It’s what any caring billionaire half longs for, half dreads: the moment his charge takes the first, faltering steps from dependence towards self-sufficiency.
For Lord Bamford, who with his wife has been supporting Boris Johnson with everything from a free wedding to country and town houses, there will inevitably be worries that their protege is not quite ready to stand on his own two feet. Of course, it’s adorable that the recently struggling politician feels able, according to recent reports, to buy a £4m house with a moat for his latest family, but it’s also natural if his benefactors – Bamford not being the only such philanthropist – fear that the notionally sitting MP might one day overtax the patience of the international speaking circuit. Johnson recently signed up, with an advance of £2.5m, to the Harry Walker Agency in New York.
The agency is presumably familiar with Jeremy Vine’s immortal description of their talent’s deliberately shambolic performances, probably best received when his audiences were financiers and drunk. Maybe sober US audiences will also enjoy the routine where Johnson pretends to forget who he’s addressing, then pretends to forget the punchline to his own joke. But can even exceptional gullibility on the part of corporate clients guarantee the Johnsons their new independence, minus protectors, distant relations offering loans? It will obviously help if potential customers never see Johnson’s “Peppa Pig” speech to the CBI, featuring his own rhetorical rule of three – “forgive me”, “forgive me”, “forgive me” – and trademark audience involvement: “Hands up if you’ve been to Peppa Pig World!”
Given that neither colossal misjudgment nor occasional muteness damaged the US speaking prospects of those unlikely entertainers David Cameron and Theresa May, it may be that foreign audiences won’t mind about, if they’re even aware of, Johnson’s workplace priapism and prodigious lying. Actually, those qualities might be of less concern to the average US business convention than the discovery that their company’s chosen British loser is one whose legendary oratorical skills were exposed from the beginning of his premiership as first dismal, then excruciating and, by the end, non-existent. The threadbare nature of his last speeches – “them’s the breaks”; “hasta la vista, baby” – could not more perfectly have matched the derelict state of his leadership.
If marginally less likely to stupefy international audiences than his predecessors, Johnson could well become the first to insult them, whether directly or with clowning or nursery allusions, showing he thinks them too stupid to realise that these represent his entire understanding. His last set piece, at the Sizewell nuclear plant, began: “Now, when I was a child, I had a wonderful book – a much-thumbed Ladybird book called The Story of Nuclear Power.” And, you know what, he feels the same about nuclear power today.
Long before he quoted Kermit the Frog at the UN general assembly, British audiences were aware that Johnson’s inability to match his language to the occasion was not so much clumsiness, more a moral failure to stop showing off. Not once in the pandemic did he respond with appropriate feeling and dignity; rather, public suffering was a hook for gags – “Operation Last Gasp”, “squash the sombrero” – or his other speciality, bellicose hyperbole. In fact, Ukraine came along just when Johnson would have been missing the pandemic’s pretexts for what he fancied to be Churchillian exhortation. “Never in our history has our collective destiny and our collective health depended so completely on our individual behaviour.”
“Mr Johnson is sought after for his illuminating insights on global security, the world economy and his continued work supporting freedom around the world,” says the Harry Walker Agency. It’s one way of describing turns likely to feature a cartoon character, a tale showcasing his own eccentricity, unfettered boasting, a few insults and some all-purpose noises to the effect that, regardless of the facts, the future is glorious.
Will the US agency be supervising him? Because without some equivalent of the Foreign Office staff who stopped Johnson embarrassing himself (James Bond was not born in Estoril) or slighting his hosts (“No. Not appropriate”), the Bamfords should perhaps not assume they are done with caring responsibilities. Already, a favourite, much-rehearsed Johnson anecdote about comical Indian dancing hand-movements (“lightbulb, lightbulb, motorbike, motorbike”) – first aired in a Spectator diary (that also featured a Chinese woman’s “velly solly”) – seems to have been coolly received by Indians present, last November, at the Hindustan Times leadership summit. Johnson fee: £261,652.
Days later, the financier Mike Bloomberg apologised to guests at Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore after Johnson described China as “coercive autocracy” to around 500 Asian business people, investors and diplomats. “Some may have been insulted or offended last night by parts of the speaker’s remarks,” Bloomberg said. “The presentation was meant as after-dinner entertainment rather than serious discussion of important controversial and complex issues.”
And there was, to be fair, a hilarious section when Johnson condemned those showing “a candid disregard for the rule of international law”, also countries whose “disastrous mistakes” have “demonstrated the immense limitations of their political systems”.
Frustratingly for bookers keen to hire this promising rival to Matt Hancock, Gavin Williamson, Lee “Caino” Cain and other Covid-era performers, Johnson’s office insists that he is – whatever Bloomberg said – a highly serious and important statesman: “He will continue to make the case for freedom and democracy on the world stage.”
The difficulties already obvious with this plan could explain why Johnson is now making a such nuisance of himself, almost as if he really does plan to boomerang back from a home-moat and £32,000 an hour to a prime minister’s salary and a Lulu Lytle begging bowl. Whether it’s by showily pronouncing on the Northern Ireland deal or styling himself lonely saviour of Ukraine, Johnson needs these gestures to prove to international clients what he forgot to demonstrate in office – that he’s all grown up.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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