‘Wounded In Action' Persona May Save Johnson

Johnson and his lieutenants gained power by exaggerating or inventing threats to UK when it came to Brexit, but now they are facing an all too real pandemic catastrophe they do not know what to do

- Patrick Cockburn

In the summer of 2011, riots erupted all over London and television screens and newspapers were filled with pictures of blazing buildings and looted shops. People swiftly noted that among those not present in the capital was the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who was with his family in a camper van in the Canadian Rockies on a holiday from which he showed great reluctance to return.

As London burned, the excuses for Johnson’s absence by City Hall became more and more embarrassing: he was said to be against “rewarding” the rioters by flying back to London precipitously; he claimed that he must stay in Canada because his then wife was unable to drive the Winnebago camper van.

When he did come back to London – sometime after the prime minister, David Cameron, and the home secretary, Theresa May, had rushed back from their own holidays – he went straight to Clapham in south London, which had suffered particularly badly in the riots. He was greeted at first by jeering residents, but he seized a broom and held it aloft as a symbol of his determination to lead the clean-up of the debris left by the riots. Hand clapping replaced the booing, though some distraught shopkeepers later said that there was no evidence that Johnson had actually used his broom. Politically, this did not matter: the gesture was enough and Johnson was re-elected mayor the following year, his political career, and wider ambition to be prime minister, undamaged.