An ignominious end for the man who would be ‘world king’

COLUMN: A Stone's Throw by Jamie Stone

At the end of one of my very first days in the House of Commons, over five years ago, and after late voting that had taken us into the wee small hours, I got completely lost in the Palace of Westminster and absolutely unable to find my way out. It wasn’t a good moment.

“You look lost,” said a friendly voice. “New MP, eh? Come with me. If you’re heading in the Hammersmith direction, then we’ll share a taxi.” This was Dominic Grieve, former Attorney General, and a very nice Conservative MP. In the taxi I asked him what Boris was really like. The answer was unprintable.

For the next two or so years, now and again, I would catch Boris staring at me from across the Chamber.

“Jamie, I think you’re making Boris’s radar go wonky”, said my future leader, Ed Davey. You know, I think he was right; for whatever reason it did indeed seem to me that Boris couldn’t make head nor tail of me.

Well, he’s gone now. From my standpoint, an autumn day in the far north, I can now take a longer look at someone who has his place in history but perhaps not for the reasons he would have wished.

Let’s start off on the credit side: it cannot be taken away from the former Prime Minister that he got it right about Ukraine. He did direct resources and moral support to Volodymyr Zelensky at a crucial time. His action probably helped forge the western alliance that has stood with Ukraine ever since.

But then, on the debit side of his balance sheet we have his seemingly complete inability to understand the difference between truth and falsehood. Not politically correct today, but the truth is that I got my bottom smacked by my mum if I told a porkpie when I was a wee boy. I learnt the hard way, but learn I did. This does rather make you wonder about Boris’s own upbringing.

Partygate got worse and worse and he was unable to come clean about what he knew about the disgraced Tory MP Christopher Pincher, who had been drunkenly misbehaving in the Carlton Club. To the rest of us, it became ever clearer that his career was drawing to a close. When his ministers started to resign en masse, you could see that it was the end – although curiously enough, it took Boris a surprisingly long time to realise this.

In those closing weeks, it seemed as if Boris was visiting Ukraine again and again whenever the storm clouds at home were gathering. One of the most amusing pictures doing the rounds on mobile phones at the time was one of Volodymyr Zelensky on the phone saying, “But Boris, you’ve already been here quite a few times already”. But that was just a joke, and Boris did do his bit by Ukraine.

So that was why last week, it was utterly astonishing when Boris got his names mixed up and informed an amazed House of Commons that Vladimir Putin was a jolly good sort of chap. Of course, he hastily corrected himself, but with that one slip the damage was done.

Is there something slightly sad about a boy who wanted to be “world king” ending his premiership so ignominiously? Last week, if you googled ‘Boris Johnson’ and clicked ‘news’, all you got was his muddling of names. He clearly hoped that his speech would be remembered as that of a statesman, someone the country wished had never resigned as Prime Minister. Sadly for him, the reality is rather different.

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