Boris Johnson concentrates in his academic curriculum the minimum that is required of the British elite, his time at Eton and Oxford. Born in 1964 in New York, he inherited from his father a fiercely competitive spirit that allowed him to overcome all kinds of obstacles and climb to the presidency of the Oxford Union, a training school for the British ruling class and a training ground for rhetoric. politics.
In 1987, and thanks to his family connections, he gets a scholarship at the Times. But neither her slick, baroque verbiage, nor his knack for old-school socializing – he was a member of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford, a club of drinkers and posh thugs – impressed her bosses.
He had better luck at the Daily Telegraph. In 1989 he was appointed correspondent in Brussels. That’s where his reputation is shaped. His columns are eccentric and excessive. But they are to the liking of Telegraph readers, especially when it comes to describing the community bureaucracy as a sinister universe and its initiatives as ridiculous.
Seven years later he returns to London. He is already the most popular of the British correspondents in Brussels. Not because of the depth of his analysis, but because of a tone that already exceeds that of a commentator and that, if the correspondent had lasted longer, would have damaged his prestige. By 1994, Boris Johnson is a political columnist and a personal project. He likes himself, he likes women and he knows how to move between the upper circles of politics and conservative journalism, where he becomes the editor of the weekly The Spectator, owned by the same owners as the Telegraph.
Without abandoning the magazine, in 1999 he became a Tory MP for Henley, a comfortable constituency for the Conservatives. He starts hanging out with a young politician with his same Eton and Oxford credentials, David Cameron. But those origins will not serve to enter the government.
Spiteful, Johnson considers changing course, but at the last moment the new prime minister saves him from the fire and offers him an unexpected position, mayor of London. It is the year 2008, just in the months in which the financial crisis breaks out. His passage through the British capital does not improve his managerial profile. The blond politician becomes popular because of his outbursts, not because of his management. He is saved by the 2012 Olympics.
In that period ruminates his revenge towards Cameron. When he calls the Brexit referendum, he becomes the clearest defender of “leave”. We are in the year 2016. In his speech are all the arguments and half-truths that the radical wing of the British Euresceptics have been weaving in recent years. Cameron resigns over the result of the vote, but to the surprise of Johnson’s growing number of supporters, he is succeeded by Theresa May.
The next three years will serve to cement his final rise to power. May doesn’t push him away, she makes him her foreign secretary. By then, Boris is already a tough man, unconventional, competitive and disrespectful of the promises he makes to those who vote for him. But he is also a man who knows how to get his way. Today his prestige has been affected, and perhaps also his political career. But don’t give him up for dead.
