Boris Johnson’s speeches at Tory conference have normally been dedicated to making the audience laugh. As Mayor of London, he was freed from the constraints that Cabinet Ministers must labour under and so could have more fun than any other speaker. But as Foreign Secretary, Boris is constrained both by the conventions of diplomacy and a Number 10 that is keeping a particularly close eye on him.
Now, Boris being Boris he didn’t totally obey the usual diplomatic niceties. He began by telling the audience how when he met the Russian Foreign Minister in New York at the UN general assembly last month, he had told him that Russia’s problems were down to how the West had ‘imposed democracy’ on the country in 1990. There were also a few more jokes than you’d have got from his predecessor Philip Hammond—including one rather good one about how the EU was imposing a global ivory ban despite its president being called Donald Tusk. But, overall, his was a speech designed to make the audience think rather than laugh.
The speech was essentially about how the West has suffered a crisis of confidence following the Iraq War and the financial crash and how this crisis has made the world a more dangerous place, as Vladimir Putin and co have moved in to fill the vacuum. Boris’s argument was that post-Brexit Britain is uniquely well placed to lend its voice to the liberal cause, to make the argument that economic and political freedom must go hand in hand.
What Boris said today was a reminder that he is, in the proper sense of the word, a liberal politician. He clearly wants to use his role as Foreign Secretary to promote liberalism, and make sure that Britain speaks up for it on the world stage. I suspect he will also be a defender of liberalism in his forays into domestic politics; he went off script to emphasise his support for immigration at one point in the speech. In the coming years, I suspect we will see Boris emerge as the standard-bearer of liberal Toryism.
Comments