Boris Johnson does occasionally tell the truth, even if you have to go back nearly a decade to unearth his honest assessment of Donald Trump. In 2015, the then Mayor of London accused the aspiring White House candidate of a “quite stupefying ignorance that makes him frankly unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Johnson was responding to some routinely offensive badinage from Trump, who was speculating about banning Muslim immigrants to the US and claiming that there were no-go areas in London for police because of large Muslim communities.
“I would invite him to come and see the whole of London and take him round the city,” said Johnson, “except I wouldn’t want to expose any Londoners to any unnecessary risk of meeting Donald Trump.”
As to the would-be president’s suggestion of banning Muslim immigrants, Johnson accused him of being “clearly out of his mind…What he’s doing is playing the game of the terrorists and those who seek to divide us. That’s exactly the kind of reaction they hope to produce.”
Well said, Boris. But, and I know you’ll find this hard to believe, Johnson soon changed his mind—and not only because, as with David Lammy or Peter Mandelson, there were professional reasons to do so. His revised opinion was that Trump was, on the contrary, wise, sane and uniquely suited to be the leader of the free world.
Just over a year ago, by now a mere Daily Mail columnist rather than prime minister, Johnson endorsed Trump for a second term in office, saying that this was “just what the world needs.” He described him as “an enthusiastic exponent of free markets and capitalism”. Tariffs, what tariffs?
It would, he argued, be especially good for Ukraine: “I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the Ukrainians; on the contrary, having worked out, as he surely has, that there is no deal to be done with Putin, I reckon there is a good chance that he will double down and finish what he started—by giving them what they need to win. We all need to grow up… If he does the right thing and backs the Ukrainians—and I believe he will—a Trump presidency can be a big win for the world.”
Almost exactly a year later, we learned of Trump’s chummy 90-minute phone call with Putin and witnessed JD Vance’s chilling speech at Munich. It transpired that Trump was, in Anne Applebaum’s words, offering Ukraine “more or less what the Versailles Treaty offered a defeated Germany” in 1919—demanding that the US should take 50 per cent of all “economic value associated with resources of Ukraine,” including mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure—not just now but forever.
Regardless, Johnson was still boosterish for Trump, urging Europeans—in the words of his Mail column last weekend—to “stop panicking, stop whingeing.” Trump was going to back Ukraine. There was no possibility of betrayal.
That was 15th February. Within days, Trump was openly attacking Zelensky and blaming Ukraine for having started the war with Russia—all Putin talking points. He said (“without evidence,” as the popular euphemism goes) that Zelensky had an approval rating of 4 per cent.
Now, this was ticklish for Johnson, who has cast himself as a Churchillian figure walking hand in hand towards the gunfire with Zelensky, whom he has lauded as “an inspiration and heroic war leader.”
How could he simultaneously keep onside with Trump while supporting his comrade in arms in Ukraine? In short, how could he have his cake and eat it?
The answer came in a brilliantly-crafted tweet of pure cakeism. Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. Of course there was no need to stage elections during a war. Of course, it was untrue to say that Zelensky’s ratings were 4 per cent. But, really, we should all grow up and stop being scandalised. Trump’s attacks on Zelensky were designed to be a wake-up call, “not intended to be historically accurate.”
This is a wonderfully Johnsonian phrase that readers could store up for use in a tight spot. As in: “When I said there were no parties at Downing Street, it was not intended to be historically accurate.”
Awkwardly for Johnson, Trump doubled down the next day, accusing Zelensky of being a dictator who wanted to “keep the gravy train going” and warning him to “move fast or he is not going to have a country left.”
We may have to wait until next Saturday’s Mail column to see whether Johnson is ready to admit that there is no future for cakeism in this matter. How delightful it would be to find Johnson admitting the truth, which is that Trump is an ignorant thug intent on selling Ukraine down the river.
Now, of course, Johnson is far from being the only prominent public figure to find it impossible to criticise Trump and Vance as they rip up the norms, alliances and values that have more or less guided the western democratic world since the end of the Second World War. Thursday’s New York Times carried an analysis of the Congressional Republicans who have fallen silent as Trump has trashed everything their party once stood for in foreign policy terms.
“It is a striking turn for Republicans,” wrote the NYT in typically restrained prose, “who for decades defined themselves as the party of a strong defence and argued that the United States had a pivotal role to play as a beacon of freedom and defender of democracies around the globe.”
Rather more forthright was the verdict of Professor Timothy Snyder, whose Substack column regularly says what the mute Congressmen doubtless feel but dare not articulate: “By speaking of Putin as someone who supposedly wants peace rather than as the aggressor in the bloodiest war since 1945, or as someone who has been indicted for war crimes, Trump is seeking the cleanse the moral stain from the person who broke the most fundamental of international laws by invading another country.”
Or read the latest Times column by Gerard Baker, who has to date bent over backwards to explain Trump’s political success. He is so shocked by what has happened in the past 10 days that he finds no problem in articulating his revulsion against “the most radical about-face in US policy in more than 50 years—a full-throated endorsement of the case for the Russian dictator who launched an all-out war, bombing cities, murdering civilians and shipping children off to Russia.”
Baker doesn’t try to parse or explain away Trump’s words as Johnson has. He thinks the most reasonable explanation of Trump’s statements is this: “He prefers Putin’s Russian over Ukraine and America’s own democratic allies”.
I imagine Zelensky has better things to do at the moment than read the Daily Mail, far less fork out to read Johnson’s musings behind a paywall. How stomach-churning it would be for him to discover that the man he once saw as a Churchillian ally is now acting as an apologist for Trump as the latter seeks to undermine, if not destroy, him.
Johnson was right: Trump is indeed quite stupefyingly ignorant and unfit to hold the office he does. A shame that, for whatever reason, Johnson can’t now admit that.
