Boris Johnson’s Comic Downfall and the U.S.-U.K. ‘Special Relationship’

The British are masters of political satire. From Jonathan Swift in the 18th century, to the cartoons of George Cruikshank in the 19th, to the puppetry send ups of the Thatcher Era on Spitting Image, Brits have always seen the humor in their politics. Seldom however, did life imitate the art of low comedy as it did during the administration of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who on Thursday announced he would be stepping down from his office.

Johnson was always something of a comic figure. From his absurd chronic case of bed head to his unceasing embodiment of the Monty Python ideal of the upper class twit, Johnson almost made one want to laugh through the damage he was doing to America’s closest ally. Almost. That said, having been responsible (with a little help from his friends in the Kremlin and British ultra-nationalists) for Brexit, history may one day conclude that Johnson drove the final nail into the coffin of the influence the British Empire once had.

Brexit was Johnson’s signature failure, but it was by far from his only one. His tenure since he arrived at No. 10 Downing Street in 2019 was marked by scandal, extravagant lying, mishandling of the COVID pandemic, and in the end a scandal over lying about how his team handled COVID (which is to say with parties that included top officials, ignoring quarantine protocols they promoted to the British people).

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Johnson’s three years in office could hardly be characterized as a success. His successor, whomever that may be, will inherit a world of pain, notably from a British economy facing recession and world-leading inflation rates.

For all that, Johnson appeared invulnerable to the political slings and arrows that came his way…until he wasn’t. In the last week, the loyalty of even his closest associates collapsed as further revelations about Johnson’s lies (including about a government official named Pincher who inappropriately touched two men at a private club frequented by Conservative party members—see prior references to the British knack for comedy) triggered a rush to the exits by senior ministers and dozens of members of Johnson’s party. Johnson had no choice but to step down.

The resulting scene of political pandemonium on British television did not disappoint, including interviews with a Tory politician outside the Houses of Parliament that featured, in the background, the theme music from the Benny Hill Show. (Benny Hill, like Johnson, was a famous British comedy figure for which I could never develop any appreciation at all.) A nice twist in that is that none other than Hugh Grant was allegedly behind the idea of playing the theme, consistent with the British law that Grant must appear in every U.K. comedy exported to America.

While the American people may have been too distracted by our own political turmoil and mayhem in the streets to pay much attention to the Johnson saga, there were audiences in the U.S. who watched closely. Notable among these were America’s two most significant political leaders of the moment, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Biden issued a statement that, while not mentioning Johnson, focused on expectations for on-going “close cooperation” between the U.S. and the U.K. Behind the scenes, however, senior officials did not lament Johnson’s departure.

One said to me that “the relationship was not what you would call close, but both sides tried to make the best of it.” Biden’s team appreciated Johnson’s staunch support for Ukraine and for U.S.-led efforts to support that country against Russian aggression. That said, they also watched Johnson’s rapid downfall with some concern because there was a sense it was precipitated in part by the tough economic times Britain was facing. In such times, in politics, there is a tendency to want to blame someone, even if the crisis—like global inflation or an international economic slowdown—was largely beyond the control of a national leader.

You might liken the phenomenon to the impulse of some primitive tribes to, in bad times, seek some unlucky victims to throw into a volcano as a way of seeking to placate the Gods and try to influence circumstances that they had few other effective means of impacting. Watching Johnson succumb, at least in part, to such forces sent a chill through some Democratic Party observers.

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Trump too could not have been happy to watch as a right-wing leader—supported by nationalists and the Kremlin, with a tendency toward prevarication, bad hair, a big belly, and sleaze—all of a sudden saw a party that once held him as its golden boy turn against him. The parallels are too numerous, and with Republicans falling in the polls relative to Democrats and rivals to Trump climbing, Trump too was likely made uneasy about the man whose arrival in office he once hailed.

The details of exactly when Johnson will step down and who will succeed him remain up in the air, and thus suggest some caution is in order before predicting precisely what will happen next. (For more on this phenomenon, see what is perhaps the greatest single triumph of British political satire of our time, The Death of Stalin.)

That said, Biden and company will be watching closely in the hopes that British policies toward Ukraine continue unchanged, but that new problems do not emerge to challenge the relationship (such as the issue of how Brexit will ultimately impact the people of Northern Ireland and the accords many in the U.S., including Biden, supported in an effort to end “the troubles” there.)

As for Trump, the GOP, and the entire United States…the great looming question is whether the next successful British export to the US will be the wholesale rejection by the political right of once popular, buffoonish, Putin-adjacent creeps.

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