Humans Usually Want Seat-warmers to Rule Them

Usually, rulers are dull idiots, seat-warmers. We humans like it that way.

But when the chips are down, that is when we choose a high-risk leader.

Think back in our recent US past.

Eisenhower? Safe pair of hands.

Kennedy? Lightweight promoted as a lightbringer.

Nixon? Safe pair of hands.

Carter? Pompous idiot.

Reagan? Unguided missile.

Bushes? Safe pair of hands.

Clinton? Safe pair of hands playing a rascal.

Obama? Pompous idiot.

Trump? Unguided missile.

And I think the same is true of our Brit friends. The unguided missiles are Churchill, Thatcher, and now maybe Boris Johnson. The rest were the usual idiots.

Why? Because in normal times you don't want the unguided missiles in charge of the government. There's no telling what they may do.

There's a remarkable piece by Toby Young about Boris Johnson out there that shows that, in normal times, you don't want him near the Prime Minister's mansion. But in the chaotic Brexit era, where the Brexit Party is threatening to tear the Conservative Party in two?

Well, when the chips are down, you gotta be willing to take a risk.

Young remembers Boris Johnson's first speech at the Oxford Union. He acted like a buffoon, forgetting his lines, which normally would be the kiss of death. Instead, his speech was a triumph.

This was no ordinary undergraduate proposing a motion, but a Music Hall veteran performing a well-rehearsed comic routine.

There was the time he beat the professors at Scrabble.

There was the occasion when he was holidaying with his family in Greece, aged 10, and asked a group of Classics professors if he could join their game of Scrabble. They indulged the precocious, blond-haired moppet, only to be beaten by him. Thinking it was a one-off, they asked him to play another round and, again, he won. 

 To Toby Young, Boris Johnson was without doubt the "big man" on campus, whatever the campus.

He was without doubt the biggest man on campus—the person most likely to succeed. He made no secret of his desire to be Prime Minister one day, and not just a run-of-the-mill, common-or-garden PM, but up there with Gladstone and Disraeli.

But the Tories in Britain would never have elected Johnson to be their leader unless they felt it was Boris or Bust. Unless they had Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party breathing down their necks.

Just as the US would never had elected Trump as president without the ordinary middle class and the white working class feeling that it was now or never. The same is true of ordinary Brits in Britain.

But there is also a serious side to Boris. From his speech after winning the Conservative Party election.

And time and again, it is to us [the Conservatives] that the people of this country have turned to get that balance right between the instincts to own your own house, your own home, to earn and spend your own money, to look after your own family. 

Good instincts, proper instincts, noble instincts. And the equally noble instinct to share and to give everyone a fair chance in life. And to look after the poorest and the neediest. And to build a great society.

But wait! I thought that Boris Johnson was supposed to be a bumbling oaf? How come he can in a short paragraph lay claim to both the themes of modern society, the individualism of the market and the need to help those less fortunate?

Everybody Said, back in 2016, that Trump would be a disaster. Maybe they are right, but it hasn't happened yet.

Everyone is Saying, right now, that Brexit will wreck Britain and Boris is a buffoon. Who knows?