Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson MP
Conservative candidate for Mayor of London
Election date 1 May 2008
Opponent(s)	Ken Livingstone (Lab) Brian Paddick (Lib Dem) and numerous others
Incumbent	Ken Livingstone
Personal details
Born	(1964-06-19) 19 June 1964 New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	British/American
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Marina Wheeler
Children	Four (2 sons, 2 daughters)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Profession	Politician, journalist and historian
Website	www.boris-johnson.com

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (commonly known as Boris Johnson, born 19 June 1964, New York City) is a British Conservative Party politician, journalist and former editor of The Spectator.

He is Member of Parliament for Henley and was for a time front-bench spokesman as Shadow Minister for Higher Education, until the announcement of his intention to stand in the London mayoral election of 2008. Johnson was chosen as the Conservative Party's candidate on 27 September 2007.

Early life

He is one of four children (including Rachel) of Stanley Johnson and his first wife, the former Charlotte Fawcett Wahl. He is the great-grandson of Ali Kemal, a liberal Turkish journalist who was briefly interior minister in the government of Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Kemal met an Englishwoman, Winifred Brun in Switzerland, and they married in 1903 in London and returned to Turkey. The couple came to England in 1909 to stay with Boris' great great-grandmother so Kemal's wife could give birth to Boris' grandfather Osman Wilfred Kemal (later Johnson), who became by reason of his birth in Britain a British subject. His great grandmother Winifred died of puerperal fever soon after giving birth. Kemal stayed with his son and daughter in Wimbledon until 1912 when he returned from exile to Turkey. In 1922, during the Turkish War of Independence Kemal was lynched and hung by supporters of Mustafa Ataturk.

During World War I Boris's grandfather and great aunt were recognised as British subjects and took their grandmother's maiden name of Johnson.

Johnson was born in New York and educated at the European School in Brussels [5], Ashdown House and then at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar. He read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford as a Brackenbury scholar, and was elected President of the Oxford Union. It has been claimed that, tactically, to gain the Presidency he touted himself as a Social Democratic Party supporter, then a dominant current at the University, though he denies that he was more than their preferred candidate. While at Oxford he was also a member of the Bullingdon Club, an exclusive student dining society known for its raucous feasts, and was involved in the British-Arab University Association. He was a close friend of Darius Guppy, later convicted of fraud.

In 1987, at the age of 23, he married Allegra Mostyn-Owen but the marriage lasted less than a year and was formally dissolved in 1993 [6]. Later in 1993 he married Marina Wheeler, a barrister (and the daughter of journalist and broadcaster Sir Charles Wheeler). They have two sons (Theo and Milo) and two daughters (Lara and Cassia).

Johnson is well known for his love of cycling and regularly cycles to work. He has been the victim of several bike thefts and has expressed his desire to plant "decoy bicycles throughout Islington and send Navy Seals in through the windows of thieves".

Journalism and historiography

Upon graduating from Oxford he lasted a week as a management consultant ("Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth profit matrix, and stay conscious"), before becoming a trainee reporter for The Times. Within a year he was sacked for falsifying a quotation from his godfather, Colin Lucas, later vice-chancellor of Oxford University. After a short time as a writer for the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star, he joined The Daily Telegraph in 1987 as leader and feature writer, and from 1989 to 1994 was the paper's European Community correspondent. He served as assistant editor from 1994 to 1999. His association with The Spectator began with a stint as political columnist from 1994 to 1995. In 1999 he became editor of The Spectator, where he stayed until December 2005 upon being appointed Shadow Minister for Higher Education. (Incidentally, he is unrelated to the other two Johnsons whose writings have been published by The Spectator in recent years: columnist Paul Johnson and ex-editor Frank Johnson.)

He wrote an autobiographical account of his experience of the 2001 election campaign Friends, Voters, Countrymen: Jottings on the Stump. He is also the author of three collections of journalism, Johnson's Column, Lend Me Your Ears and Have I Got Views For You. His first novel was Seventy-Two Virgins, published in 2004, and his next book will be The New British Revolution, though he has put its publication on hold until after the London Mayoral election . He was nominated in 2004 for a British Academy Television Award, and has attracted several unofficial fan clubs and sites. His official Boris Johnson website and blog was started in September 2004.

