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Donald Trump's secret brother Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson hiding in a fridge.

“ ” Idiots love Johnson's contrived, clownish TV persona, and so will vote for him even if his policies mean they'll be living under a flyover and cooking rats over a brazier. —An amusingly accurate description from The Daily Mash.[1]

Alexander BoJo Boris de Pfeffel "Great Supine, Protoplasmic Invertebrate Jellies"[2] Johnson (1964–) is a smooth talking wannabe authoritarian who served as Mayor of London (2008-16), Foreign Secretary (July 2016–July 2018), and — somehow — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Theresa May as Leader of the Conservative Party on 24 July 2019, and then securing a massive majority on 12 December 2019.[3] [4] A former opinion writer who got in trouble for yellow journalism, the man was elected mayor because he was funny once on Have I Got News For You and climbed the ladder from there, so that's Eddie Izzard for Prime Minister sewn up.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his buffoonish attitude, Boris has a knack for soothing to the media, always managing to dodge scandals that would sink other, less skilled spin doctors. Think of him as a smarter, English Donald Trump, to whom he has often been compared.

Before the Brexit vote, he drove up and down the country in a (German-made) bus liveried with demonstrable lies.[5] Presumably, then, his career in politics is over? Of course not, he was handed one of the great offices of state: Foreign Secretary, the British equivalent of CIA Director/Secretary of State.[6] He resigned from this post in July, 2018, to completely avoid any responsibility for the gigantic mess that he had been crucial in creating protest the way Theresa May intended to deliver Brexit.[7]

Boris became the freshly-minted Prime Minister of the UK following the resignation of Theresa May, when he won a contest "decided by a 160,000-strong Tory membership that is 70% male, 97% white, 86% social class ABC1, 50% of whom read the Telegraph or the Daily Mail and who have an average age of 57".[8] Meritocracy and democracy doing well in Britain, as always (Boris too can call himself a "democratically elected leader"). He has started really well, by losing his first seven [9] more than[10] eight[11] parliamentary votes and a Supreme Court case that ruled he (or more accurately his pet Victorian Jacob Rees-Mogg) lied to the Queen[12].

Bigotry [ edit ]

Daily Telegraph Johnson's sexism on display while he was a " journalist " at the

Johnson has made multiple sexist, racist and homophobic comments throughout his career, for which he would like to keep getting a free pass each and every time because he was 'just joking'[13] — or perhaps just because he's a Tory.[14] Examples of his bigotry include:[13][14]

Multiple uses of "hot totty" (i.e., women) and "tottymeter" (i.e., penis) and other inappropriate attempts at sexualizing and demeaning female politicians

Accusing the Labour Party of teaching homosexuality in schools, comparing gay marriage to bestiality in his 2001 book Friends, Voters, Countrymen , calling the former First Secretary of State Peter Mandelson's supporters "tank-topped bumboys"

, calling the former First Secretary of State Peter Mandelson's supporters "tank-topped bumboys" Referring to African as "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles" in 2002, comparing Muslim women in burqas to "letter boxes" and bank robbers in 2018, and saying that Islamophobia is a natural reaction for non-Muslims in 2005

Background and personal life [ edit ]

"Oxford Union Becomes Ha-Ha Fest": What else is to be expected when Boris is elected President?

“ ” I never really knew the meaning of the word "shameless" until I beheld the career of Boris Johnson. —Robert Harris[15]

Boris Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 in New York, USA, educated at Eton, (King's Scholar) and Balliol College, Oxford (Brackenbury Scholar in Classics).[16] The pollster Frank Luntz has claimed that while at Oxford Johnson touted himself as a supporter of the Social Democratic Party, then a dominant current at the university, as a strategy to win the Union presidency, though Johnson denies he was more than the SDP's preferred candidate.[17] Along with David Cameron he was a member of Oxford's Bullingdon Club, a student dining society known for its raucous feasts that often involved trashing everything and then paying cash for the damages.[18] In 2008, he claimed to have smoked "dope" and that he "was once given cocaine" while at university, "but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar."[19]

He is an old-fashioned Tory Boy™ by genetics, i.e. distantly related to the royal family. He's classically liberal in the British sense: socially liberal, but with an appreciation for traditional institutions, e.g. the inevitability of a ruling class.[20] However, BoJo's past comments on homosexuality, race, the British Empire and its Commonwealth, the War on Terror, and Islam suggest an altogether different kind of Tory.[21]

Picture him as Tom Cruise: intense friendliness and "big laughter" thinly veiling the emptiness within.

