Nigel Jones

Whatever his myriad faults and foibles, Boris Johnson has the one essential quality that Napoleon demanded of his generals: luck. A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister was on the point of being dethroned by his own MPs. Today, thanks to two men, Vladimir Putin and Rishi Sunak, he strides the stage again, basking in the praise of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s most doughty and effective international defender. Johnson owes his survival and resurrection to his firm response to Putin’s brutal invasion, but also to the abrupt political implosion of the colleague who was being lined up – not least by himself – to succeed him: Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

I live near the small Sussex seaside town of Selsey. It’s the sort of place that gets right up the well-bred nose of Labour’s Emily Thornberry with her famous disdain for flag wagging patriotism. For in normal times the many flagpoles in the tidy gardens of the resort are flying the St George’s flag of England, or sometimes the Union Flag. Not this month however. Suddenly, most of the same poles are sporting the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine. In a touching show of solidarity with that faraway country of which we now know all too much, the patriots of Selsey are putting out more flags to demonstrate their disgust at Putin’s barbaric invasion. In Ukraine itself, displaying the national flag is ubiquitous: it is everywhere.

Boris Johnson’s hero – apart from himself – is Winston Churchill, who led Britain through the dark valley of World War Two. Our present PM has even written an adulatory biography of the great man, and clearly would like to channel Churchill as a war leader and emulate his success. Will the war in Ukraine give him the opportunity? Although Britain is not – yet – a direct belligerent in the current conflict, it is already playing a major role. It is supplying anti-tank NLAW weapons and missiles to the Ukrainians; it is ramping up diplomatic support for the invaded country; and – albeit unofficially – British Army veterans and volunteers have travelled to Ukraine to join the fight against the Russian invaders.

The news that the Queen had tested positive for Covid must have sent a shiver of dread down the spines of all but a tiny minority of hardhearted Republicans. Most of us don't want to even imagine a country bereft of the monarch who has been a seemingly immortal part of the fabric of the lives of all but the very old. Yet the brute fact of human mortality means that we will have to face a world without this indomitable 95-year-old woman at some point. How will we cope? Under the Treason Act of 1351 it was a capital offence to 'imagine' the death of a reigning sovereign, but in our time whole departments of state have long not only 'imagined' our Queen's passing, but have planned for it down to the finest detail.

The embattled denizens of Downing Street must be quaking in their loafers as another incoming missile streaks in. This one – typically late in the day – is fired by one of our growing squad of embittered ex-prime ministers, Sir John Major. It takes the form of a speech to the Institute for Government titled ‘In democracy we trust?’. Sir John’s sense of irony in choosing this subject is clearly not strong considering he spent much of his spectacularly undistinguished premiership struggling to subsume British parliamentary democracy under the proudly undemocratic European Union. Nonetheless he chips in with the usual tropes of the anti-Boris brigade: the PM is demeaning standards, undermining probity, telling fibs. We all know the familiar words of the song.

Boris Johnson is in the midst of the bleakest period of his premiership, but he can at least nibble on a crumb of comfort from history. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Tory party is not at all ruthless in dispatching their prime ministers when they have fallen out of favour with voters, or appear to have passed their sell by dates. If Boris is on his way out, he might still be able to look forward to one of the very long goodbyes experienced by his Conservative predecessors in No. 10, thanks to the marked reluctance of Tory MPs to wield the fatal knife. Let’s start with Johnson’s hero, biographical subject, and the man he is said to have modelled his political career upon: Winston Churchill.