Boris’s attempt to become a second Churchill

On his way up the greasy pole Boris Johnson was keen to claim an affinity with Winston Churchill. Clearly, associating himself with the man voted the Greatest Briton in 2002 was a clever if crude ruse, on par with a B-list actor standing next to Tom Cruise in the hope some of his magic might rub off. It certainly would not have escaped Johnson’s notice that Churchill was fondly remembered, especially by the Conservative party’s mostly aged members who ultimately determine the fate of candidates for the leadership.

In 2014 Johnson went so far as to write a biography of Britain’s wartime premier. Most readers will have come away from the book with the impression that Johnson wanted them to think of him as Churchill reborn. As the authors of The Churchill Myths noted, this aspirational affinity was to some extent genuine: Boris had persuaded himself that the Winston about whom he wrote really did share key aspects of his own character. To him they were both populist risk takers, untrusted by the stuffed shirts of the Establishment but enjoying a unique resonance with ordinary Britons.