Boris Johnson to Be U.K. Prime Minister After Winning Party Vote – The New York Times

sarah lyall

Well, there’s been a lot of trouble with women. He fathered a child with someone other than his wife while he was mayor of London and managed to never really have to discuss it publicly. When he was editor of The Spectator, he had an affair with one of his employees, who got pregnant, wrote about it. He denied in the beginning he’d had the affair. He lied to the journalists who asked. He lied to the prime minister. He got fired from his job. And somehow he got out of that, too. And it started to become clear that his disheveled, bumbling persona was calculated. And people have said — and I’ve seen it, too — before he goes on TV, he’ll run his hands through his hair to make it look messier, as if he couldn’t be bothered to ever brush it. He wants to look like that. And someone recently told this amazing story about how Boris came to speak at some kind of civic meeting, or a meeting of some industry group, and arrived five minutes late, right before he was supposed to speak. And sort of got up and looked and said, where am I speaking, what group is this, and told these anecdotes, and how he totally snowed the crowd. The crowd thought it was hilarious. They loved him. And the guy was really happy he pulled it off. Until he saw Boris do the exact same thing at a totally different group some months later, the exact same thing. He came late. He said, where am I? He told the same anecdotes, as if it was just off the top of his head.