Book review: Boris Johnson's 'The Churchill Factor'

Johnson’s book on Churchill invites comparisons between the two mavericks. Apt or absurd? Peter Bruce got the Mayor of London on the blower

The British are not always kind about Boris Johnson, he of the tousled blond head, the posh accent, the witty comeback. And the Mayor of London. Last month, asking whether Boris could be prime minister (it thinks it's a distinct possibility), The Economist asked: "Does he deserve it?" And then answered its own question.

"Of course not. It takes no comparison with [Winston] Churchill to see that rarely, perhaps never, in the history of British politics has such an unlikely and unreliable politician been spoken of as prime ministerial material by so many, for so long."

The Economist is reaching for the Churchillian prose there because Boris has just written a new book, The Churchill Factor (Hodder & Stoughton, R305), to mark the 50th anniversary of the former Prime Minister's death. It is a very good book, but by its very nature, and the fact that the author is so obviously a Churchill fan, it invites comparison between the two characters.

"Oh no, no, no - nothing like that," says Boris, when I put it to him. He says the publishers probably asked a long line of people to write it before alighting upon him. Well, okay, but that still doesn't stop the comparisons.

Boris, who left Parliament under a cloud and then fought and toppled Ken Livingstone to run London, has just secured a very safe Tory seat for next year's elections. He will undoubtedly be back in parliament - and a weak showing by David Cameron in the polls could trigger a crisis in the Conservative Party. In any new leadership race, Johnson would be a powerful candidate.

The Economist, to the extent that it reflects an important stratum of the British elite, is particularly interested in Boris and Europe. As UKIP has become a real factor to the right of the Tories, Johnson dwells delightfully on how Churchill, in contrast to many Tories today and certainly UKIP, was, in fact, rather warm about Europe.

"We must build a kind of United States of Europe," Churchill said after World War 2. "The structure will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important . If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and can."

But Churchill has something for the Eurosceptics too. Before the war, he had said of Britain and Europe: "We (British) have our own vision and our own task. We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed ."

Johnson clearly loves the Churchill he is writing about and the book is so good that you forget he just has to be using it as a vehicle for his own political gain. All strength to his elbow anyway. I'm a Boris fan.

Johnson had a classical education and it shows. Whether he is writing about the Byzantines, the Romans, the Greeks or, now, Churchill, he is able effortlessly to reach for any idea, any quotation, any comparison, to make his point. Reading him is always an education.

Churchill's errors (many of them very expensive in terms of human life) are as much part of his story as his triumphs. Perhaps Boris is making another point (of comparison). He almost met Hitler for tea in Munich, escaping what would have been a huge blunder by pure chance. In 1914, he took it upon himself to defend Antwerp from the Germans and lost thousands of men to German prison camps. At Gallipoli in Turkey (a German ally in 1914), he thought he could sneak in and race to Constantinople, thus relieving the Russians and opening a new front against the Germans. In the process, he lost over 100 000 troops. His decision as chancellor to return the British pound to the Gold Standard in 1925 was an economic catastrophe, just, as Johnson reminds us, was Britain's decision to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1989.

I don't think there's any question that this witty, educated, charming journalist-turned-politician has written this book for a mass audience in his country looking, perhaps, for a country beyond the smaller place Britain can often seem to have become.

His subject, another witty, educated and charming journalist-turned-politician is just the kind of mould, Johnson may calculate, Britain needs right now. He may or may not be right. Churchill had more than one war with which to sculpt his reputation. Boris is faced with a much more complex world, but I suspect the British, despite their outward disdain for showmanship, would love him as prime minister.

And the rest of us would surely want him never to stop writing. When you've done with The Churchill Factor, read his best book, A Dream of Rome. Even by the end of what begins as a sharp commentary on Johnson, The Economist's Bagehot column wilts and falls in love.

"A more important thing about Mr Johnson is that, despite his shortcomings, and like Churchill, he is going to dominate British politics for as long as it amuses him to do so. Shrugging off embarrassments that would sink most of his rivals, he remains a buoyant, quick-witted and vastly entertaining celebrity-politician. If he would take care to think through his views, he could also be judicious. But even if he does not, which is likely, it is tempting to think that, in an age of dull politics and small politicians, his unlikely rise is also inevitable."