After graduating in 1987, Johnson became a trainee reporter with the Times newspaper but was sacked within a year for falsifying a quotation from his godfather Colin Lucas.[22]

Then Conservative leader Michael Howard sacked Johnson as shadow arts minister in 2004 for lying about an affair with Spectator journalist Petronella Wyatt.[23]

During his time as Mayor of London, he repeatedly did favours for US businesswomen Jennifer Arcuri, who he was having a four-year affair with, inviting her on three overseas trade missions despite not qualifying and giving her business a total of £126,000 of public money.[24][25] He is now being reinvestigated[26] for the appointment of another woman he was having an affair with (who had his child!) Helen Macintyre,[27] another women who he didn't declare an interest with as Mayor of London, a scandal which he barely escaped censure from in 2010.[28]

Brexit campaigner [ edit ]

“ ” Donald Trump is popular because he seems so like the sort of figure who’d appear in a drama about a big-hitting businessman who takes on the political establishment and wins the presidency. It’s also why his campaign ads feel like something you’ve seen somewhere before but in another dimension...Boris Johnson’s main selling point is that he feels like how someone would be portrayed in a comedy drama about an eccentric good egg tripping up the establishment and becoming prime minister. —Armando Iannucci[29]

BoJo did a number on London: He helped make it a haven of the super-rich,[30] then ran a campaign saying Don't listen to the super-rich in London.[31]

He was originally pro-European Union.[32] Then he, Michael Gove (former MP and News Corp columnist), and Nigel Farage (UKIP Leader) rode the backlash at UK working conditions out of Europe, each one surfing on the backs of empty promises about trade, immigration and national devices. (NHS etc.)[33] Boris later became the figurehead of a successful campaign to kick Cameron out.[34]

However, Gove was Boris' campaign manager for the PM position. He sabotaged the campaign from the inside and then announced he himself was running, only a couple of hours before the deadline.[35][36] Leaked reports showed that Rupert Murdoch was not a fan of Boris, and favored Gove for the leadership contest. Gove took a large swath of Johnson's supporters with him. They were friends for decades before this. Then Boris gave a campaign speech (the kind where you're supposed to rally your supporters) where he said,

In voting to leave the EU, it is vital to stress there is no need for haste, and as the prime minister has said, nothing will change in the short-term except how to give effect to the will of the people and to extracate this country from the supranational system. There is no need to invoke Article 50.[37]

Chuckle. Twitch.

Arise, Sir Boris of Theresa, first Viscunt of Westminster [ edit ]

Boris unexpectedly announced his withdrawal from the leadership race, leaving Gove and Theresa May the last ones standing.[38][39] Now, Boris Johnson will forever be remembered as an arsonist who didn't wanna put out the fire, and ran away in disgrace when things got rough.[40] The hurdle facing the next PM was negotiating a retreat from Europe (Article 50) on the cushiest possible terms, and the architects of Brexit were particularly ill-suited to achieve this. Boris won't be able to avoid posturing and calling them names (as well as being useless anyway), and Gove has all the charisma of an oil-slick; [41] neither would be given a soft landing by Europe. George Osborne is in the same sinking ship now....Good God, he may be the last PM of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.[42]

Still, most Britons would escort Boris to Number 10 personally, if it kept Theresa out of the job [43] Damn.

Then she made Boris the foreign secretary. Even though he is the opposite of a diplomat.

