Boris Johnson: A mixture of principle and opportunism, just like every politician

Boris Johnson is a slippery fish, but I don’t think Nick Cohen quite captures him in his blog post earlier today. To accuse him of putting career before country in the EU referendum campaign, as Cohen does, is to fall into the trap of viewing politicians too dichotomously, as if they’re all either men and women of conviction or unprincipled opportunists. Boris, like every front rank politician, is a mixture of conviction and careerism, rather than one or the other. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are both cases in point.

Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution is Boris’s decision to join the Leave campaign. Like many divisive political issues, the people lined up on each side have difficulty imagining that their opponents could possibly be motivated by anything other than stupidity or venality. Thus Cohen, a committed Inner, dismisses out of hand the notion that Boris could be guided by a high-minded concern for the national interest – that’s completely inconceivable to him because he believes so passionately that Britain’s interests are best served by remaining in the EU.