My host twinkled sardonically. ‘We’re bound to be discussing Boris. So what’s the right wine?’ I suggested a bunker-busting Australian Shiraz, preceded by an alluring, minxy champagne: cuvée Madame Claude. ‘No, we need something intellectual, to bring perspective.’ ‘That sounds like Graves, perhaps a Pessac-Leognan.’ ‘Got it in one. Came across a couple of bottles the other day. La Mission Haut-Brion ’64 — the year Boris was born.’
In personality, the bottles were everything that a mature claret ought to be, with no resemblance to Boris. Perhaps a little less fruit than there would have been five years ago, but these were well-tempered wines, with subtlety, structure and a length that will last until 31 October. Will Boris?
At present, his animal energy is sweeping all before it. He seems to have found a moulin mystique producing endless supplies of cake, while emancipating himself from gravity, in all senses of the word. But what happens when the irresistible force crashes into immovable objects in Brussels? We should not rule out an outcome which I would have dismissed until recently. Boris might pull it off.
If so, and there was no economic crisis, Boris would focus voters’ minds on aspiration. ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ could be his theme tune (it didn’t do Roosevelt any harm). With Labour still mired in Corbynism, Boris wins an election. Labour splits. The future is bright: the future is right. But what if Brexit goes pear-shaped and there is a global economic crisis? That would neither be Boris’s fault nor Brexit’s. Yet both would cop the blame. Electoral carnage would follow.
Boris is a much better human being than Bill Clinton or Donald Trump. They might do in America. Will Boris do in Britain? As middle age comes on apace, I am growing into a comfortable prejudice.
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