A gasp of horrified surprise from the Italianate grandeur of the British Foreign Office was almost audible when the backbench MP Boris Johnson was installed as one of its best-known but least-experienced overlords in history.
The new foreign secretary has no ministerial experience, a weakness for headline-grabbing insults of world leaders and a track record of causing upset on overseas trips. Even his recent Leave campaign colleagues doubt his credentials as a statesman.
Michael Gove referred to him as “an amazing and impressive person” but one apparently not “capable” of building teams or “providing unity”. Fellow leaver and one-time Johnson admirer Dominic Raab described our new emissary in chief as “cavalier”.
And just two weeks ago, when the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, was launching her bid for the Tory leadership, with Johnson still a contender in the race, she commented: “Boris negotiated in Europe. I seem to remember last time he did a deal with the Germans, he came back with three nearly-new water cannons.”
As successor to such greats as Lord Palmerston and Ernest Bevin, Johnson has also frequently come under fire for not fulfilling that great foreign secretary requirement: Doing his homework. Since Johnson started attending political Cabinet after returning to Westminster last year, he has frequently been accused of not reading his briefs and this continued failure appears to have caused many of the rifts now only too obvious in the leavers camp. One campaign colleague described him as “unbriefable”.
When he was attacked in the past for poor grasp of detail during his eight-year stint as mayor of London, he saw fit to respond with such flippant putdowns as “blah blah fishcakes” — hardly suitable language for Britain’s representative on the world stage. Nor has Johnson demonstrated other useful diplomatic skills despite a seemingly never-ending series of foreign trips during his time as mayor of London — so frequent that they led to some staffers joking that he had permanently “checked-out” of City Hall. Taxpayer-funded visits to such countries as India, China and the United States worked wonders on promoting Brand Boris to a global audience, by jumping into cars, on to subways or making speeches about Downton Abbey and James Bond. He has been widely received overseas as a celebrity, attracting in some cases crowds of excitable youths entranced by a politician being so, well, un-politician-like. But details of deals clinched as a direct result of these supposedly trade-related jaunts have not always been entirely forthcoming or that impressive.
And some of his overseas forays have had decidedly negative effects on international relations. When Johnson attended the Beijing Olympics in 2008 he offended his political hosts by apparently ignoring the mayor of the city, wearing his jacket unbuttoned, putting his hand in his pocket and his casual manner in holding the Olympic flag with only one hand. Last year, he ostentatiously grabbed media attention by posing lying on the ground aiming an AK47 while on yet another overseas foray, this time ostensibly to visit British troops in Iraq. But not only was the stunt considered unbecoming for a mayor of London — let alone to a foreign secretary in waiting — Johnson’s behaviour throughout the trip caused consternation in the department he now leads.
He gave the Foreign Office just three weeks to organise a trip for which there was “zero appetite”, left his sizeable personal bar bill to be picked up by officials and even demanded a last-minute sightseeing tour. He was granted permission to visit the “front” only if he conducted himself in an “appropriately sombre manner”, but broke his word by his unhelpful pose with the gun (which was in due course interpreted as a dig at the then prime minister David Cameron’s military strategy).
Yet another trip, this time to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ended in embarrassing chaos and had to be cut short amid an escalating row over Johnson’s “inaccurate, misinformed and disrespectful” comments about a proposed boycott of Israeli goods. Women’s and children’s groups cancelled their invitations to Johnson after he dismissed such an idea as “crazy” and prompted by a “few lefty academics in corduroy jackets”. It was not one of Britain’s most successful interventions in the world’s number one troublespot.
There are other historic reasons that Johnson may well find a lukewarm reception in King Charles Street as he settles in to his tennis-court sized office, a lavish relic of an imperial past. Many still recall his description of diplomats as “limp-wristed” with “shy grins” and “corrugated-soled shoes”. Indeed, he has been a thorn in the Foreign Office’s side for the past quarter of a century.
In the 1990s, for instance, the former Conservative foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, found that his attempts to negotiate with the EU were frequently trashed by Johnson’s inaccurate and incendiary reporting. Foreign leaders and their staff members found the stories offensive, and began to distrust even the most sympathetic or admired British ministers. “Boris,” Hurd said later, “saw it as his duty to make life more difficult for me.” Johnson’s antics — which he himself has compared to throwing rocks into a glasshouse — were in fact so gravely “undermining the national interest” that the Foreign Office set up a special “Boris unit”.
“We are dealing with Boris”, insisted a senior diplomat of the time, but for several years, the Foreign Office seemed powerless to stop the “constant headaches” he caused them. It was not just Johnson’s reporting on the European Union (EU) that has prompted such antipathy, however. There was also distinct unease at his apparent call for an age of neo-imperialism when he wrote an article entitled Cancel the Guilt Trip in which he argued it was “simply not credible” to blame Africa’s “mess” on colonialism. Indeed, he opined, the problem is “not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more”. For a Foreign Secretary, Johnson harbours an unusual gift for causing offence to as many people as possible. He once had to apologise to the entire country of Papua New Guinea for linking it to cannibalism. His casual use of such terms as “picaninnies” and “watermelon smiles” also hardly rank as international statecraft, but nor do his comments about the very world leaders he will now need to nurture as allies if Britain is to navigate its way through an uncertain post-Brexit world.
United States President Barack Obama may only have a few months to go in the White House, but he made his distaste for Johnson very clear on his recent visit to Britain after our new foreign secretary suggested that he had moved a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office because of his “part Kenyan” heritage and “ancestral dislike of the British empire”. Johnson did not stop there in his attack on Britain’s chief ally, also laying into Obama for “downright hypocrisy” and guarding US sovereignty with “hysterical jealousy” in not forcing the American embassy in London to pay the congestion charges, while urging Britain to hand over money to the EU.
He reserves some of his most colourful insults for women, however, not least Hillary Clinton, who may well soon replace Obama and shares the latter’s dislike for Johnson. After comparing her to a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” in 2007, he admitted that it was “amazing” that she had later agreed to meet him when he travelled to the US while still mayor of London. It is, nevertheless, common gossip in Washington that she has neither forgotten nor forgiven his remarks.
A former colleague of Johnson’s once said that like Palmerston, he had not friends but merely interests. It is high time for Britain’s new foreign secretary to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps and finally pursue his country’s interests, not just his own.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Sonia Purnell is the author of Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition.
