Gwynne Dyer is a British-based Canadian journalist and long-time commentator on international affairs.Īfter all the things Johnson has got away with, why would this minor affront to public opinion bring him down? I think my neighbour Linda in Camden Town, the inner London district we live in, could explain why. (Much less so in Scotland and Wales.) Yet he is now brought down by a few wine-and-cheese parties. For all this, he received the unstinting adulation of around half the English population. There have been many affairs and there may be more children, because he will never state exactly how many he has.Īnd thanks to his hesitant leadership, the United Kingdom has had one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in Europe.

He has at least seven children by three different mothers (two of whom he married). He is famously lazy, doing actual work only at the last possible moment. He then made a very similar deal himself, proclaimed it a triumph, won the 2020 election – and within a year was threatening to break the treaty he himself had signed.Īlmost every day Johnson tells barefaced lies with great charm and apparent sincerity. He got the prime ministership by undermining his predecessor, Theresa May (also a Conservative), whom he accused of trying to make a sweetheart exit deal with the EU. (Photo by Daniel Leal - WPA Pool/Getty Images) Fourteen days of gritty negotiations by 20,000 diplomats from nearly 200 countries and the hopes of salvaging a deal at COP26 boiled down to cash, coal, compensation and the willingness to speed up the drawdown of fossil fuels. LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 14: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson smiles during a press conference inside the Downing Street Briefing Room on Novemin London, England.

He became a national figure on the strength of winning the Brexit campaign to leave the EU by a hair’s breadth (52 per cent to 48).

Having made his name, he was mayor of London for a while (though a Conservative in a city that generally votes Labour). * How many lockdown parties did Britain's PM Boris Johnson and staff attend? Here's a guide * 'Ambushed with a cake': Brits mock latest defence for embattled PM Boris Johnson * Boris Johnson refuses to quit as he awaits lockdown parties probe As the Telegraph’s correspondent at European Union headquarters in Brussels, he stoked rampant English nationalism with outraged (but false) stories of EU regulations that, for example, required bananas sold in the UK to be straight, not ‘bendy’. It seems so petty, when he has got away with so much more. Now the police are looking into his behaviour too. Not only is he awaiting judgement by senior civil servant Sue Gray for more than a dozen staff parties (with drinks) at his official residence, No. This week may be when “Boris” (always known by his first name) gets his comeuppance at last. But to be brought down by completely harmless parties! Humiliating. Not for nothing did his former colleagues at the Daily Telegraph know him as the “Greased Albino Piglet”. That’s Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who slid effortlessly through endless scrapes and scandals that would have finished off a lesser scoundrel. OPINION: The plot couldn’t be more familiar: criminal mastermind gets away with endless daring escapades, and is brought down in the end by some silly little mistake. Gwynne Dyer is a journalist and commentator on international affairs.

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