Britain’s next PM: not taken seriously at home or abroad, how long will Boris last? 

Sacked from The Times newspaper for making up a quote ; sacked from the Tory shadow cabinet for lying about an extra-marital fling; barred from seeing sensitive intelligence as Foreign Secretary after a series of gaffes; accused of misleading voters during the Brexit referendum; and most recently questioned by police following a row with his girlfriend.

Meet Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the man most likely to become Britain’s next Prime Minister in less than two weeks to replace Theresa May. She was ousted last month in an internal coup engineered by him and other Brexit hardliners.

From all accounts, Johnson is headed for a certain victory in the ongoing Tory leadership election with his sole rival Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, reported to be struggling despite a late momentum. Hunt’s supporters are hoping that Johnson’s chances could still be scuppered by the so-called “curse of the front-runner”—a reference to the fact that in the recent history of the Tory party leadership contests the favourite has never won. As of now, however, Johnson remains odds-on to win the race. As the joke goes, “it’s only Boris who can now derail a Boris win with some reckless act”.

Such is the fear that he might end up “self-harming” his prospects that his minders are keeping him on a tight leash, not letting him do even a head-to-head debate with his rival. He is effectively under purdah, being allowed only limited exposure under controlled conditions. And the strategy has worked.

But the really crucial factor that is likely to see him through the finishing line despite the many controversies that have dogged him (from those about his colourful personal life to his competence and work ethic) is the selection system. The outcome is down to the whims and fancies of a group of some 160,000 Tory grassroots members who are entitled to vote in the leadership election. These are Old School Tories: mostly Telegraph-reading English nationalists in the 65 plus age group (the average age of a Tory member is 72), virulently anti-EU and given to nostalgia for the Empire and Britain’s old glory. A study found them as much more socially illiberal on issues like immigration, Islam, gay marriages than mainstream Britons—a “breed apart” from the rest of Britain.

Johnson’s tub-thumping populist rhetoric about “national sovereignty” and “independent borders” (he has likened Britain to a EU “colony”) appeals to this demography. Plus over the years, he has used his weekly column in The Telegraph to cultivate Tory grassroots by throwing red meat on issues close to their heart, especially his aggressive hard line on Brexit and his pledge to leave the EU by October 31 (when the extension granted by the EU ends) “do or die”, even if no deal is reached despite warnings that it would have a catastrophic impact on the economy and people’s daily lives.

This has won him the grudging support of even those who don’t like him otherwise. A Johnson premiership is taken to be a “done deal” with a “transition” team already in place shortlisting potential candidates for a “Boris cabinet”.

This is a remarkable turnaround for a man who is not taken seriously either at home or abroad and earned the reputation of being Britain’s worst foreign secretary.

He is widely viewed as a figure of mirth given to deploying colourful Latin phrases to distract attention from his ignorance. In European capitals, he is openly mocked as a “clown” with little regard for facts.

An unnamed British minister is reported saying: “There is not a single foreign minister there (in Europe) who takes him seriously. They think he’s a clown who can never resist a gag.”

His record as The Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the 1980s and early 1990s when he acquired a reputation as an anti-EU pamphleteer still rankles with European leader.

“He seized every chance to mock or denigrate the EU filing stories that were undoubtedly colourful but also grotesquely exaggerated or completely untrue,” a contemporary recalled recently.

This is how Johnson himself later boasted about his antics in a BBC interview: “I was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive ­effect on the Tory party – and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.”

Like Donald Trump, he is said to lack a grasp of details and struggles to understand official briefs. As Mayor of London, his office was effectively run by a tight circle of smart aides who made key decisions for him while shielding him from public scrutiny.

At the Foreign Office, there was no one to hold his hand; he was on his own and the king was found to be wearing no clothes. He thought his corny Etonian sense of humour would get him through but as Arthur Snell, former British diplomat, wrote in Prospect magazine recently, the problem is that “diplomacy isn’t very funny”.

“Boris’s idea of funny usually would fit neatly into his comfort zone—an after-dinner speech at a provincial Conservative Association. International summits, not so much. When Boris quipped at a meeting to discuss the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis in Yemen, ‘with friends like these? who needs enemies Yemenis,’ it’s not very surprising the joke fell flat in a room full of people worrying about mass starvation and cholera”.

It says a lot about the state of the Tories that they are ready to elect a leader —and by extension prime minister —a man who has been accused of covert racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia; has had his character questioned; and been called “morally bankrupt” and “unfit for national office” by his former Telegraph editor Max Hastings. He has tried to cover up his character flaws by playing the buffoon and a please-all entertainer, but the act has started to wear thin prompting serious questions about his fitness to lead the country at such a difficult time.

The new prime minister will inherit a country that has never been more divided and polarised in post-war history thanks in large parts to fanatical Brexiteers like Johnson. Ironically, it will fall to him to clear a mess to which he himself has contributed in no small measure. Clearly alluding to Johnson’s limitations,

The Sunday Times noted that “the job of prime minister is demonstrably more demanding than that of London mayor”.

and “will involve the discipline of a chief executive rather than the skills of a semi-detached chairman”.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that he may not last long— and will be ousted in a vote of no-confidence leading to a general election and most likely another hung parliament with more uncertainty, more divisions ahead.

Brexit meanwhile remains the big conundrum.