Johnson is also a popular historian and his first documentary series, The Dream of Rome, was broadcast in 2006. It compared the Roman Empire and the modern-day European Union.

Member of Parliament

In 2001, Johnson was elected as the MP for Henley-on-Thames, succeeding Michael Heseltine, having previously been defeated in Clwyd South in the 1997 general election. In 2004 he was appointed to the front bench as Shadow Minister for the Arts in a small reshuffle resulting from the resignation of the shadow home affairs spokesman, Nick Hawkins. He was also at one time vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, with an emphasis on campaigning.

Johnson was dismissed from these high-profile posts in November 2004 over accusations that he lied to Michael Howard about having a four-year extramarital affair with Petronella Wyatt, The Spectator's New York correspondent and former deputy editor. Johnson derided these allegations as "an inverted pyramid of piffle", but Howard sacked Johnson because he believed press reports showed that Johnson had lied in this denial of the affair, rather than for the affair itself.

He was appointed Shadow Minister for Higher Education on 9 December 2005 by the new Conservative leader David Cameron, and soon resigned as editor of The Spectator. On 2 April 2006 it was alleged in the News of the World that Johnson had had another extramarital affair, this time with Times Higher Education Supplement journalist Anna Fazackerley. The video shows him emerging from her flat and waving to her in a taxi. Subsequently, in a speech at the University of Exeter concerning student finance, he allegedly made comical remarks about his gratitude to the audience for not "raising other issues" during the talk, which may possibly have been a reference to the allegations. A report in The Times stated that Cameron regarded the possible affair as a private matter, and that Johnson would not lose his job over it.

Boris stood for the University of Edinburgh Rectorial Elections in 2006 after being nominated by its students, and came in third. In September 2006 his image was used in pastiche 'Boris needs you' and 'I Love Boris' Tory promotional material in universities.

Conservative candidate for London Mayor

On 16 July 2007, after several days of speculation and considerable media interest, Johnson announced that he was a potential Conservative candidate for the London mayoral election in 2008. At the same time he resigned from his position as shadow Higher Education spokesman, but remained an MP, and according to The Independent enjoyed the "tacit support" of David Cameron. George Jones, Political Editor for The Daily Telegraph reported that the Evening Standard quoted Johnson as saying, "The opportunity is too great and the prize too wonderful to miss... the chance to represent London and speak for Londoners."

The left-wing political group Compass has issued a dossier which argues that "his buffoonery conceals a hard line right wing set of views - a type of Norman Tebbit in clown's uniform." The dossier, drawing on Johnson's 20 year career in journalism and politics, seeks to demonstrate that he is an unfit candidate for a tolerant and multicultural London. The dossier has been challenged on factual accuracy and representativeness by the Evening Standard's Andrew Gilligan. However the Evening Standard has been accused by The Guardian's Seumas Milne of "to all intents and purposes running the Tory candidate Boris Johnson's campaign for the mayoral election in May".

Johnson's candidacy for London Mayor was officially confirmed by the Conservative Party on 27th September 2007. His election campaign was officially launched in Edmonton on 31st March 2008, when David Cameron, introducing Johnson, commented "I don't always agree with him but I respect the fact that he's absolutely his own man"

Public appearances

Have I Got News for You

Johnson has appeared on the popular British television programme Have I Got News for You four times as a guest presenter and three times as a panellist. The tabloid press, before he became an MP, tagged him as the show's "star", even though he had by then appeared only twice on a programme that had been running for ten years. He has also taken part in the similar Radio 4 programme, The News Quiz.

His first HIGNFY appearance, in 1998, reached a peak when Ian Hislop chided Johnson over his previous association with fraudster and schoolfriend Darius Guppy, quoting verbatim from a taped telephone conversation between the two that discussed Guppy's plan to attack a journalist. A mischievous Johnson later claimed the show was "fixed", though he formally retracted the comment when invited back as a guest for a second time. When asked why he had come back, Johnson eventually replied (to the delight of the audience) that it was "basically for the money."

