BoJo revising

Or, the British PM as climate warrior

Sep 30, 2021

The only incorrect view to hold about Boris Johnson is that he’s changed. If his trademark slapdash erudition seems appalling now that he’s Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, it’s only because of the job he holds.

His dishevelled wit helped him skate through Oxford without much work, mock the EU as The Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent, edit The Spectator while launching and crashing his first political career as a “self-proclaimed bungler”, become mascot-mayor of London, glom on to Brexit as his signature issue, win a “huge great stonking” majority in Parliament, and deliver last week’s wacky speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

That speech is a perfect encapsulation of The Boris Style: Sometimes clever, occasionally sloppy, mostly entertaining, and entirely self-promotional. In this case, the promotion was for the COP 26 climate conference he’s about to host in Glasgow, which has caused Johnson to declare himself a green warrior. He hasn’t changed; he’s just found a new parade to get out in front of. Yes, he’s been wobbly on the issues in the past, but given that the world is on fire, better late than never.

And his unique rhetorical talents will be useful for the cause. Consider that 170-odd presidents and prime ministers spoke at the UN in the last week, and aside from the leaders of the two superpowers, none made the news except for Boris. His formula, honed through newspaper columns, is simple:

1. Cheap puns

“In fact we produce so much offshore wind that I am thinking of changing my name to Boreas Johnson in honour of the North Wind.”
What speechwriter would script a line like that?

2. Needless erudition

As he builds up to his finale, he takes a moment to correct a common misconception about a Greek philosopher:
“But what Sophocles actually said was that man is deinos and that means not just scary but awesome — and he was right.”

3. Winking euphemisms

“And every day green start-ups are producing new ideas, from feeding seaweed to cows to restrain their traditional signs of digestive approval, to using AI and robotics to enhance food production.”
Two words: cow farts.

4. Anglicisms

This one goes out to the Commonwealth:
“And though we were setting in train a new era of technology that was itself to lead to a massive global reduction in poverty, emancipating billions around the world, we were also unwittingly beginning to quilt the great tea cosy of CO2...”

5. The occasional elegant sentence

“The world — this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and wisp of an atmosphere — is not some indestructible toy, some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart’s content.”

6. And, served up on a platter, the groaner as headline

“And when Kermit the frog sang It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green, I want you to know he was wrong — and he was also unnecessarily rude to Miss Piggy.”
It’s a bad joke, not at all saved by the defence of a swine’s honour, but boy was it memeable.

This was not a perfect speech, but it was a perfect Boris speech. It was, if nothing else, interesting.

That is certainly better than most of what passes for political oratory. If you actually listen to an average politician’s speech from beginning to end (as opposed to the sound bites crafted for 15-second videos) and can judge it solely on its rhetorical merits (as opposed to your political leanings) you’ll invariably conclude that they are talking to us like we are distracted children. Now more than ever, it’s the repetition, the misplaced emphasis, the repetition, the phrases that turn inward, and the repetition that makes you wonder if their teams ever expect a free-thinking human to hear their words. How are these dullards ever going to spur climate action?

Boris Johnson’s managerial skills, political stances, and fashion sense all crumple under scrutiny, but his rumpled wit holds up. Hopefully, he’ll keep talking about the climate crisis as only he can.

“There are no disasters, only opportunities,” he famously wrote after, as ever, he found himself in a spot of trouble. “And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”

“Eating my words has never given me indigestion.”
—Winston Churchill

“Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.”
— Gore Vidal

“He’s the cutlery man of Australian politics. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, speaks with a forked tongue, and knifes his colleagues in the back. ”
— Bob Hawke (Australian PM from 1983-91) on Malcolm Fraser (Australian PM from 1975-1983)

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That was the 117th edition of Get Wit Quick, your weekly speech galette. For a cartoony, non-gloomy consideration of the climate crisis, do subscribe to my lovely wife’s Minimum Viable Planet newsletter. I wrote about Boris for the Globe and Mail back in 2019 and was chuffed to have run adjacent to this Graham Roumieu illustration of the PM as a sponge cake. Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting didn’t predict Brexit, but it did note that Johnson was a much better politician than David Cameron. Hurl yourself against the wisp of a ❤️ below.