Last year, during a visit to Myanmar, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, visited the Shwedagon Paya, one of Buddhism’s most sacred sites, adopting the usual freestyle, somewhat awkward, bumbling tone he had become known for. As he rang ancient bell, he recited a fragment of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’, including, “The temple bells they say/ Come you back you English soldier.” The invocation of the colonial-era poem clearly caught the British Ambassador off guard: he was captured on camera firmly stopping Mr. Johnson from proceeding further with the recital, saying it was “not a good idea” and “not appropriate”. While the remark did indeed provoke criticism at home and beyond, it was dismissed by many as yet another Boris “gaffe”, one of many that he has clocked up over his political career.
History of gaffes
Mr. Johnson’s time as Foreign Secretary was peppered with controversial moments, including his remarks on boosting the whisky trade between India and the U.K. during a visit to a British gurdwara. There was a “joke” about boosting British investment into Libya. “They have got a brilliant vision to turn Sirte, with the help of the municipality of Sirte, into the next Dubai… the only thing they’ve got to do is clear the dead bodies,” he said in 2017. And there was a moment during a visit to New Zealand where he compared the traditional Maori greeting to a head butt that could be “misinterpreted in a pub in Glasgow”.
It might be easy to dismiss some of these but there were others that had to be seen in a more serious light, such as his mis-characterisation of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British charity worker imprisoned in Iran, as “teaching journalists”. His comments provoked an outcry at the time, going against her insistence she had simply been on holiday, and were seen as worsening her already abysmal plight in the country. Mr. Johnson’s typical response to these controversies has been to offer a non-apology.
His early blunders, during his time as Mayor of London served to strengthen his image, particularly beyond Britain’s shores, as the flamboyant, floppy-haired, Etonian given to faux-pas that wouldn’t be out of place in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. His later ones were the subject of more serious scrutiny, including questions around his appropriateness as the head of Britain’s Foreign Office at a time when its relations with the world outside Europe matter more than ever, but they have been by and large treated as blunders. Even at the time this was a rather naïve assumption given Mr. Johnson’s background: Oxford-educated, he once edited the conservative magazine, The Spectator , and savvily sensed the direction of British politics by finally leaping into the Brexit camp after he had drafted two columns, each taking a different position on Brexit.
The latest outrage
Mr. Johnson’s latest comments on the burka challenge suggest a much more methodological, deliberate approach. In the face of a public outcry – including criticism from Prime Minister Theresa May and calls for the party whip to be taken from him — he has stood firmly by his comments in The Daily Telegraph earlier this week. He described the burka as “oppressive and ridiculous” and compared women who wore them to “letter boxes”. Subsequently, he has let it be known that he viewed the calls for an apology as “ridiculous”, citing it as part of his effort to speak up for “liberal values”. It is not the only time he has caused such offence: before he became London Mayor, he once used a racist slur to refer to the people the Queen would meet on her trips across the Commonwealth.
The latest comments come at a particularly difficult time for the ruling Conservative Party, already suffering from great ideological differences within its ranks particularly on Brexit and the immigration policy. While the Labour Party has faced criticism over its treatment of anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Conservatives have been accused of tolerating Islamophobia within theirs. Earlier this year, the Muslim Council of Britain used the instance of a meeting in Parliament attended by Tapan Ghosh, the leader of the Hindu Samhati, last year, to highlight a “wider problem” of Islamophobia within party — the room had been booked through the office of a Conservative MP. Mr. Johnson’s latest comments have provoked anger from both Muslim and non-Muslim members of the Conservative Party, with one senior MP, Dominic Grieve, suggesting he would leave the party should the former become its leader. For its part, the party said it had launched a disciplinary investigation into Mr. Johnson’s comments on the burka.
However, he has had many defenders too — a recent poll for Sky News found that up to 60% of the public did not view his comments as racist, and conservatives in both Britain and the U.S. have defended him. One Breitbart commentator suggested he needed to go “full Donald Trump”. In fact when Mr. Trump became U.S. President, Mr. Johnson’s congratulatory message was among the most effusive of senior politicians globally. “I am increasingly admiring of Donald Trump,” Mr. Johnson remarked earlier this year, while Mr. Trump in turn suggested that Mr. Johnson would make a “great Prime Minister”.
Mr. Johnson’s prime ministerial aspirations are of course no secret. During his time as Foreign Secretary until his resignation in early July in protest against the direction of the government’s Brexit policy, many of his actions were seen as attempts to undermine Ms. May: such as publishing a 4,000 word essay on his vision of Brexit just before a major speech by her. He is seen as a front-runner to replace her: in early August just before his comments on the burka but after his resignation, he came in as the most popular person to replace Ms. May in a poll by Conservative Home, suggesting his increasingly right-ward politics was striking a chord with the party membership. He is not the only one in his party to have benefited from its internalisation of increasingly right-wing policies, as has been seen with the rise of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the anti-Brexit European Research Group, whose particularly conservative vein of Conservatism (he opposes abortion under any circumstances as well as same sex marriage, and has boasted of never changing a diaper for any of his six children) has made him the unlikely figurehead of a young right-wing party movement dubbed “Mogg-mentum”.
The nationalist arc
It would hardly come as a surprise that Steve Bannon, the former chairman of the alt-right Breitbart News and former adviser to Mr. Trump, has admitted to being in regular communications with Mr. Johnson. Mr. Bannon has spoken of his eagerness to build an anti-European Union, nationalist movement across Europe, and has described the British politician as one of the “most important persons on the world stage”. Mr. Johnson’s latest comments – and the outcry against him – will only serve to strengthen his appeal to the right.
What will happen to Mr. Johnson within the Conservative Party remains to be seen: disciplinary action could very well follow, which would help build his image as a “martyr” of the alt-right. One thing is clear though: his political days are far from over, as the Trump playbook of pandering to prejudice and division gains admirers in Europe.
vidya.ram@thehindu.co.in
