Bruce Anderson

How Boris Johnson can emulate Margaret Thatcher

An open letter to Boris Johnson:

People, even including your opponents, are getting used to the idea that you are not only the Prime Minister, but likely to remain so for some time to come. Yet before we settle down under the new regime, we should remember just how incredible this would have seemed, well within recent political memory.

If you had approached a publisher ten years ago with what would have turned out to be an accurate prediction of the Boris-ade, you would have been laughed to scorn.

Even a few months ago, you appeared to be a most implausible candidate for Downing Street. If you did somehow win, would you have any idea what to do? There was hardly any support for you among the battle-hardened veterans of the Tory commentariat. Counting myself in that group, I was exceedingly sceptical about your judgment, bewildered by your successes and full of alarm about the future.

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