…. because it might come true. I should pass on this advice to the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
His selection as Prime Minister, it is generally believed, is the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition. What is more, a combination of rumour and careful scrutiny of his mannerisms indicates that he actually sees himself as a kind of Churchill figure. His own account of himself would probably focus on the crisis in which the country found itself as a consequence of the bungled process of withdrawal from the European Union, into which he stepped in order to exercise his decisive leadership. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”, to deploy what seems to be a suitable cliche. We didn’t actually need to “fight them on the beaches” but I would not be surprised if he saw, in his own mind, the threat posed to Britain by the possibility of our being unable to complete the process begun by the referendum almost as the equivalent of a catastrophic military defeat. He hasn’t adopted the cigar or the V-sign yet, but the PR device of ensuring that he is usually referred to as “Boris” certainly caries echoes of war-time references to “Winston”. So much for the good news. He does seem to be well on the way to emulating his hero. But wait a minute! We need to remember how the story went.
After his successful leadership of the country during the war Churchill suffered a surprising but emphatic defeat at the hands of the Labour Party, led by the rather uncharismatic figure of Clement Attlee. Churchill had overlooked the signs that the country had come to expect an entirely new order in the wake of the war, enabling Attlee to bring in the welfare state while “Winston” had to sit it out on the Opposition benches.
Today the new leader of the Labour Party was announced …. Sir Kier Starmer. I listened to his introductory speech on the radio as we ate lunch today. He was emphatic in pointing to the effect that the current health crisis will have by way of re-valuing the pattern of economic inequality in Britain, and calling for a very fundamental reassessment of the distribution of income once the health crisis is over. I can’t help but wonder whether “Boris” has picked up the historical resonance of that, and his achievement of Churchillian status might end in his own equally emphatic rejection by the electorate.