His act fools everyone. An Eton contemporary, Earl Spencer, tells me he was delighted to spy Boris bumbling about on his first day, as he felt there was “one boy at school thicker than me”. Spencer soon discovered that under that unruly mop of strawberry blonde lurked acres of grey matter.
Still, Johnson has a problem. As Tory higher education spokesman with hopes of a bigger job under the new leader David Cameron, he needs to be taken seriously. So he uses this interview to launch a controversial attack on “niggardly” middle-class parents reluctant to pay for their offspring’s university education. But the question is: has Bozza played the buffoon a little too convincingly for his own ambitions? “You have to open your shoulders and play your shots,” he insists. “You are going to miss some, probably quite a few, but it is better than playing a Boycottian defence — and then getting out anyway. Besides, if I had bottled it up I would have gone puce and exploded in some mad way.”
So he does not regret those hilarious appearances on Have I Got News for You? Or that unprovoked attack on Liverpool that prompted Michael Howard, then Tory leader, to send him on a pilgrimage of atonement? “No, if anything I regret not being more vigorous in my defence.” Johnson is stepping down as editor of The Spectator to concentrate on politics. Can his new job really be more fun, having to gen up on how the clearing system affects the University of Bognor Regis? “I just felt I was not going to get any further in politics if I stayed in the editing game,” he says, dismissing suggestions that it was his new Spectator boss, Andrew Neil, who drove him out. “His arrival was a great glutinous tide of treacle,” Johnson laughs. “Saccharine dripping from the chandeliers . . .” Not.
How has Johnson found the change to politics? “It’s no longer just a good yarn,” he says. “You can’t just be contrary for the sake of it.” But being contrary for the sake of it is precisely what Boris does so well. Westminster is fascinated to see how long he can curtail his, well, free-flowing stroke play.
Even by his high standards our man is looking shambolic: eye sockets darker than a Cairo pissoir, loose hairs and dandruff scattered over his black suit. “I had a long night,” he sighs. Studying his expanding brief, one hopes.
Advertisement
But after a few tugs of the crankshaft the old brain chugs into life. “How is your old mate Mark Oaten?” he asks me, peeling into laughter — a little cheeky, this, coming from an MP sacked for an unsanctioned pairing arrangement of his own with the pouting hack Petronella Wyatt, who had an abortion.
Moving on from such insalubrious matters: it is Roman, not Greek, practices we have come to discuss. Johnson’s new book, The Dream of Rome, seeks to ask why ancient Rome succeeded in uniting Europe where modern Brussels fails.
He claims he was inspired to write the book when Charles Clarke, then education secretary, used an interview with The Sunday Times to attack the teaching of classics. “He claims he was misquoted,” says Boris, a smile tracing round those chunky lips. “It is outrageous to suggest you might have done that,” he laughs riotously. And he is off: he says the man organising the mass carnage of Roman games was called “the editor”. “How little, ” he observes, “mutation there has been in the meaning.” And he points out that in the Roman empire folk were mad for garum, “a kind of Euro-ketchup”, and asks why there is no unifying Euro-nosh today.
There is a serious point under these Bozza-isms: if Europhiles studied the classics they might learn why the ancients inspired folk to want to be Roman citizens, unlike today when the citizenry is hardly ablaze with Euro-fever.
Johnson revels in the glory of Rome, so shouldn’t he be a supporter of European union? “There is a logic in what you are saying,” he concedes, “but you are only pointing up the contrast. What Rome offered was so life-changing, giving citizenship and an entirely new idea of what it was to be a civilised man: literature, baths, theatre, the games, togas. What is Europe offering that remotely compares? I remember talking to Jacques Delors, brilliant man, who saw this lacuna: Europe lacks a spiritual dimension.”
Advertisement
Indeed. Working-time directives hardly stir the soul. America, he says, is like Rome because it is “a pungent brand selling an idea”. Then again, Europe can’t win with a Europhobe like Boris: if it tried to build a “brand” he would be the first to mock.
“No, I don’t think that’s fair,” he says, looking hurt. “The ideal of a united Europe in which everyone shares the same mind and system of government, with the cultural unity of Rome, would be no bad thing.”
