When he announced his candidacy for party leader and prime minister in mid-June in London, one of the key architects of the 2016 Brexit referendum, Alexander Boris de Fefel Johnson, promised his supporters that he would take Britain out of the European Union "after three years and two missed deadlines" at the latest on Halloween on October 31, if necessary without an agreement with Brussels. "I'm not aiming for an outcome without an agreement," said 54-year-old Johnson, who is also known as "BoJo" after the abbreviation of his first and last name, "but the only responsibility is to prepare energetically and seriously that there will be no agreement", and added that any new "delay means defeat".
THE ARCHITECT OF BREXIT
But Boris wouldn't be Boris if he didn't, for the umpteenth time, show the ability to easily side with seemingly completely opposing views of the world, if that would give him an advantage. On the one hand, he openly threatened the European Union that he will not pay the "bill" for Brexit in the amount of 39 billion pounds, if the official Brussels does not agree to better conditions for the exit of Great Britain, and shortly afterwards he said conciliatoryly that London needs support and cooperation with the EU, especially regarding unhindered cross-border trade. "It depends not only on us, but also on the other side." There is a very important element of mutuality and cooperation in this matter," Bojo told the BBC.
Behind Johnson's disheveled, almost Monty Pythonesque exterior and jovial demeanor, hides an experienced and intelligent political being, homo politicicus for example, with a clearly designed strategy of political action. His decades of experience gained as a journalist, political commentator and editor, and later as a politician, make him one of the best connoisseurs of the British political arena, in which he navigates like a fish in water. With a sharpened political instinct, Johnson can be a conservative hardliner or a progressive liberal cosmopolitan according to the needs and desires of his constituents; a member of the social elite or an ordinary "man of the people"; media "celebrity" or charismatic leader. The fact that Johnson has been at the top of the charts in Great Britain for a long time speaks for itself.
It seems that no permanent political ideas or principles "stick" to him, and even the numerous gaffes and affairs he was exposed to in previous years did not leave a visible mark on him. This earned him the nickname "Mr. Teflon."
Even as a young, ambitious journalist, he distinguished himself with a distinctive style that brought him recognition and popularity in the English media world and among readers there. However, Johnson didn't care too much about the old journalistic rule that first-year journalism students learn - that facts are sacred and comment is free. Free comments did come out of Boris's journalistic pen, but his factography was often too "free", sometimes completely untrue. He was fired from the London "Times" for inventing the statement of an interlocutor, but a little later he gained journalistic "fame" as a controversial correspondent for the "Daily Telegraph" from the EU capital, Brussels.
MEDIA STAR
The choice for the young, then 24-year-old Boris to be a reporter from the capital of Belgium was not accidental. He lived in Brussels as a boy and knew the city well, as his father Stanley was "one of the first British bureaucrats at the European Commission after the United Kingdom joined the European bloc in 1973," according to the American magazine "The New Yorker." In addition, he also spoke French fluently. However, Boris Johnson soon realized that "conventional British reporting on the procedures of the European Economic Community (which was renamed the European Union in 1993) was fair, accurate and boring." He went to the other side."
Translated, this meant that he began writing Europhobic, tabloid, "sly and exaggerated stories that portrayed the European project as bureaucratic madness," according to The New Yorker. Everything was there: from the supposed standardization of the size of condoms, through the orders of the European Commission to fishermen to wear hairnets, possible threats to "British pink sausages", the fictional ban of the famous English double deckers, and all the way to the fact that the headquarters of the EC should be built in the air. "I found that everything I wrote from Brussels was like throwing stones over a garden wall, and then I would just listen to the amazing bang from the greenhouse in neighboring Britain," Boris Johnson later recalled his journalistic work in Brussels. "It all gave me, I suppose, a rather strange sense of power."
His bombastic reporting was a sensation among the British public, and he was quickly noticed by the influential, Eurosceptic wing of the then-ruling Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. When he returned from Brussels in 1994, he became the assistant editor-in-chief of "Telegraf", and a few years later he became the editor-in-chief of the weekly "Spekteitor".
He was first elected as a Tory member of parliament in 2001. Despite the public's pressure to step down from the head of the newspaper due to his political engagement and possible conflict of interest, he refuses and in his own style utters the sentence that becomes perhaps his most famous political credo, but also his life principle: "I want to have my cake and eat it too." It is Johnson's behavior and public communication without almost any political correctness that is a strong asset in his charm of the average British voter.
