Steven Fielding

Boris Johnson should be wary of comparisons with Churchill

(Photo: Getty)

Despite his carefully-crafted bumbling image, Boris Johnson is anything but daft. When vying to replace the apparently rootless Tory moderniser David Cameron as Conservative party leader he knew what to do: write a book praising Winston Churchill. 95 per cent of Conservative members regard the wartime Prime Minster favourably.

Johnson lost out to Theresa May in 2016 thanks to Michael Gove’s treachery. But during the Brexit referendum campaign he returned to familiar territory by drawing lurid parallels between the European Union and Nazi Germany, if only to imply that by leading the Leave campaign he was our modern-day Churchill. And when the Conservative leadership become vacant again last year he assiduously if subtly associated himself with the wartime leader.

Despite his early membership of the Liberal party there is something of a Churchill cult within Conservative ranks. As Johnson says in his biography, Churchill is regarded as almost a deity by Tories. In 1969 Oscar Nemon’s statue of Churchill, located in the Members’ Lobby of Parliament, was unveiled. Just over three decades later the foot was found to have been almost rubbed away due to Conservative MPs rubbing it for luck before entering the Commons Chamber. Churchill’s imposing statue in Parliament Square was also commissioned by the Conservative MP John Tilney and colleagues to ensure the wartime leader’s ‘grit and greatness’ was on permanent public display.

It is also no coincidence that our current leading Churchillophile, the historian Andrew Roberts, is a committed Conservative. Roberts has also not been afraid to boost Johnson’s Churchillian credentials and has even suggested the Prime Minister’s leadership of the country during the Covid crisis was inspired by Churchill’s spirit of 1940.

While such comparisons might be catnip to Conservatives there are some dangers in this approach. Although Churchill’s popularity is not confined to his former party, for an increasing number of younger Britons he means little or nothing.

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Written by
Steven Fielding
Steven Fielding is Emeritus Professor of Political History at the University of Nottingham. He is currently writing a history of the Labour party since 1976 for Polity Press.

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