Boris Johnson’s ugly soul is visible through an unlikely window: rugby
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Version 0 of 1. Is this the famous Churchill factor that Boris Johnson has written about – the quality of leadership that sets a great politician apart? Or is it an unmistakable exposure of the kind of silliness that must have the Labour party praying Johnson becomes the next leader of the Conservative party? Boris Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, fought in India and the Sudan, and was taken prisoner in the Boer war. Johnson himself recently offered to take part in a brigade of art lovers to defend antiquities in Syria. In reality, however, here he is in a set of risible images knocking down a 10-year-old Japanese boy in a game of touch rugby. In the pictures it looks as if Boris forgot he was playing touch rugby, in which a player is stopped simply by being touched, and thought he was playing a macho game of proper rugby union. His face contorted with effort and ferocity, lips curling in strenuous, angry zeal, he puts his entire body into a thrusting, ape-like rage. The unfortunate thing is that in these photographs, Johnson really seems to have forgotten himself and got worked up into a competitive frenzy. Did he imagine for a moment he was tackling Theresa May? (“Take that, Theresa!”) Or did he visualise his enemy as George Osborne? (“Eat my fist, you bloody brainbox!”) Presumably at Eton, just as as at my Welsh comprehensive, the rugby field was a great leveller. Squirty Osborne may be top in maths and political thought, but here on the sports pitch his massive brain won’t help him. He’s going down. See Johnson stare at the ground, red faced and wretched as he realises it is not Osborne he has felled, or even Scary Theresa, but 10-year-old Toki Sekiguchi. These images of a politician losing his rag in a friendly rugby game against children resemble something that might happen to Steve Coogan’s hapless failed television presenter and local radio DJ, Alan Partridge. Alan is always getting confused between his raging inner world of mad media ambition and ordinary reality. All Boris had to do when asked to play touch rugby as part of his visit to Japan was take part with a smile on his face and have shower afterwards. Instead, he looks in the pictures like a man obsessed with winning and defeating his foes, however small they may be. Surely this is a window on the poor man’s soul. Boris Johnson is a titanically successful and ambitious character who has suddenly come up against a brick wall in his career. Not only is he the mayor of London, his books are profitable bestsellers. He recently got a £500,000 advance to write a book about Shakespeare – 10 times what the Booker prize is worth (“Take that, Marlon James!) For years he has been seen as the Conservative party’s king over the water, the true populist that David Cameron supposedly was not. In the darkest moments of this spring’s election it was Johnson the Tory press turned to as saviour. Then it all went wrong for Boris - he got elected to the House of Commons. Suddenly it was the Eton fagging system all over again. Bully May pissed on his water cannon and cunning George gave the house captaincy to that Andrew Adonis after practically promising it. Marginalised from the triumphant Cameron ascendancy and outwitted by the Machiavellian chancellor, it no longer seems certain that Boris Johnson will ascend to the leadership of his party and inevitably thence to 10 Downing Street. But is that really any excuse to take it out on a child? Of course Johnson did not mean to do that. It was an accident. He apologised. The boy forgave him. Unfortunately the photographs are so funny. Johnson looks so fierce. The boy looks so small. It appears a genuinely passionate, intense explosion of sporting fury, as if Johnson can’t adjust to the fact he’s playing against kids. Labour supporters will love this. It shows the true nastiness of the Tories, they will say. The anger behind the “compassionate” spin. Our Jez was photographed helping a wheelchair user. Johnson has been photographed knocking down a child. There is the true soul of both men. Related: I, Boris Johnson, have so much in common with Shakespeare | Catherine Bennett But in reality Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have similar problems. Johnson is just as “authentic” as Corbyn. You can hardly call these pictures the bland products of meticulous spin. I’ve only encountered Boris Johnson in the flesh once and he was genuinely, spontaneously funny. His human messiness appeals to Tories (and in fact, general voters) disgusted by fake politics, just as the new left love Corbyn. But real life is a total disaster area. Politicians cannot afford to go there. The art of politics is an actual art, that creates an ideal and beautiful version of the world. In Henry James’s story The Lesson of the Master a writer must choose between the perfection of art and the seductive compromises of real life. Politicians too have to choose between art and life. Boris Johson and Jeremy Corbyn are both obviously much more authentic, warm and human than George Osborne, a political artist if ever there was one. They are both going to be flattened by him. That’s the sport. |