MAYOR AND MINISTER
He claims he was magnificent as Mayor of London, while his opponents say he actually avoided doing his job. From there, he devised overpriced projects such as the construction of a gondola to transport passengers across the Thames, bicycle lanes around the city, or a 115-meter-tall red steel sculpture that was majority-financed by steel industry tycoon Lakshmi Mittal. It was supposed to be the new symbol of the capital, and it became, as critics called it, "the Eiffel Tower after the nuclear disaster." Even during his mayorship, Boris Johnson did not give up his high earnings from journalism, even higher than his salary as the first man of the capital.
After becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain, Theresa May tactically offered the position of Foreign Secretary to Boris Johnson, her rival within the Conservative Party. In the mandate that lasted two years, he did not celebrate God knows what results. He was also accused of knowingly lying in the Brexit campaign when he claimed that the UK was paying £350m a week to Brussels and that a vote to leave the EU would mean that this substantial sum of money would be used to fund the UK's health service. He resigned amid a growing political crisis over Brexit strategy, dissatisfied with British Prime Minister May's plan for the future relationship between London and Brussels. Some critics, however, claimed that he was actually surprised by the victory of the option to leave the EU, so when he felt that things were getting worse, he simply ran away from the party.
NO HAIR ON THE TONGUE
Johnson was often criticized for his racist, homophobic and sexist statements, which he "fired" even while holding high government posts. He is also known for the sentence that the EU is actually an attempt to achieve Adolf Hitler's goal of a united Europe, only by different means. He called the traditionally veiled Muslim women "mailboxes", and he wrote nostalgically about colonialism in Africa.
Boris Johnson's nature is in stark contrast to the Protestant, strict, puritanical upbringing of the average Conservative voter in England. His love life is often the subject of writing by the media, especially tabloids, which, by publishing tidbits from his private life, increase their circulation, but also form Johnson's public image as a great womanizer and seducer. He married twice, while at least five of his extramarital affairs are known to the public. Tabloids in Britain also "discovered" this politician's illegitimate child, some unwanted pregnancies and subsequent abortions by his mistresses.
In the current campaign for the Tory leader, he suffered fierce criticism from the public due to the fact that his election team consists almost exclusively of men. The British "Guardian" reported a statement from an MP from the opposition Labor Party who said that Johnson "showed once again what women in his party and country can expect - to be ignored and forgotten", adding that "anyone would think he was lying". when he said he was a feminist".
As if all that wasn't enough, the front-runner for the post of British Prime Minister found himself under pressure from the British public recently to explain a heated argument with his current partner Carrie Symonds at his home in south London, because of a noisy argument, allegedly followed by shouting and door slamming, the police had to intervene.
A TERRIBLE LIFE
Boris Johnson was born in New York and has British, French, German and Turkish roots. His great-grandfather Ali Kemal was the Minister of the Interior in the last phase of the Ottoman Empire. Johnson attended the prestigious Eton College and studied classics at Oxford. He admitted that he tried marijuana and cocaine as a student. His political role model is Winston Churchill, and it is also noted that he used his official visit to Serbia in July 2016 to promote his latest book about this famous British political and war leader in the ceremonial hall of the Belgrade City Assembly.
He officially has four children with his second wife, Marina Wheeler, from whom he is currently divorcing. It is interesting that Johnson's Wikipedia profile in the "Children" section says: 5-6. However, he himself does not like to talk about it and refuses to talk to the media about his private life. "I don't think people want to hear that kind of stuff," Johnson responds to intimate questions.
When he announced that he was running for Conservative leader, he also changed his appearance. He's cut his hair, slimmed down and dressed up, and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon described him as "very inspiring." "I think Boris Johnson would be a good prime minister." I think Johnson is a guy with big ideas. He is the new, refreshed Boris Johnson who has lost 30 kilograms - he has a new haircut, he is a role model - the way he lost so much weight ... very inspiring," Politico reports. And American President Donald Trump, who is often compared to the British due to his appearance, hairstyle and unconventional behavior, said that Boris Johnson would be an "excellent" prime minister.
FAVORITE FOR PRIME MINISTER
He did not appear at the opening televised debate with the other Tory candidates for party leader and prime minister, and as a result he was accused of being a "coward". The latest polls show, however, that he has retained majority support from the Conservatives and still has a large lead over his rival, the current British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
Even if by some miracle Boris Johnson does not win the internal party elections on July 22, when the voting of about 160.000 members of the Conservative Party ends, this island country will hardly have a more colorful character on the political and social scene in the foreseeable future. In a way, it has become part of pop culture.