By his third appearance Johnson had been elected to Parliament. He was then subjected to a surprise Mastermind parody round — spotlight and all — on which he was forced to answer questions about his party's leader, Iain Duncan Smith. He started by getting his own name "wrong", saying, "my name is Boris Johnson" and then being corrected by the host, Angus Deayton, who proceeded to quote his full birth name, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Next, despite claiming to be an admirer and supporter of his leader, Johnson proceeded to get no questions correct. Earlier in that episode, his mobile rang (Paul Merton pointed out that he told whoever was ringing him that "I can't speak now, I'm on television at the moment"). He also memorably admitted that he had forgotten the title of his own book as he was writing it, hence the inconsistency between the title on the hard cover (Jottings from the Stump) and the dust jacket (Jottings on the Stump). He then said, "At least this isn't as bad as last time," to which Paul Merton rejoined, "I think you're underestimating how bad it was last time."

After Deayton's sacking, Boris was one of a number of people recruited to introduce the show, his first opening remarks as host being: "When I first appeared on this show I complained that the whole thing was scripted and fully rehearsed. I'd now like to complain in the strongest possible terms, that it isn't." During his first attempt at keeping order and mastering the autocue, he promised Paul Merton a coconut instead of a point. Johnson then retracted the offer but Merton insisted on having a coconut. At the end of the show, a stage hand rushed in with a bag of them, giving Johnson a chance to say, "Coconuts, from the party that keeps its promises!" He also said that the chances of him becoming leader of the Conservative Party were about as likely as "being locked in a disused fridge". Paul Merton cheerily told him, "These things do happen."

Johnson returned to front Have I Got News for You in November 2005. He admitted on the show that he once tried to snort cocaine, but sneezed and failed. He also hosted HIGNFY's Christmas special on 15 December 2006, his fourth appearance as host.

The appearances of Boris Johnson on the popular show remain some of the most memorable in its long history. They have earned him a large fan base, even from audience members of opposite political inclinations. Paul Merton put on a "Vote Boris" ribbon during the week that Iain Duncan Smith resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, saying, "Boris Johnson is the person to lead this country back into the 17th century!" Full, unedited versions of the shows can be found on the HIGNFY: Best of the Guest Presenters DVDs, on the "Full Boris" bonus disc. Unlike normal episodes, which are cut to about thirty minutes from an hour's worth of material, these both feature the entire studio recordings.

On the DVD commentary of The Very Best of Have I Got News For You, Merton and Hislop affectionately refer to Johnson as Wodehousian, and concur that "every time he's on it gets better".

Top Gear

Johnson has appeared on television motoring show Top Gear as a "star in a reasonably priced car" (one of the show's features). He set a time of 1m 56s in the Suzuki Liana, finishing nine places from the bottom before they changed car. While nearing the end of his timed lap, he failed to realise that he had accidentally pressed the horn with his arm. After hearing the noise he looked around puzzled and said, "Who hooted at me?"

The Dream of Rome (TV)

Boris also presented a BBC TV series titled The Dream of Rome, which set about questioning how ancient Rome managed to unite Europe in a way the modern day European Union has failed to. A book published by HarperCollins followed the series.

Controversies

Bigley and Liverpool

On 16 October 2004, The Spectator carried an unsigned editorial comment criticising a perceived trend to mawkish sentimentality by the public. Using British hostage Kenneth Bigley as an example, the editorial claimed the inhabitants of Bigley's home city of Liverpool were wallowing in a "vicarious victimhood"; that many Liverpudlians had a "deeply unattractive psyche"; and that they refused to accept responsibility for "drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground" during the Hillsborough disaster, a contention at odds with the findings of the Taylor Report. The actual reaction in Liverpool to Bigley's murder by his captors consisted of no more than two minutes' silence organised by the city council (one of several held around the country) and a sparsely attended service at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, although overblown coverage and hyperbole was indeed rampant in the media. The editorial closed with: "In our maturity as a civilisation, we should accept that we can cut out the cancer of ignorant sentimentality without diminishing, as in this case, our utter disgust at a foul and barbaric act of murder."

