Boris Johnson Keeps Defying Gravity
“I am a juggler,” Boris Johnson declared nearly two decades ago. “I can have it all!” This, more than anything, is the essence of the man. To lead is to make choices—among different priorities, factions, paths forward—but Boris Johnson refuses to choose. Ask those close to him to describe his philosophy and they reply with “cakeism,” in that he wants to have it, and to eat it. This might be an insult from others, but is a badge of pride for Johnson.
Yet the most confounding thing about him—the thing that really winds people up—is not that he demands everything; it’s that he either gets everything, or seems to avoid the consequences that might come for others when the juggling act finally crashes to the floor. “I don’t know when I really started hating Boris Johnson,” one journalist wrote in The Times of London as far back as 2004. But he knew why. “I hate him because he’s been built up and not yet knocked down. He has defied the usual laws of gravity.”
Throughout Johnson’s career, he has ignored the usual rules that apply and has largely gotten away with it. He is, after
