What will British foreign policy be like under Boris Johnson’s leadership? With tensions rising between the U.K. and Iran, this is a pressing question.
Johnson, Britain’s newly confirmed prime minister, has been described as the U.K.’s “worst foreign secretary in living memory.” To be fair, this description was by Matthew Parris, an anti-Brexit columnist at the Times of London who, along with many others, blames Johnson for Britain’s decision to leave the EU in 2016. Parris has also described Johnson as a “habitual liar,” “cheat,” “conspirator,” and “cruel betrayer [of women].”
Nonetheless, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned.
Johnson served as Britain’s highest-ranking diplomat under Theresa May from July 2016 until his resignation in 2018 (thanks to irreconcilable differences over Brexit). May’s decision to give Johnson a cabinet role was widely considered an indictment of keeping one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer. But it wasn’t exactly plain sailing from thereon.
On a rhetorical level, Johnson’s journalistic flair and polemical tendencies have brought problems. In the realm of diplomacy, gaffes have consequences.
Two months prior to his appointment, Johnson had won The Spectator’s “most offensive Erdogan poem” contest — a competition devised by Douglas Murray in response to Angela Merkel’s decision to censor a German comedian who had been rude about Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Murray wanted to prove that “in Britain we still live and breathe free.” Johnson’s victorious entry was as follows:
There was a young fellow from Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.
Naturally, this made Johnson’s visit to Turkey as foreign secretary rather awkward. A far graver indelicacy was in 2017 when Johnson endangered a British-Iranian woman imprisoned in Tehran by mistakenly saying she had been “teaching people journalism.” Though Johnson corrected this, it was used as evidence against her. His decision to cite Rudyard Kipling’s poem Mandalay (a product of the colonialist era) during a visit to the Myanmar temple was described as “not appropriate” by the British ambassador — and caught on mic.
On a policy level, Johnson has also been criticized for being too cozy with the Saudis. He disagreed with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal. He appears sympathetic to Israel. Johnson has been highly critical of President Trump in the past; however, his Euroskepticism is accompanied by an enthusiasm for the special (U.K.-U.S.) relationship and genuine desire to work closely with the 45th president. Trump seems receptive to this.
Boris Johnson’s foreign policy — unpredictable as it is consequential — will be worth watching closely.