Re: Boris Johnson's persona

If we get bored with BoJo, there's also Rees-Mogg, e.g. in this recent
send-up <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lrb.co.uk%2Fv41%2Fn15%2Fjames-meek%2Fthe-two-jacobs&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C4545269ef1304839de3708d7154ca961%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C637001291960380339&amp;sdata=NF5ZErot6gAjp2hx6mTAWK%2F8aDGks70CfJ1jR1iNG34%3D&amp;reserved=0> by James
Meek:

He made it into Parliament in 2010 as Conservative MP for North East
Somerset and has been there ever since, stiffening the already near-rigid
sinews of the Faragist party within a party.

His maiden speech in Parliament invoked ‘three great Somerset men’ as his
models: Alfred the Great, ‘the first Eurosceptic’; the 11th-century
anchorite St Alphege, who in Rees-Mogg’s exegesis was England’s first tax
martyr; and John Locke, whom he characterised with cynical vagueness as a
champion of the people against government. That speech set the key for his
parliamentary excursions into history and literature, armed with the *kind
of cute patriotic simpleness one might have found in a child’s nursery
library from the 1890s*. He hovers on the edge of self-mockery without
committing to it:


I was thinking initially of Achilles sitting in his tent and about whether
that was a first example of industrial action …


Let me start with that sad day in March 1603, when our beloved sovereign of
blessed memory, Elizabeth, died …


I was concerned about my hon. friend’s attack on the Victorian age, which
was one of the finest ages in British history, when most employers were
benevolent, kindly, good …


I know that sometimes I bore the House with historical examples, but on
this occasion I thought that I would go back to Odysseus …


Queen Elizabeth I … did not need special measures, advancement and
protection to get her going; she did it through her own vim and vigour …


Does the lord chancellor recall that in the reign of Henry VIII it was made
high treason to take an appeal outside this kingdom? …


I think one can take back the divergence between our legal system and that
of the continent to the Fourth Lateran Council.


At times he seems to fall into an eerie timelessness, as if he hadn’t
merely been born but was summoned from his enchanted prison on the
mantelpiece in the photograph of your grandfather and friends dressed up
for a night on the town in 1935.

LRB 41.15

Best,

Dan

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 5:19 AM Mark Davidson <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Here's a wonderful story about Boris Johnson that gives some insight into
> his public persona.
>
> Keep reading, and you'll never see Boris Johnson in quite the same way
> again.
>
> My Boris Johnson story
> by Jeremy Vine
>
>
> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs.spectator.co.uk%2F2019%2F06%2Fmy-boris-story%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C4545269ef1304839de3708d7154ca961%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C637001291960380339&amp;sdata=6v4HKHjSMmADjjjmH43hhApkdMo%2By05%2BIronYsyfLzw%3D&amp;reserved=0
>
> Mark D.
>