Boris Johnson and the art of distraction politics

The prime minister’s obsession with Churchill is making him look to some like the patriotic guardian-in-chief of statues, standing alone against those who would rewrite Britain’s history, writes Sean O'Grady

Past Tory leaders rarely invoked Churchill, unlike Boris Johnson (AFP via Getty)

It is no great surprise that Boris Johnson has declared, “I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square”. No doubt Johnson has a genuine affection for a predecessor who invented the euphemism “terminological inexactitude” for a lie, and who showed an unusual degree of political flexibility in his career. After all, Churchill changed his political party twice and forged an alliance with (Soviet) Russia.

Yet for a politician with a liking for vague, patriotic optimism, Johnson’s wholehearted adoption of Churchill is politically smart and expedient.

First, it is obviously an attempt to align himself with the great man, in order to win the support of what you might call the Churchillian vote – those far too young to have fought in the last world war but whose nostalgia for a pre-EU golden age of empire and Ovaltine that never was is as fervent as it is inexplicable. Some evidence of that was on display during the recent VE Day celebrations.