Although Johnson had not written the piece (journalist Simon Heffer later said he "had a hand" in it), he accepted responsibility for its publication. The Conservative leader at the time, Michael Howard, condemned the editorial, saying "I think what was said in The Spectator was nonsense from beginning to end", and sent Johnson on a tour of contrition to the city. There, in numerous interviews and public appearances, Johnson defended the editorial's thesis (that the deaths of figures such as Bigley and Diana, Princess of Wales, were over-sentimentalised); but he apologised for the article's wording and for using Liverpool and Bigley's death as examples, saying "I think the article was too trenchantly expressed but we were trying to make a point about sentimentality". Johnson then appeared on a BBC Radio Merseyside phone-in show, in which Paul Bigley (brother of the murdered hostage) told Johnson: "You are a self-centred pompous twit – get out of public life." Michael Howard resisted calls to dismiss Johnson over the Bigley affair, but dismissed him the next month over the Wyatt revelations. It was about this time that sections of the press started referring to Johnson as "Bozza", (in the mode of "Gazza", "Prezza" and other figures whose activities are widely reported). At a football match between Liverpool and Bolton Wanderers, the Bolton fans started chanting Boris Johnson, there's only one Boris Johnson in an attempt to agitate the Liverpool fans.

Papua New Guinea

Johnson was also criticised by Papua New Guinea for harmfully stereotyping its citizens, after referring in a newspaper column to "orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing" there similar to party leadership contests. The nation's High Commissioner invited him to visit the country and see for himself, while remarking that his comments might mean he was refused a visa. Johnson suggested he would add Papua New Guinea to his global apology itinerary, and said he was sure the people there "lived lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity like the rest of us". His defence was conclusive: "My remarks were inspired by a Time Life book I have which does indeed show relatively recent photos of Papua New Guinean tribes engaged in warfare, and I'm fairly certain that cannibalism was involved."

Jamie Oliver

Johnson was criticised at the 2006 Conservative party conference for his comments regarding the campaign for healthier school dinners headed by celebrity TV chef Jamie Oliver. He stated, "I say let people eat what they like. Why shouldn't they push pies through the railings? I would ban sweets from school – but this pressure to bring in healthy food is too much." Earlier at the conference, David Cameron, the Tory party leader, had lauded Oliver's campaign as an example of "social responsibility in action". Johnson has since described Oliver as a "national saint" and a "messiah".

Portsmouth

In April 2007 Johnson was called upon to resign by the MPs for the city of Portsmouth after claiming in a column for GQ that the city was "one of the most depressed towns in Southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs".

Race controversy

Two days after Boris Johnson's candidacy for Mayor of London took a six point poll lead over Ken Livingstone in a YouGov survey published by the Daily Telegraph , Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, said that he would 'destroy London's unity', adding that 'once people read his views, there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community'.

She was referring especially to the occasion on which Johnson, as a journalist in 1999, accused the Macpherson Inquiry, which reported on police racism following the Lawrence murder, of 'hysteria', adding that the "recommendation that the law might be changed so as to allow prosecution for racist language or behaviour 'other than in a public place'" was akin to "Ceausescu's Romania".

The Conservative London Assembly candidate for Bexley and Bromley and former Conservative candidate for mayor of Lewisham, James Cleverly, another prominent black Londoner, rejected Doreen Lawrence's criticisms, saying, 'The comments that Doreen Lawrence made about Boris Johnson yesterday are deeply unfair. She implies an attitude towards the Macpherson report which is just not borne out by the facts, her words are clearly designed to taint Boris with a whiff of racism and to claim that "there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community" is ridiculous.'

In a piece in the Evening Standard on 6 August 2007, the journalist Andrew Gilligan responded to the allegations saying how 'outrageous – indeed Orwellian – it is to attack a man as a destroyer of racial harmony, one of the most serious charges you can lay, simply on the basis that he refuses to sign up for every dot and comma of a report of which she approves. While condemning the "grotesque failures" in the Lawrence case which "may well have originated in racism," Boris was far from the only person to oppose that particular Macpherson recommendation. Labour MPs opposed it, too. So did the Government, clearly, because they didn’t implement it.'

These remarks were followed by criticism from two black Labour London MPs, Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler, who criticised a column written by Johnson in 2002, saying he had used "most offensive language of the colonial past", showing "that the Tory party is riddled with racial prejudice".

In the article in question, Johnson mocked Tony Blair's brief visits to world troublespots, acting as "Supertone", bringing peace to the world while the UK deteriorated; Blair would arrive as "the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief", just as "it is said the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies".

Johnson's campaign team rejected suggestions that their candidate might be prejudiced, insisting that he "loathes racism in all its forms". However, journalist Rod Liddle has come forward and said that Johnson used the word "piccaninnies" in private to refer to black Africans. Greater London analyst and director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, Dr. Tony Travers, has written that "There is no way to dress up expressions such as "piccaninnies'" and "watermelon smiles" to take them within a million miles of acceptable."

