I wrote this piece (reproduced below) for the Spectator website during my time as 'Political Mischief' Intern on the magazine: https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/07/britains-new-nadir-how-the-worlds-papers-reacted-to-boriss-victory/
Love him or hate him, Boris Johnson is big news. His victory in the Tory leadership race – and imminent appointment as Britain’s next PM – has filled newspapers around the world this morning. Brexit aside, it’s rare these days for British politics to make the front pages of papers outside of the UK. But Boris is something of an exception. From the United States, to France, Italy and Spain, here is what the world’s press makes of prime minister Boris.
Across the Atlantic, the New York Times warns that the Brexit situation has escalated into a ‘nightmare’ and that Johnson’s ‘policy swerves, lack of attention to detail and contradictory statements leave the country guessing how things will unfold.’ The Times predicts doom and gloom to come, saying that Boris faces the same obstacles as his predecessor Theresa May: ‘deep divisions on Brexit among Conservatives in Parliament, implacable opposition from other parties, and the insistence of European officials that they will make no major concessions.’
The Wall Street Journal similarly acknowledges the scale of the challenge ahead for Johnson. It says that ‘his tenure will almost certainly be defined by Brexit, one of the greatest political challenges faced by any British Prime Minister since World War II’, and points out that factionalism over Europe has ended the careers of all the most recent Tory PMs. Will Boris be the exception? The verdict in the US papers isn’t optimistic.
But if the US media’s reception to Boris is lukewarm, the reaction from the European press is icy – and much more personal. Several newspapers depict Boris as a deceptive and self-serving clown. France’s Le Monde says Boris is ‘known for his eccentricity, narcissism and lies’ and explains that ‘for Johnson, making people laugh and playing politics have never been two separate activities’. The paper remarks that Boris had previously tried ‘to silence rumours about his ambition to govern the country’ by citing his escapades on zip-wires as evidence for his own apparent unsuitability for the role.
Le Parisien meanwhile dubs Johnson ‘the terrible child of British politics’. It draws attention to the so-called Euromyths that he became famous for during his time as Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph – including claims about the EU meddling with prawn cocktail crisps and the size regulation of condoms – as demonstrating his unsuitability for the top job.
In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine says in its profile of the new PM that ‘as a child, Boris Johnson wanted to become King of the World.’ It scathingly adds: ‘Now he at least can rule a former empire.’ Rival newspaper Süddeutsche focuses its glare on the process through which the Johnson premiership has come about, running with the headline ‘0.35% of British voters decide new Prime Minister’. The paper deplores the fact that Johnson was selected for office by ‘a tiny fraction of the population’ and calls it ‘unlikely’ that the decision reflected the desire of ‘the majority of the British people’.
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Italy’s La Republicca features an interview with former PM Tony Blair, who strikingly calls Johnson ‘more dangerous’ than Italy’s ruling far-right League party. In contrast to this claim however, he also tells readers, ‘Do not believe him: despite his threats, even he will give in to a second referendum on Brexit’. Corriere says Johnson’s victory is ‘the fruit of his charismatic personality’ and emphasises his focus on besting Jeremy Corbyn at a general election, with the newspaper calling it ‘no coincidence that he spoke of the need to defeat Labour in his first speech.’
In Spain, El Pais compares Boris to Shakespeare’s Falstaff and also claims that ‘nobody’ trusts him. It adds however that he has won a landslide of support from Conservative party members because he has become their ‘last hope’ of avoiding ‘irrelevance’, their ‘desperate solution’ to ‘stand up to the irresistible rise of the Brexit party’.
Ireland’s press also, perhaps not surprisingly, isn’t sold on the prospect of PM Boris. The Irish Times’s ‘View on Boris Johnson’ labels him ‘Britain’s new nadir’ and asks: ‘How far can Britain fall?’ The damning editorial says that ‘he doesn’t mean a word he says, he is obsessed with power and he is willing to betray those closest to him in the pursuit of that power’. But it takes consolation in saying that, paradoxically, these aspects of his character may prove ‘the best hope for Ireland and for Europe’.
Further afield, in Iran, Boris is splashed across the front pages of every paper. One of the most popular, Donya-e-Eqtesad, runs with the headline ‘Trump’s Double in the UK’, clearly positioning Johnson as a hawk on the American anti-Iran axis. Although the paper says Boris will ‘inherit the political crisis of British withdrawal from the European Union’, it makes no mention of the more immediate crisis he will inherit in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s safe to say that, as in Europe and the US, Boris’s entrance into Downing Street is big news in the middle east.
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