boundaries between different London boroughs. The Irish opposition described the comments as extraordinary, adding that "trivializing the very serious concerns relating to Ireland displays a dangerous ignorance that must be challenged."
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/P. Morrison
Johnson jeopardizes case for British-Iranian mother jailed in Iran
During a foreign affairs committee hearing in November 2017, Johnson said British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been detained in Tehran while "simply teaching people journalism." Her family criticized the foreign secretary for making reportedly misleading comments that jeopardized her case. Iran has long viewed the BBC's Persian broadcasting service as a subversive arm of MI6.
Image: Iran-Emrooz/HRANA
Libya's Sirte could be 'new Dubai' if they 'clear the dead bodies away'
Addressing a UK business forum in October 2017, Johnson told how fighting in Libya had prevented a group of investors from transforming the coastal city of Sirte "into the next Dubai." Johnson added that "the only thing they have got to do is clear the dead bodies away." Downing Street chided him for his remarks, while Johnson accused his critics of having "no knowledge or understanding" of Libya.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Brabo
Johnson accused of 'incredible insensitivity' during Myanmar visit
Johnson was accused of "incredible insensitivity" during a state visit to Myanmar in September 2017, as he recited part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem in front of local dignitaries at a sacred Buddhist site. Visibly embarrassed, Britain's Myanmar ambassador forced the foreign secretary to stop halfway through his impromptu recital.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/T. Zaw
Johnson compares France's Francois Hollande to POW guard
Johnson caused uproar early on in his career as foreign secretary by comparing then French President Francois Hollande to a WWII prisoner of war guard for seeking to punish the UK for leaving the EU. “If Mr Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some World War II movie, I don’t think that is the way forward... ” said Johnson.
Image: Reuters/D. Martinez
Johnson likens EU project to Third Reich
In May 2016, as the Brexit campaign was entering its ill-tempered final phase, Johnson told media that European history was marked by repeated attempts to unify the continent. "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically," Johnson said. “The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. But fundamentally ... there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe.”
Image: Museen der Stadt Nürnberg/Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände
Obama accused of harboring 'ancestral dislike' of the UK
US President Barack Obama's intervention in the Brexit referendum in April 2016 provoked a furious reaction from Johnson. After Obama said the UK would be better off remaining part of the EU, Johnson described the US president "part Kenyan" and accused him of harboring an "ancestral dislike" of the United Kingdom.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Warnand
The president and the goat
After Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained about German comedian Jan Böhmermann calling him a "goat f---er" in March 2016, the UK's "Spectator" newspaper, which Johnson used to edit, ran a competition for readers to submit their own poems about Erdogan. Johnson's poem, in which he called the Turkish president from Ankara "a terrific wankerer," was awarded the £1,000 ($1,325, €1,127) prize.
Image: picture-alliance/AA/E. Aydin
The 10-year-old victim of Johnson's competitive edge
In October 2015, Boris Johnson was forced to apologize as his competitive nature on the sports field saw him knock over a 10-year-old during what was supposed to be an informal game of rugby in Tokyo. Despite being bulldozed to the ground by the then-mayor of London, the young Toki Sekiguchi appeared unfazed by the incident, saying later he "enjoyed" meeting Johnson.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/S. Rousseau
The zip-line incident
Johnson sought to mark Team GB's first gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London with a high flying zip-line act. However, as he zipped across Victoria Park, the mayor lost momentum and came to a halt, leaving him dangling above a crowd of mystified onlookers. “I think they needed to test this on somebody going a bit faster,” he told onlookers, before urging them to get him a ladder.
Image: picture-alliance/empics/B. Kendall
Cannibalism in Papua New Guinea
Johnson was lampooned for one of his columns in "The Telegraph" in 2006, in which he compared infighting within the UK's Conservative and Labour parties to "Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing." Johnson issued an openly sarcastic apology, saying he did not mean to insult the people of Papua New Guinea, "who I am sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity."
Image: Axel Warnstedt
Johnson accuses Liverpool of wallowing in their Hillsborough 'victims' status'
As editor of the "Spectator" in 2004, Johnson claimed that drunken supporters of Liverpool football club were partly to blame for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 fans lost their lives. Johnson went on to accuse Liverpudlians of wallowing in their "victims' status." A coroner's inquest concluded in 2016 that the supporters were unlawfully killed due to police negligence.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Racist portrayal of Africa colonies and DRC
In another column for the "Daily Telegraph" in 2002, Johnson wrote that the Queen loved the Commonwealth "partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies." Also writing ahead of Prime Minister Tony Blair's trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UK's future top diplomat described how "the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/PA/A. Matthews
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Fishy business
Standing in front of red double-decker bus and spewing forth unsubstantiated figures is one thing. Standing on a stage brandishing a smoked herring takes the stand-up routine to another level. Appearing at the final hustings of the Conservative Party's leadership contest last week, he brandished a kipper wrapped in plastic that had come from a fish smoker on the Isle of Man.
Johnson claimed that EU regulations require kipper suppliers to keep their products cool with ice pillows when they are delivered, thus increasing costs. This is not true. EU regulation covers fresh fish, not smoked fish. Indeed, the UK's Food Standard Agency says food manufacturers must transport food so it is fit to eat. This might require a "cool bag." Did I mention that the Isle of Man is not part of the EU?
Leaving aside for a moment the blatant lies, what we should be concerned about is that his buffoonish behavior — which he has honed to perfection — is being gobbled up by many up and down the country. I'll admit that I'm partial to the odd bit of eccentric Englishness but — barring an incredible upset — this is the man whose clowning, er, crowning glory is to be the country's next prime minister.
We've already witnessed the car crash that was his tenure as foreign secretary. Care to imagine how he will handle the current spat between the UK and Iran over the seized UK-flagged tanker in the Gulf? I shudder to think.
I could go on, but my sanity has already taken a beating. The UK is so far up s**t creek that even having 10 paddles wouldn't get it out of this quagmire. The fissures that have emerged over the last three years — not only within the Conservative Party, but throughout the political system and society in general — have left the UK deeply damaged, both domestically and on the international stage. With Boris Johnson as prime minister the abyss awaits.
DW's Rob Mudge is a British-born journalist living in Germany and has followed Brexit developments with great trepidation.