Extraordinary: he has devoted his career to knocking Europe, but if that is his view surely he should have worked to build it up? “I propose in the book that all children across the Union should study The Iliad.” Well, even Brussels hasn’t dared decree that! Is Boris a Europhile in disguise? “Of course I’m a Europhile, always have been.” Well, you hid it well, my friend. “I can see there is something noble and idealistic about building a united Europe. Churchill believed in it. I just think the present system is too top-down.” Wasn’t Julius Caesar top-down? “Okay, Rome was run at the point of a sword.” Indeed.
“But the triumph of Rome was that they did it with 150 senior officials. In Provence you could go a long time without seeing a legionary. They did it by the lunar pull of the Roman example.”
The Roman state eventually did much more — even introducing a dole, attracting, Boris suggests, the first dole scroungers — but it is unfair to compare that government with Brussels, as we expect so much more from government today. “That is true, but they were fantastic at making civic patrons of everyone: local worthies wanted to build those latrines just like the Romans.” And Europe, he argues, offers no such inspiration. Is there nothing it can do? “Central to Rome was a semi-divine emperor.” And Jacques Poos is never going to inspire that awe. “To create a culturally united European territory it does need a Euro-president.” But that is the last thing Boris would want: President Blair being even more insufferable. “Maybe our grandchildren will want that, maybe they will.”
Advertisement
Meanwhile Boris is happy to trundle along with independent states, opposing the great European project. Surely Romans would have regarded Boris as a barbarian, raging against the tide of history.
Continued on page 2
()
Continued from page 1
“Again you have put your finger on it.” Then he flatly contradicts my point. “There is nothing to gain from union now. In Rome there were huge financial and cultural gains the elites of conquered territory could make from empire. People went around with badges saying Roma.” Blimey: don’t tell Gordon Brown or he will make it compulsory to wear ones screaming “Britannia”.
Advertisement
Johnson praises the Romans for encouraging mass immigration: should we have opened our doors even more? “Maybe we should,” he replies, in stark contrast to the last Tory campaign of bashing Johnny foreigner.
But the Boris prescription comes with a sting: that, as in Rome, incomers should be forced to embrace Britishness. “It is often immigrants who like waving flags and receiving CBEs, and they certainly seem pretty good at cricket,” he says, sounding like a mildly enlightened colonial governor. “But sod it, if you are going to be here, you have to be British. For the Romans that schtick was obvious.”
Isn’t it more difficult to promote Britishness now we are past its Victorian pomp? “I don’t know. We are still one of the most aggressive powers on earth,” he laughs. “And that stunt with the rock in Moscow that I can’t quite understand shows Her Majesty’s secret service is still up to some pretty nifty dodges.”
Rome, it seems, even infuses his ideas for education. “We need to develop in this country the Roman and American practice of giving to our places of learning.
The middle classes have been hugely empowered by this expansion of higher education, and they see it as a free public entitlement.”
Advertisement
Yikes, Boris. I can see them shaking in the Tory heartlands reading this, but he continues: “There are many families who could well afford it, basically receiving a pretty easy ride.”
Who should pay — students or parents? “I have to tell you my instinct is affluent parents are being a little niggardly. There are lots of people who could well afford to make a contribution to their children’s education who don’t.”
As always with Boris his position springs from an interesting idea, something called “inter-generational financial conflict”. “These baby boomers are sitting with their mortgages paid off on old-style pensions living a pretty gorgeous life. The younger generation have to pay their way through university, can’t expect the same pensions and face an extremely tough housing market.”
But if Johnson’s Tories whack the older middle class it seems a bit unfair. Many have already been hit with tax hikes, yet still pay for services twice by going private to avoid poor treatment on the state. “Yes, that’s true: due to the failure of this government to reform public services.”
Hmm. Boris seems to have morphed into a Europhile socialist. Only on overseas students do you get any foreigner bashing: “With EU students the Treasury pays their loan, then they are meant to remember to pay it back once they have returned to Naples and maybe — and I am not for a moment suggesting they will not be absolute sticklers — it might just slip their mind. It’s just a wrinkle: but it is a 300m-quid-a-year wrinkle.”
The bell tolls. Johnson is summoned to the house. But who is he to play today — the great statesman Julius Caesar, or the clown Sir Toby Belch?
The Dream of Rome is published by HarperPress on February 6 at £18.99. Boris Johnson presents two television programmes based on it beginning tonight on BBC2 at 8pm