A class act | 23 October 2011

When John Donne wrote that no man is an island he clearly didn’t have Boris Johnson in mind. Because, if Sonia Purnell’s well documented book, Just Boris, is correct, old Bozza, “like Palmerston, has no friends, merely interests”.

According to Purnell and her star studded cast of executioners Boris is a class act, but an act is all it is. He doesn’t emote, he’ll never pop down to the pub with chums for a drink and is the “most ruthless man” that she have ever met. The bumbling, hair mussing, self deprecatory Bertie Wooster figure is an elaborate act. A defence mechanism and a camouflage for what his real opinions are. And there’s the other problem, does Boris have a firm view about anything? The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, was chairman of the Oxford University Conservative Association. He never thought Boris was a Tory at all and assumed that he was SDP/Liberal Alliance.