Barack HUSSEIN Obama [ edit ]

Boris Johnson endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, but nine years later adopted the Birtherism of his fellow blonde, tousle-haired buffoon from over the pond, Donald Trump, saying that:[44]

Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009 … It was a bust of Winston Churchill — the great British wartime leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington … Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire — of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.[45]

Naturally, these Trumpian comments mentioning Obama's Kenyan ancestry have naturally been described by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell as "another example of dog whistle racism from senior Tories" and the worst of Tea Party rhetoric.[46] The Washington Post notes that Johnson's comments "mentioned a [conspiracy] theory, prominent among some right-wing Americans, that Mr. Obama is motivated by a radical anti-imperialist agenda and that 'the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire' motivated the removal of the bust";[47] this led Financial Times columnist John Gapper to ironically tweet: "So is Boris Johnson against the European Union because he's part-Turkish?"[48]

On the actual content of what Mr. Johnson has said, the allegation about Churchill's bust being removed from the White House has been debunked as early as July 2012;[49] the bust of Churchill is currently placed outside the Treaty Room on the second floor of the house, where Obama claims to look at it every day.[50] Clearly, this is not enough for Boris — only once per day!? That commie, Empire-hating bastard! And this irrational fear of the old colonies rising up — which was exacerbated by Cold War hysteria about national liberation movements in South Africa — is exactly the type of fearmongering which led to Thatcher denouncing Nelson Mandela's ANC as "a typical terrorist organisation".[51] Indeed, one of those people fighting against the British in Kenya — as mentioned in passing by Nigel Farage in regards to defending Johnson's comments[52] — was his grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, who was imprisoned and tortured by the British during Kenya's Mau Mau Uprising.[53] Even if Obama were to remove Churchill from the white house — which he patently did not — then one cannot really blame him for this.

Foreign Secretary [ edit ]

Appointment [ edit ]

First day in the Foreign Office.

“ ” In the light of the Foreign Secretary's display of chronic "foot-in-mouth" disease, when deciding on Cabinet positions, does the Prime Minister now regret that pencilling "FO" against his name should have been an instruction, not a job offer? —Peter Dowd MP, displaying an excellent sense of humeur.[54]

Johnson was made Britain's Fine Foreign Secretary (FFS)[54] in July 2016 by Theresa May. This decision was made in order to make him a figurehead with little power.[55] and ensure that he would be out of the country most of the time, unable to mobilise backbenchers against her premiership and forces to take responsibility for problems related to Brexit, i.e. a whipping boy .[56] Since he is now PM, it's fair to say that this didn't go as planned.

Johnson's appointment was seen by many (including former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt ) as a sick joke.[57] Labour MP Angela Eagle's was fighting her own to be leader of the Labour Party (and topple Jeremy Corbyn) at the time of the announcement; her live reaction and quick turn away from the camera to swear is very amusing.

Johnson has been criticised by journalists and foreign politicians for his statements about other countries, including:[58]

Saying that the Commonwealth "supplies [Queen Elizabeth II] with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies". In this column, he described the Congo as follows: "No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."

On the effects of colonialism in Uganda: "If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain."

Equating Papua New Guinea with "orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing."

Which of course makes him an excellent choice to be Foreign Secretary...

Diplomacy Time™ [ edit ]

Johnson's visit to Turkey in May 2016 was somewhat tense due to his having won a poetry competition about the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, four months earlier, which went as follows:

“ ” There was a young fellow from Ankara

There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer

Till he sowed his wild oats

With the help of a goat

But he didn't even stop to thankera.[59] But he didn't even stop to thankera.

Here is an interactive map of all the countries he has offended.

In a stopped clock moment in in December 2016, he said that Saudi Arabia was "puppeteering and playing proxy wars" throughout the Middle East, which caused a rift between him and Theresa May.[60] Despite this, Johnson supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and refused to block UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, stating there was no clear evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law by the Saudis in Yemen.[61]

In November 2016, Johnson told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe —a British-Iranian dual citizen serving a five-year prison sentence in Iran allegedly for "plotting to topple the Iranian government"[62] by running "a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran"[63]—had been "simply teaching people journalism".[64] These remarks appear to have put her at risk, prompting condemnation from politicians across the spectrum including Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, leading to calls for Boris Johnson to be sacked.[65] Zaghari-Ratcliffe had said that her visit had been made simply for her daughter to meet her grandparents. Johnson stated he had been misquoted and that nothing he said had justified Zaghari-Ratcliffe's sentence.[66]

In April 2017, Theresa May had to convince the EU that Britain wasn't preparing for war with Spain due to comments made by Johnson and other senior politicians.[67] In May 2017, during the 2017 United Kingdom general election, he apprehended by a woman in a Sikh gurdwara for discussing alcohol and ending tarrifs on Indian whiskey there (alcohol is forbidden in Sikhism).[68]

In September 2017 Johnson reiterated his "£350m a week" red bus lie in a Telegraph op-ed. This led Sir David Norgrove (chair of the non-partisan UK Statistics Authority) to call this a "clear misuse of official statistics".[69]

Johnson promised while in Northern Ireland that Brexit would leave the Irish border "absolutely unchanged", but declined to say how.[70] However, in February 2018, Johnson said Northern Ireland may have to accept border controls after Brexit,[71] which is absolutely a change.

