Will prime minister boris listen to columnist boris? | thearticle

Contrary to the absurd charge that he is a “dictator”, Boris Johnson, like all prime ministers, is hugely constrained in what he can do. But we are exceptionally well informed as to what he

would _like_ to do. Theresa May was enigmatic about her beliefs, and to an astonishing extent this continued during her premiership. Johnson, a columnist for decades, has been very much the

opposite. Subscribers can read most of them in the archives of the relevant publications (mainly The Telegraph, but also The Spectator and The Mail). A couple of collections – Have I Got

Views for You and Lend Me Your Ears have been published as books and are still available on Amazon. Those swathes of copy have included countless personal anecdotes, often highly

entertaining. There are plenty of inspired metaphors – sometimes so colourful that they have brought controversy on their author. Some consist of commentary on some fleeting matter of

limited contemporary interest. Yet other pieces do give us an insight into the direction the Prime Minister would like to take us. Often they don’t merely lament our national misfortunes,

but propose some sort of remedy. Some might be modest or symbolic, others more ambitious. Of course, he might have since changed his mind. Or he might have been offering a proposition for

reasons of journalistic flair, rather than it being deeply held and seriously thought through. But I would still argue that they offer a clue of what will happen should Boris have a chance

to continue as Prime Minister for several years and have his authority boosted by securing a working Parliamentary majority. Here are some examples. Writing in The Spectator in 2004 he says:

“I remember being amazed, sitting on some Police Bill, when we just nodded through a clause changing the oath of loyalty sworn by police constables so as to remove a specific reference to

the Queen. I went into the Lobby, found Chris Moncrieff of the Press Association, issued a torrential statement of denunciation, and heard no more about it.” Well, what about restoring the

proper version? Some pieces are fairly recent. In The Spectator last year he wrote: “Why not start with a goal of 10,000 tigers in the wild by the end of 2050?” Is that now Government

policy? Free speech is one of Johnson’s great causes. In 2005 he wrote for the Daily Telegraph: “The proposed ban on incitement to ‘religious hatred’ makes no sense unless it involves a ban

on the Koran itself; and that would be pretty absurd, when you consider that the Bill’s intention is to fight Islamophobia.” So when will the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 be

repealed? In February this year, he wrote about Kate Scottow from Hitchen who had been arrested after declaring on Twitter that a transgender woman was really a man. Boris conceded that some

might indeed find the comment offensive “but if, and only if, you can be bothered to read her tweets, and if and only if you can be bothered to take offence.” He added: “Are you really

telling me that it is a sensible ordering of priorities to round up Twitter-borne transphobes and chuck them in the clink, when violence on the streets would seem to be getting out of

control?” A fair question. Now he is Prime Minister, what is his answer? Modernising the honours system? In 2004 Boris said: “Why not have a straightforward tariff for honours? If you give

£5 million to a national museum, you should get a knighthood. And if you gave £50 million to a university, you should get a hereditary baronetcy. Believe me, there would be plenty of

takers.” A bit vulgar perhaps – but I don’t think that change would require any legislation. In 2012 he declared that “we should get fracking right away.” Switching to this new source of

energy had meant “the Americans have cut their CO2 emissions to levels not seen since the Nineties, in spite of a growing population.” Shale is “glorious news for humanity. It doesn’t need

the subsidy of wind power.” Pretty emphatic. The broadly libertarian and Eurosceptic themes are pretty consistent through the archive. Linked to these is his keen backing for free trade:

“Let us begin by scrapping the tariffs on bras, shirts and all other textiles, currently running at 7.2 per cent, from Sri Lanka, Thailand and other flood-hit areas,” he said in 2005. Brexit

would allow such opportunities. There is support for capitalism, but some impatience with sluggish vested interests: “Let’s look at our bloated public procurement system, with its

inflexible OJEU rules (the Official Journal of the European Union, which records all public sector contracts) that favour established companies and their complacent approach. Brexit gives us

an opportunity to simplify. We should take it.” When it comes to transport our new Prime Minister has written robust pieces commending cycling and opposing a third runway at Heathrow. We

can chronicle his initial enthusiasm for HS2 evaporating. “It takes an awful lot to put me off a jumbo infrastructure project, ” he wrote last year. “But when it comes to championing HS2,

the so‑called high-speed rail scheme, I am afraid my sword rather sticks in my scabbard.” He also doesn’t like traffic lights. “People often ask me why there are so many traffic lights, and

why they seem to spend such an unconscionable time on red”, he wrote ten years ago. “The answer is that there has indeed been a huge expansion of traffic lights in the past 10 years, and

each one generally represents the culmination of some campaign.” he adds that though a “plausible case can be made for each intervention, the cumulative effect can be counterproductive.” As

a shopping list of policy demands it could become very long indeed. Johnson now has the means for his own salvation. He has the chance to agree to his own demands. Except that in real life

it’s never quite that simple. There is still something to be said for him and and the rest of us holding him to account. So many politicians offer fine rhetoric but fail to back it up with

substance. It is reasonable to expect our Prime Minister to acquiesce to at least some of the so trenchant lobbying from his past self. Apart from looking for items to tick off reading all

these old columns gives an insight to the Prime Minister’s mentality. Too open minded and unpredictable to be an ideologue. Often a piece will read like he is conducting a debate within his

head and relish the chance to come to an expected conclusion. What we do see is a boldness,  optimism and a sense of justice and of sticking up for the underdog. There is a cheerful,

unapologetic feel. For instance, he is unembarrassed about being (relatively) posh without expecting or showing any social deference – or deference of any other sort. Aneurin Bevan once

advised: “Why look in the crystal ball when you can read the book?” Boris Johnson has been refreshingly uninhibited in letting us know his outlook on life. That offers a pretty good idea of

what we are in for.