The man who was christened Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has been called a lot of other things as well. “Fanatically anti-intellectual”, in the assessment of his former Islington neighbour David Goodhart. “Ineffably duplicitous”, according to Conrad Black, Johnson’s boss during his eventful period as editor of the Spectator (1999-2005).
Johnson has been likened to Princess Diana (by Michael Gove), Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, a butterfly (by Ferdinand Mount, who acknowledged the “insult to lepidoptera”), the Dulux dog, a punk (by John Lydon), “the general who leads his troops to the sounds of the guns and then, within sight of the battlefield, abandons them” (by Michael Heseltine), Toad of Toad Hall, the Pied Piper, “the Doctor”, the Rector of Stiffkey and various PG Wodehouse characters. Such assessments go some way in characterising his behaviour. But perhaps the most trenchant charge levelled against Johnson is that he is a child, possibly as young as two years old (the journalist Dominic Lawson’s estimate) and certainly no older than six.
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