Who is Boris Johnson?

Behind Boris Johnson’s bumbling posh boy persona lies a nasty, ultra-privileged, self-serving, power-hungry political operative who will cling to power no matter the cost to us all.

Video transcript

By now, you know that Boris Johnson is a proven liar. Tory MPs may have decided to keep him in the top job, but in this video we want to show the main reasons why he is utterly unqualified to be prime minister, or to hold any kind of authority.

Born in New York in 1964 – yes, New York – Johnson’s family was a wealthy and privileged one. He attended Eton with David Cameron and went on to study at – you guessed it – Oxford University. At Oxford, he joined the all-male bullingdon club. Reports say Johnson was a central member at a time when group members would get extremely drunk, trash places and throw bottles in the streets to scare and intimidate people. They also referred to certain people as ‘plebs’.

Fast forward a few years and Johnson landed himself a job as an editor at The Times, courtesy of family connections – but it didn’t last very long, as he was found out for inventing a quote from his godfather. Remember this part – this won’t be the first time he’s sacked from a position for lying.

After securing a job at the Daily Telegraph, a leaked phone call between Johnson and his friend Darius Guppy was revealed –  with Johnson supplying the address of a Journalist Guppy wanted to beat up.

There’s also a lot to say about his actual writing style as a journalist – he once wrote about Africans as ‘flag-waiving picanninies’, and described gay men as ‘tank top bum boys’.

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In the late 90s, he was offered the editorship of the Spectator on the condition he didn’t run as an MP – spoiler, he did anyway. But it was his appearance on the flagship BBC show, Have I got News For You, which would catapult him into the eyes of the general public. It also helped get him elected as Conservative MP for Henley in 2001, where he spent his time voting for the war in Iraq, speaking out against what he called the ‘appalling’ ‘teaching of homosexuality in schools’, whilst also finding the time to write articles blaming Hillsborough on ‘drunken fans’ 

By 2004, Johnson was in the news again, this time being sacked by then-Conservative Leader Michael Howard for lying to the party about an extra-marital affair.

Johnson was eventually able to move on from the scandal and fail upwards into the position of Mayor Of London in 2008. It was a disaster. A total of £43m of public money was put into Johnson’s Garden Bridge vanity project. Questions were also raised about his office’s allocation of a £100,000 grant to US business woman Jennifer Arcuri – who he was having an affair with at the time.

Oh, and the whole Brexit thing – turns out he’s not such a firm believer in leave, more that he thought it could boost his political career. We know this because he wrote two articles before the referendum – one remain and one leave.

Since taking power in 2019 he’s overseen some of the largest government contracts – which were very conveniently awarded to donors of the Conservative Party. He also found time to have illegal parties during lockdown – trashing the very rules that he and his cabinet put in place. And when he and his chancellor were fined for it, he didn’t resign, and continued to cling on to power.

While millions suffered due to the cost of living crisis, Johnson sat on his hands and provided little relief, until relenting to pressure for a windfall tax on energy companies – which he conveniently announced the day after the Sue Gray report was released. Throughout his tenure, Johnson has repeatedly insulted and taken the British public for fools. From Oxford Bullingdon member to prime minister, Johnson’s life is a story of how wealth, privilege and connections can put you in the highest positions of power – no matter how incompetent, devious, dishonest or idiotic you are.