Being Boris

Lovable larrikin or master manipulator? The world’s eyes are firmly on Britain’s new larger-than-life Prime Minister, but should we be amused or afraid? William Langley reports.

- William Langley

In the 700-year history of Britain’s parliament, all manner of showmen, scoundrels, seducers, chancers, charmers and crackpots have risen to power – sometimes through villainy, occasionally by accident – but none with the swirl and dazzle of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Plain “Boris”, as the new Prime Minister is known to almost everyone, is a big, blond bundle of contradictions – a brilliant mind with a taste for buffoonery, a child of privilege with a common touch, an oversexed connoisseur of talented women who longs for commitment and security.

Boris has been famous for almost his entire adult life, first emerging into the world of glossy magazines and gossip columns as the leader of Oxford University’s “gilded set” in the mid-1980s. Millions of words have been written about and by him, yet few would claim to know what goes on in his head.

On July 24, following a half-hour visit to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen formally invited him to lead a new Conservative government, 55-year-old Boris sped to Downing Street to deliver a characteristically barnstorming speech, in which he in effect promised to solve all the nation’s problems, including the colossal mess surrounding Britain’s attempts to leave the European Union.

A short distance away, watching from the crowd, was an attractive, 31-year-old blonde wearing a floaty, floral-pink dress and a knowing expression. Carrie Symonds, daughter of a London media executive, is the latest and perhaps most intriguing woman in Boris’s romantically turbulent life. But why wasn’t Carrie at the new PM’s side as his crowning moment arrived?