LONDON — Call it karma. Call it kismet. It is all but inevitable that within a matter of weeks Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson will become prime minister of the United Kingdom.
It won’t be the result of a military coup or some other democratic lapse, either. Actual adults, members of both parliament and the Conservative Party, many of them largely sober, will put an X in the box beside Johnson’s name.
In doing so, they will be giving Brexit Britain the prime minister it deserves — a clown.
The U.K. in 2019 is a strange, angry place: anti-establishment, anti-politics, anti-everything.
This didn’t start with the 2016 vote to leave the European Union. You can trace the roots of Britain’s nihilism back to the 2010 expenses scandal, or even further, to the Tony Blair government’s decision to ignore public wishes and go to war in Iraq. They were further aggravated by the austerity agenda and the accompanying stagnation of wages, the overpriced housing market and the decline in manufacturing and industry.
The 160,000 Tory members who will choose the next prime minister want to elect someone who makes them feel good about themselves.
Then, of course, came Brexit. The vote and everything that followed have exacerbated Britain’s teenage tantrum.
When the U.K. was (most recently) granted a delay to Brexit, European Council President Donald Tusk warned that the ensuing six months should be used “wisely.” The U.K. responded by dumping its prime minister, a rational pragmatist.
For all her many flaws, Theresa May was attempting to impose logic on an irrational situation in which all sides are unprepared to compromise. It’s no wonder she failed.
In many ways, she was doomed from the start. Elected as an antidote to David Cameron, whose fecklessness in holding the EU referendum in the first place led to a national cry for a politician of substance, May was faced with an impossible task.
Labour members elected Jeremy Corbyn — another figure with a cult-like following — to the leadership of their party | Isabel Infantes/AFP via Getty Images
In seeking to be the “serious prime minister,” she failed to appreciate that Britain is no longer a serious place; it is a land driven by emotion and fads, where trending on social media is a substitute for achievement.
This is the nation that thought it amusing to opt for “Boaty McBoatface” when invited to vote for the name of a new Royal Navy vessel.
It is the place where hundreds of thousands of people joined a political party to get Jeremy Corbyn, a Marxist with questionable views on anti-Semitism, elected leader of the opposition — not because they believe in his policies, or in him, but because it was a laugh and their friends were all doing it.
Later they chanted his name along to that catchy riff from the White Stripes, and voted for him at a general election. Again, not because they thought he would make the best prime minister, or even a half-decent prime minister, but as a two-fingers to the establishment and to sensible politics.
Now it is the Conservatives’ turn to show their mastery of rude gestures. The 160,000 Tory members who will choose the next prime minister want to elect someone who makes them feel good about themselves, who tells them it’s all right to vote with their guts rather than their heads, who assures them the warnings from experts of the dire consequences of their prejudices are just fake news.
And who can blame them? Rational politics left the building a long time ago.
There are similarities between Boris Johnson and teflon Donald Trump | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Enter BoJo. Perhaps more than any politician alive, Johnson understands the power of personality. It was etched into every line of the somewhat dashed-off biography he wrote of Winston Churchill: Forget facts, strategy, planning. The personal is political, and personality is all.
To be fair to the electorate, Johnson has not presented his most jester-esque aspects during this truncated leadership contest. Thanks to his team’s astute adoption of a “submarine strategy,” his profile has been so low as to be subterranean.
At his leadership launch, he deftly sidestepped questions about his history of scandals, allowing no follow-ups and so avoiding the intensive scrutiny his past warrants.
But then, the normal rules don’t apply to Boris.
Any one of his misdemeanors — his lack of personal and financial probity, his racist and homophobic language, his casual lying on matters big and small to his family, employers and the public — would have doomed another politician’s aspirations.
Britain wants Boris — it deserves him. Exiting the EU is a fool’s errand; it will take a clown to deliver it.
But like Donald Trump, who once claimed he could “stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” it seems Johnson’s supporters can forgive any misbehavior as “Boris being Boris.”
That is why, if Johnson does become prime minister next month — and there is every reason to believe he will — it will prove an entirely fitting appointment. Britain is deeply frustrated with itself and its place in the world in the 21st century. This identity crisis sees its clearest expression in the country’s decision to exit the most successful trading bloc in modern history.
Now Britain is about to entrust Johnson with the task of delivering the impossible: a Brexit its supporters can believe in. And who knows, following the “Only Nixon could go to China” formula, which suggests that only an extremist can deliver the unpalatable, maybe he will even make a roaring success of it.
Britain wants Boris — it deserves him. Exiting the EU is a fool’s errand; it will take a clown to deliver it.
Rosa Prince is the author of “Theresa May, the Enigmatic Prime Minister” (Biteback Publishing, 2017) and “Comrade Corbyn” (Biteback Publishing, 2016).