LONDON — Boris Johnson’s pillaging of the Donald Trump playbook continues. And it seems to be working.
At the launch on Wednesday of his campaign to replace Theresa May as Conservative Party leader, the former U.K. foreign secretary had the press on the back foot, as an audience of Conservative MPs backing his leadership bid booed and hissed at reporters over a probing question.
Why do people who worked with him “not think you are fit to be prime minister,” Sky News’ Beth Rigby wanted to know, and challenged him to comment of his comparison of women who wear the burqa to “letterboxes.”
The response from Johnson’s backers may not have been quite as threatening as the rowdiness and violence of a Trump campaign rally, but the contempt on display was worryingly out of character by the standards of phlegmatic Tory Englishness.
Journalists are right to be worried about Johnson’s not-so-tacit endorsement of MPs’ rude behavior.
Johnson’s newfound readiness to antagonize the press is worrying.
After MPs finished jeering, Johnson quipped, “Occasionally some plaster comes off the ceiling as a result of a phrase I may have used.” He came close to apologizing, then skirted the issue and added, to applause: “The public want us to talk straight and say what we really think.”
This claim of speaking plainly — not kowtowing to politically correct speech — is a big part of what drove support for U.S. President Trump over his competitors for the Republican nomination during the primaries in 2016. And it’s still key to his unswayable popularity among the minority of American voters who put him in office.
Trump has perfected the art of lying in public. His view is, basically: Go big or go home. If you keep the untruths coming, there won’t enough newspaper space to debunk them all. And he’s not entirely wrong.
Johnson seems similarly immune to attacks on his honesty. Earlier this week, the former foreign minister laid out plans in a column in the Daily Telegraph for a massive, roughly £9.6 billion tax cut for high earners. In his campaign launch speech, he promised to rebuild public services. But didn’t say where the money would come from.
Johnson launches his Conservative Party leadership campaign on June 12 | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Say anything, promise anything — don’t worry about how to carry it out. It’s a strategy that’s worked well for the U.S. president so far. So, it’s no surprise, really, that Johnson should be trying it on for size.
Despite the obvious existing parallels between the two firebrand, coiffured politicians, Johnson’s newfound readiness to antagonize the press is worrying. A former journalist himself, Johnson knows — unlike Trump — how the sausage is made, even if he didn’t pay much attention to best practice in his career. And as a politician, the former foreign secretary was always willing to make himself available to reporters and give good quote.
Those days are over, apparently. In the weeks after May announced her resignation, Johnson was more than uncharacteristically reticent and withdrawn as the race to replace her kicked off. Other than his Monday morning column for the Daily Telegraph, he was nowhere to be seen.
Then, in a classic Trumpian move, he severely restricted questions at the press’s first opportunity to question him since he declared his candidacy. By choosing where and when to meet reporters and packing the room with partisans encouraged to show their emotions, Johnson made sure he would come out looking good.
People like to say of clever politicians, he’s playing chess while his opponents are playing checkers. When it comes to Trump — and now Johnson — it’s more like the political disruptors are playing Tic Tac Toe and always get the first move. Lead with a cross in a corner and you can’t lose.
In my 30 plus years as a journalist, I’ve learned that the only way to level the playing field is to engage politicians in dialogue, rather than ask just one question. At the first lie that comes out of Johnson’s mouth, British colleagues should interrupt with “That’s a lie,” offer up the facts and keep the discussion going.
Johnson leaves the Cabinet Office in March | Leon Neal/Getty Images
It’s actually a technique I learned from Johnson himself. At a press conference in Geneva during the final days of the Uruguay Round of negotiations within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1994, Johnson gave Peter Sutherland — then director general of the institution that would become the World Trade Organization — a thorough grilling.
Sutherland wasn’t lying; he was merely diplomatically evading some points. But Johnson interrupted, joked and essentially conducted a private conversation in a room full of colleagues. It was an effective strategy, and the only way to level the playing field with a less-than-forthcoming official.
Johnson hasn’t quite plagiarized the whole Trump playbook yet. He hasn’t yet admitted his invincibility out loud. We haven’t heard him say he could stand in the middle of Regent Street and “shoot somebody” and still become prime minister. But given how much else he has copied from Trump, it wouldn’t be surprising if the thought had crossed his mind.
Michael Goldfarb, a former NPR London correspondent, hosts the First Rough Draft of History podcast.