In March 2018, Johnson apologised for his "inadvertent sexism" after being reprimanded by the Speaker of the House of Commons for calling Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry by her husband's surname (Nugee).[72]

In June 2018, Johnson was reported as having said "fuck business" when asked about corporate concerns regarding a hard Brexit.[73]

Prime Minister [ edit ]

Finally Boris got his heart's desire, replacing Theresa May as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019 after winning a leadership election against Jeremy Hunt. During his campaign he had promised both tax cuts and spending increases, which would normally be contradictory (less income plus more outgoings equals problems), so it wasn't exactly clear how he was going to run the country.[74] On entering office, he rapidly set about remodelling the government, sacking many loyal to May and Hunt.[75] It emerged that his plan for Brexit was to drop out without a deal, despite the bad effect that would have on British industry.[76]

He packed his cabinet with right-wingers and hardliners, such as Priti Patel (a former supporter of capital punishment) as Home Secretary, in charge of policing and immigration.[77] Other appointments included Thatcherite ex-banker Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer (replaced by Rishi Sunak in February 2020 after a falling out over special advisors), strong Brexiteer Dominic Raab as Foreign Secretary, fellow leaver Michael Gove as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (a sort of all-purpose fixer position), and another Leaver, Steve Barclay, remaining as Brexit secretary.[78]

His special advisers come partly from his time as Mayor of London, but also from pro-Brexit group Vote Leave, hard-right institutions like the TaxPayers' Alliance and the Legatum Institute, and from right-wing and right-libertarian publications like Guido Fawkes and Spiked. Dominic Cummings, formerly master strategist at Vote Leave, became his de facto chief of staff (a move which seemed to presage an early election). The head of his policy unit is Munira Mirza of Spiked magazine and before that communist-turned-libertarian magazine Living Marxism; she advised him on arts policy while he was Mayor. Johnson's political secretary is Danny Kruger, a former Tory parliamentary candidate who called for a "period of creative destruction in the public services", as well as working for Vote Leave, the Legatum Institute, as a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, and a speechwriter for David Cameron before his 2010 election win. Ross Kempsell, a former journalist for TalkRadio and Guido Fawkes with no policy experience, is advising Johnson on public policy reform. Chloe Westley, formerly of the TaxPayers' Alliance, Vote Leave, and right-wing student organisation Turning Point UK, is another adviser.[79][80]

Boris Miscellanea [ edit ]

Musicians: can you see what's wrong in this picture?

"Your mileage may vary" when it comes to Boris Johnson. People view him as either an absolute legend or a complete arse biscuit. Often, the reasons for either conclusion are the same:[81]

Other Johnsons [ edit ]

Boris' younger brother Jo Johnson, a Conservative MP. Is characterised as being like Boris but with no sense of humour whatsoever (and agrees with said characterisation). Jo has basically said that what Boris is doing is not in the "national interest"; hence why he’s standing down. Because Boris would expect him to support him, but Jo cannot do so because it’s not in the national interest. Let that sink in. [95]

His father, Stanley, is worth a look.

His sister Rachel Johnson stood as a candidate for strongly pro-EU rival party Change UK in 2019.[96]

The whole family also seem to be opposed to Brexit, which must have made for some awkward dinner table conversations recently. Especially around the fridge.[97]

See also [ edit ]

George Galloway — Clowns to the left of me...

Neil Hamilton — … jokers to the right

Zac Goldsmith — Here I am, stuck in the middle with EU.

Marmite - Like Boris, you either love it or hate it.

Donald Trump - His long lost twin brother from Jesusland

Videos [ edit ]

Boris gets called a "cunt" on live TV — But he lacks the depth and warmth.