In the days since his appointment as the UK’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson’s offensive statements about Africans, Americans, Europeans, Papua New Guineans, Russians, Turks and pretty much everyone in the world outside Britain have received significant coverage.
This comes as no surprise. Johnson has been a public figure for many years, and in that time he has penned some fairly remarkable commentaries. He is often witty, but lately his humour has grown rather tiresome. The schoolboy who makes jokes about blowing up his farts doesn’t seem so funny when the school is burning down after one of his stunts.
But his is a carefully cultivated image, the eccentric man-boy who stumbles through life getting stuck on zip lines and accidentally winning poetry competitions. Where that other comedy villain, Donald Trump, aims to offend and is loathe to apologise or admit to wrong-doing, Johnson happily says sorry when he has been caught out.
He may offend vast swaths of the globe and merrily refer to people from Papua New Guinea as “cannibals”, but he does so with a boyish grin that makes it look as though he’s just being honest.
But the bumbling persona covers up his deeply divisive and dangerous embrace of populism. It is tempting to think Johnson has only recently become a nationalist, spotting an opportunity for personal gain by leading the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. Yet his love for the mythic Britain of yesteryear pre-dates his starring role in the Brexit drama. How else does one explain his view that: “The [African] continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more.”
For Johnson, the world exists as a foil. Africans and Turks and Papua New Guineans are mere accessories aimed at highlighting Britain’s greatness. His gags don’t work without the cannibals and the AK-47-wielding children. We are all accessories, placed here to prop up the superiority of Britain.
So it doesn’t take much imagination to see how the ex-London mayor has gone from propping up British superiority by mocking people from other parts of the world to becoming foreign secretary. In today’s Britain, the ability to simultaneously appal minorities and appease the public seems to be a strong qualification for leadership.
But it is important not to exceptionalise Boris Johnson. He has cloaked his superiority in humorous robes but he has never broken with the colonial mentality that has characterised the attitude of the British state towards the world. Regardless of whether the government is Labour or Conservative, British exceptionalism has always reigned supreme. In this way, Johnson is the perfect choice.
While he has worked hard to cultivate the popular image that softens his obvious elitism, his core beliefs are not unusual for a British foreign minister. His oft-repeated view that the rest of the world is savage, corrupt and unsafe is perfectly in keeping with Britain’s historical view of itself.
Yet as recent events have illustrated, Britain may soon be a faded, isolated and irrelevant country. For those of us from the “rest of the world”, then, the question is not whether Johnson will continue to be offensive or racist in his new portfolio. The question is, will we be laughing with Boris and his UK foreign policy – or at him?