At an Evening Standard debate on January 21, 2008, Johnson apologised for these remarks, while insisting that they were taken out of context:

"I do feel very sad that people have been so offended by these words and I'm sorry that I've caused this offence. But if you look at the article as written they really do not bear the construction that you're putting on them. I feel very strongly that this is something which is simply not in my heart. I'm absolutely 100 per cent antiracist, I despise and loathe racism."

Proposed beating of Stuart Collyer

Johnson became embroiled in controversy when he was recorded agreeing to supply the address of News of the World journalist Stuart Collyer to former schoolmate and convicted fraudster Darius Guppy in order to have him beaten up as a result of knowing too much about a failed insurance fraud. Johnson asked how badly Collyer was to be beaten up, and Guppy replies "He will probably have a couple of black eyes and a... cracked rib or something like that". The conversation ended with Johnson agreeing to supply the address. Despite the call from Guppy, Johnson did not alert the police and the incident only became public knowledge when the recorded telephone conversations were summarised in the Daily Mail. Collyer was not attacked. Johnson retained his job at the Telegraph but was reprimanded by its editor Max Hastings.

Satire

Johnson is a frequent target for satirists. The satirical magazine Private Eye pictured him on the front cover of issues 1120 (26 November 2004) and 1156 (14 April 2006). He also features regularly in its cartoon strip called at various times The Has-Beano and The Old Beano as "Boris the Menace", who is often to be found "bonking" behind the bike-shed (a reference to the extramarital dalliances). In a recent 2006 issue, a poster was made up advertising a new film called Boras: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Party of Conservatism (a parody of the then recently-released film Borat). Online, the news satire website DeadBrain has published over 25 articles mentioning Johnson, and the website Backing Boris spearheads a lighthearted campaign to advance his cause.

Usmanov website takedown

On 20 September 2007 the server that hosts Johnson's website was taken down. This was due to comments made by Tim Ireland against Alisher Usmanov on Ireland's own website and regarded as libellous by Usmanov's laywers. The loss of Johnson's website was not intended by Usmanov's lawyers, but occurred because both sites shared the same server, and the hosting company took the entire server offline.

Johnson stated of the action: "This is London not Uzbekistan. It is unbelievable that a website can be wiped out [by] some tycoon."

Drug use

In a April 2008 Marie Claire interview with Janet Street-Porter, Johnson admitted that while at Oxford University he had used cocaine, and earlier while at Eton had used "dope",

Bibliography

• Johnson's Column (Continuum International — Academi) ISBN 0-8264-6855-1
• Friends, Voters, Countrymen (HarperCollins, 2001) ISBN 0-00-711913-5
• Lend Me Your Ears (HarperCollins, 2003) ISBN 0-00-717224-9
• Seventy-Two Virgins (HarperCollins, 2004) ISBN 0-00-719590-7
• The Dream of Rome (HarperCollins, 2006) ISBN 0-00-722441-9 * Have I Got Views For You (HarperPerennial, 2006) ISBN 0-00-724220-4
• Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars (HarperPerennial, 2007) ISBN 0-00-726020-2
• The British (HarperCollins, 2008) ISBN 0-00-717225-7

Video appearances

• As a guest presenter on Have I Got News for You: The Best of the Guest Presenters compilation of Have I Got News For You, which also contains "The Full Boris" – an extended version of the first edition he hosted.
• Also appears as a guest host on Have I Got News for You: The Best of the Guest Presenters Volume 2. This DVD also contains a "Full Boris" bonus disc, which lasts almost three times as long as the original broadcast.

Further reading

• Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson by Andrew Gimson (Simon & Schuster, 2006) ISBN 0-7432-7584-5.

External links

• Back Boris Official Mayoral Candidacy Website
• Boris Johnson.com official web site and blog
• Conservative Party — Boris Johnson MP official biography
• BBC News — Boris Johnson profile 10 February 2005
• Open Directory Project — Boris Johnson directory category
• I'mWithBoris.com Grassroots organisation urging Boris Johnson to run for Mayor of London
• StopBoris.org Non-partisan anonymous campaign aiming to stop Boris Johnson becoming Mayor of London