After the interminable teasing, the winks, the nudges, it would have been humiliating for Boris Johnson to announce that he was, after all, supporting EU membership. “Bottler Boris” would have been the epithet of choice.
By instead declaring for Brexit, the Mayor of London has made the choice that will best serve his primary cause – becoming Conservative leader and prime minister. Tory MPs testify that Johnson has long been privately supportive of EU membership (“The trouble is, I am not an ‘outer,'” he is said to have told them late last year). Unlike Michael Gove, who declared in 2013 that he would vote to leave on the current terms, the mayor has never publicly advocated withdrawal.
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