Lucky Boris

“Luck, be a Lady to-night..” The song from “Guys and Dolls” is one that every politician with an understanding of the political game known as snakes and ladders is accustomed to chant in the shower. You gotta have luck to keep from sinking, as Margaret Thatcher discovered when General Galtieri invaded the Falklands, and thus helped deliver the next General Election into her grateful hands.

Today there can be no doubt that Boris Johnson is Fortune’s Favourite, absolutely unchallenged. Who, six months ago, would have foretold this? Napoleon, whose first question about a General reputedly was, “is he lucky?” , would have looked at Mr Johnson and said “that’s my boy”.

Just consider how it’s gone. First, the opposition enabled him to hold a general election at a time of his choosing. It could have prevented this by insisting on the provisions of the Fixed Term Parliament Act and, using it, could have delayed any election. It’s true of course that the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – remember him? – had been moaning for months about wanting an election and would have lost face if he had changed tack, but , since he didn’t have much face to lose, this wouldn’t have mattered. Using the Fixed Term Act Labour with the other opposition parties and Tory rebels (remember them?) could have kept the last parliament limping on well into the new year.

But they didn’t. First stroke of luck for Mr Johnson.

Second, come the election, he was lucky in his opponents. Back in 2017 Jeremy Corbyn had had some strange sort of appeal. By last December this had evaporated. Any voter who wasn’t blindly committed to Labour could see that he was hopeless. “I usually vote Labour,” people told canvassers, “but I can’t vote for Corbyn.”

Then there were the Liberal Democrats. They had the opportunity to garner the large Remain vote and damage the Tories in a good many constituencies. But their leader, Jo Swinson, was just as useless as Corbyn. Instead of sticking to the quite sensible Liberal policy of calling for a second EU referendum, she talked of revoking Article 50, which was absurd because she could have done that only as Prime Minister and everyone knew she wasn’t going to be Prime Minister. So she looked daft. She might have done deals with other parties to stand down in some constituencies if they stood down in others. She might have backed Tory Remainers now standing as Independents in the constituencies they had represented. She did none of these things.

The election might have gone differently if Labour had had a leader like the young Tony Blair, the Liberal Democrats one like Charlie Kennedy. But they didn’t, and so Johnson was rewarded with a Commons majority of 80.

Then, with Brexit Day achieved, came Coronavirus, a third stroke of luck. Bad luck, of course, for millions, but good luck for Boris Johnson. In the flash of an eye he was transformed. Just like his hero Churchill in 1940 he was no longer a distrusted and divisive party politician with a rackety private life. Instead he was given the opportunity to be a national leader, a role which, like Churchill, he was not only ready and eager to play but capable of playing rather well.

Next, he contracted the virus himself, got it severely indeed, and was moved into intensive care. These were worrying days, very anxious ones for family and friends, for the Conservative party which had no one capable of replacing him, and indeed for everyone who thought his leadership essential in this time of crisis.

Given that he recovered, it was also an extraordinary stroke of luck. In times of adversity a Tory politician who says “we’re all in this together” is usually met with a raspberry, disbelief and indignation. But nobody could deny that Johnson was entitled to make the claim. He had come closer to death than the millions of us in lockdown. What a stroke of luck!

Finally, with perfect timing, his fiancée gave birth to their son. All births are a promise of renewal. This was a quasi-royal one.

Napoleon would have been mightily impressed. “Lucky? He’s more than a lucky General. Give him a Marshal’s baton.”