Boris Johnson: 'The boy who wanted to be world king' - BBC News

would you like to be Prime Minister I had very tough job being Prime Minister very tough job I mean obviously it's a that ball came loose from the back of a scrum which it won't like all of course it'd be it would be a great great thing to have a crack at but it's not going to happen [Music] the human bulldozer who snatched the ball from the back of the Tauri scrum is a man of many contradictions a classical scholar turned popular entertainer a self-proclaimed liberal one nation Tory hand in glove with the hardline LexA tears there's a spectrum of opinion about one is that he will be the most unsafe pair of hands ever to open a prime ministerial red box now the other end people think here is a man of brilliance and flair who can suddenly like an alchemist turned the base metal of brexit to something shiny and remarkable so who is the real Boris Johnson what makes him tick and what kind of fist will he make of the job he is craved since he was a boy this is Boris Johnson age five paddling his own canoe he grew up the eldest of four children in the hugely competitive Johnson family he knows that life is a competition and he once always wants to be top whenever anyone asked him what he wanted to be he would answer world king that is true he painted this self-portrait at the age of 12 and downgraded his ambition to becoming British Prime Minister he was off to Eton where he became a star of the school plays and discovered he could make people laugh do you think that you learned something for later life from acting in plays at Eton you could actually get more laughs by looking as if you don't know your lines than actually remembering them well I certainly think that as a general tactic in life if that's what you're driving at it is it is often useful to give the slight impression that you are deliberately pretending not to know what is going on because the reality may be that you didn't know what is going on but people won't be able to tell the difference this is why he's dementing for other politicians because they're all to an extent playing the part assigned to them by the party you know you have to be loyal you have to be a good Tory Boris has realized quite early on that he would go further if he broke all those rules and people would love him even more at Oxford who managed to be elected president of the Union the training ground for future prime ministers by disguising his true Tory colors I declare the motion overwhelmingly carried and I pose the house at 12:18 air a Tory MP and Murray Trevelyan is a passionate brexit here and a longtime fan of Boris Johnson I first met him in Oxford 30 odd years ago when I was a new student at the Oxford Union what I remember most was this extraordinary articulate see his ability to tell a story to capture the essence of something it was mesmerizing for a young woman of 18 I'd never come across anything like it after Oxford Johnson became a trainee journalist at the Times where he was sacked for making up a quote but he got a job at the Daily Telegraph became its brussels correspondent and immediately set about ridiculing the european commission from euro manure to one-size-fits-all condoms little escaped Johnson's eye there his fellow brussels reporters felt his stories were hyped up beyond recognition it made Boris Johnson's name [Applause] Johnson came back from Brussels as a star and was much in demand on celebrity TV he was made editor of The Spectator and was elected Tory MP for Henley which intensified his ambition to make it to number 10 but the twice Miriam Johnson was sacked from the front bench for lying to the party leader about an adulterous affair with one of his staff it was one of a string of love affairs that have raised what's called the character question about his fitness for the job of prime minister he is a man with human frailties as many are and I would always say you know should our politicians all be you know perfect puritanical you know immaculate lives led perhaps then we were representing the society that we live in he has got great qualities of that there is no doubt they're just not the qualities that I want to see personally as Prime Minister in this country these are not the times when we need someone who is a bit of a chancer you know Boris is a chancing you know John sir Bonjour Simois Boris Johnson the Maryland Strasse Richard Lugar manasa would Maurice have a very very happy Chinese New Year everybody kung hei fat Choi a decade ago Johnson showed he could reach pass that other toys couldn't when he was elected mayor of normally labor London and there's the frontman for the London Olympics he famously got stuck on a sip any other politician anywhere in the world got stuck on a zip wire it would be you know disastrous for Boris it'll be an absolute triumph when David Cameron called the brexit referendum he desperately wanted Boris Johnson on his side in the campaign but Johnson have now calculating whether to reverse the stance he'd taken three years earlier how would you vote tomorrow there was a referendum I'd vote to stay in the single market I'm in favor of the single market I want to be part I asked to be able to trade freely with our European friends and pawns I rang Boris and said Boris you can't you can't do this you know you cannot come out for leave you can't and I said if you don't Boris I'll run your campaign to be leader I have to say I did say that to drive bribe him into not doing and immediately went the other way and naturally many people thought that Johnson chose to back leave to endear himself to Pro brexit Tory members in a future leadership contest that was the view of the senior remain Minister amber Rudd as she faced Johnson in the TV referendum debate do you need to look at the numbers although I fear the only number that Boris is in interested in is the one that says number 10 but the fact is he's the life and soul of the party but he's not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening [Music] as he left home the morning after the leave campaigns shocked victory Johnson had become simultaneously the most hated and the most loved politician in the country with politics plunged into convulsive and unpredictable turmoil the new Prime Minister Theresa May gave Boris Johnson one of the great officers of state as foreign secretary much to his astonishment [Music] at the Foreign Office he met the senior mandarins and after his first full day at his new school he emerged to face the media foreign secretary Johnson diplomacy is about personal relationships today the French Foreign Secretary has said you've told a lot of lies in the campaign in the German Foreign Secretary has said some of the stuff you've done is outrageous in a responsible well after a vote like the referendum result On June the 23rd he's inevitable that there's going to be certain amout of plaster coming off the ceiling in the chancelleries of of Europe it wasn't the result that they were expecting and clearly they're making their views known you know in a frank and free way I had to say that the gentlemen that you that you mentioned the the French Foreign Minister in fact has sent me a charming just a couple of hours ago his most contentious moment as foreign secretary came when he gave evidence to MPs about the fate of Nazneen zaharie Radcliffe the Anglo Iranian woman had been jailed by the Tehran regime for being an alleged spy when you look at what Nazneen is a category Radcliffe was was doing it's just you know she she was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it in fact she'd gone to around on holiday and Johnson had misremembered his briefing and the Iranians used his words against mrs. Sahara Radcliffe I think he had a chance to prove to the world and to himself to his friends and supporters that he would be an outstanding he could do a really big job at a very difficult time which it was and in my view he failed so that again also gives me cause for anxiety and worry it doesn't alter the fact that he's extremely agreeable to have dinner with cynical of CERN's is the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson recently wrote a biography of Churchill in which he pointedly noted that Churchill was a journalist turned politician with many human flaws who was written off but called in to save his country in its darkest hour Alexander Boris TEFL Johnson is now about to become Britain's 55th Prime Minister and the 20th old Etonian with many people questioning his ability to handle the most daunting and difficult of jobs in the most forbidding political environment since the Second World War do you have any doubts about your ability to fulfill the role of Prime Minister I think people who don't have doubts or anxieties about the you know to do things probably have something slightly terrifyingly awry you know we all have worries and insecurities but I think I think I've done it and I think we've done a pretty good job so far until you all know when we continue to do boris has a vision for the country and this this energy and this optimism which the British people are longing to feel because he believes in the future he is an optimist and an optimist it's catching it's like a smile it's catching you share it like a cult you look at it and you smile - he's not fazed by difficult in fact I think the heart of the challenge the more we'll get out of him as Prime Minister Boris my biggest single worry perhaps about Boris Johnson is that he seems to me to be a politician who has inhaled his own legend before he's created it he shown levels of personal and political narcissism which do worry me and if he believes in his own myth my own feeling veers towards the anxiety end of the spectrum I hope I'm wrong but it certainly does veer towards the exact especially because you cannot busk being Prime Minister I texted him last weekend and I said to him when Churchill became Prime Minister on the day became prime minister he went back to his flat where he met my grandmother and his children and they drank a bottle of champagne and he proposed the taste which I equated the boys of Hairston not buggering it up and I said to Boris I can't possibly vote for you I can't vote for you but I pray for all our sakes you don't bugger it up and that is my home for Boris and your fear my fear is really good bye Murray dad

Channel: BBC News

Views: 948,293

Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, boris johnson, boris, pm, prime minister, conservative vote, conservative leader, tory, tories leader, breaking story, breaking news, uk pm, uk prime minister

Id: Sed0MmigLaA

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019