Interview: “I was like those Kenyan warriors coated in peanut butter who charged the machine guns”: Prime Minister Boris Johnson on bicycles, books, Brexit, and Black Mirror
Prime Minister Boris Johnson doesn't hold back on cycling, foreign policy, and more in an interview with the Washington Reporter.
Boris Johnson, a self-described “militant cyclist” and “technological optimist” had no plans to serve as Prime Minister, or steer the United Kingdom through riots, the Olympics, and a pandemic.
Between his trademark hairstyle and his unique ability to harness the UK’s populist energy, Johnson is in many ways the Donald Trump of the UK: a well-known media figure who successfully parlayed a long career in journalism into the mayoralty of London during the 2012 Olympics and ultimately into the highest level of British politics.
In contrast with other Tory politicians, like Michael Heseltine — who famously sketched out his life’s ambitions on an envelope — Johnson has benefitted from a next man up mentality. “There were a couple of times when the Tory Party was really stuck, it was stuck for a mayoral candidate, and it was stuck on how to do Brexit, and in desperation, they turned to me,” he said during an extensive interview about his career and his latest book, Unleashed, which he described as leaping from his frame “like Athena from the head of Zeus, or like the alien from John Hurt’s movie.”
Despite the United Kingdom’s historic vote for Brexit, Johnson found that many people at home and abroad tried to stymie the will of the voters — but he persisted. “I just had this sense of superhuman invincibility, because I knew all the time, I was like those Kenyan warriors who coated in peanut butter and who charged the machine guns, because I just knew that we had the law on our side,” he said. “I knew that we were right. They had been defeated in the argument and they couldn't get over it.”
Over his lengthy political career, Johnson has gotten used to lobbing insults at his opponents. When he was Mayor of London, he referred to some members of the London Assembly as “great, supine, protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.”
“They were,” he said. While he wouldn’t say if he plans to mount a political comeback a la Trump’s successful 2024 bid (“I'm having a blissful time,” he insisted), Johnson has plenty of criticisms for the United Kingdom’s current leadership.
Current Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s foreign policy, which includes an arms embargo on Israel, is “horrendous,” Johnson said. “How can you have an arms embargo on Israel while Israel is under existential threat? Having to say that you’re standing with Israel, which is what the current Labour government in the UK said, when they’re cutting arms to Israel, is horrendous, and it's all about party management within the Labour Party, and dealing with these creeps, many of them anti-Semites on the left of the Labour Party, rather than thinking about the interests of freedom and democracy around the world, or the interests of the UK, the greater interest of the UK, which are to stand with Israel.”
Starmer’s policies are tantamount to “standing with Hamas,” he continued. “It’s an utter disgrace.” However, Johnson’s criticisms of the current Labour Prime Minister goes far deeper.
Johnson likened Starmer to “Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest,” bragging that that “really got underneath [Starmer’s] skin,” and that the current prime minister is also “very slow on the turn.”
“I call him the ‘human bollard’ and various other things,” he added. “There’s something rather stolid and surprised, he has a look of ever so slight moral designation. And I think I said he looks like ‘a bullock having a thermometer unexpectedly shoved in its rectum.’ He has that faint air of lefty, finger wagging, moralizing coupled with a slight bovine imbecility.”
Facing Trump’s return to the White House in January, Johnson, for whom the war in Ukraine is a top priority, said that “the prophecies that Trump would necessarily be a disaster for Ukraine are off the mark just because of what I saw the Trump administration do when I was in office.”
Trump’s foreign policy will also differ from that of President Joe Biden on countries like Afghanistan. Although, Johnson said, Biden warned him about America’s plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, “we underestimated how literally determined he was to do that, and I think that was a mistake the way it happened,” he said.
However, Johnson didn’t want to campaign for Trump or Kamala Harris: “I think this was for the American people to decide,” he said.
For years, Johnson has dominated Britain’s cultural sphere — even inspiring an episode of Britain’s hit Netflix show, Black Mirror (The Waldo Moment). While Johnson was unaware that he had inspired that specific episode, he also said that he had not seen the show’s most infamous episode, The National Anthem, in which the prime minister is forced to choose between being filmed having sexual relations with a pig on live television or having kidnappers execute the princess of the United Kingdom.
While Johnson insisted that he never faced that specific dilemma during his years in elected office, he did note that public service isn’t always easy.
“There’s no question that you get some pretty nasty dilemmas, like going against all your instincts and locking down society is about as horrendous as being force to have relations with a pig on live TV,” he said. “The nature of the job is that sometimes you have to do some very difficult things,” he said.
Below is a transcript of our interview with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Prime Minster Johnson, you’ve written several books. Why this one? And why now?
Boris Johnson:
Unleashed was uncontrollable, it was uncontainable, it was ungovernable. Unleashed leapt from my frame, it exploded, like Athena from the head of Zeus, or like the alien from John Hurt’s movie, it just erupted. It was uncontainable. It’s a fifteen year story about a project to unite and level up the country. It’s about the belief in Britain. It’s about why our country is great, and why our country can do things independently. The core of the story is an idea about political independence, which miraculously came good during the most appalling pandemic we’ve had in 100 years, and in a sense that we suddenly were able to do things that no other European country could do as fast, because we were outside the European Union. And so, serendipitously, miraculously, we were able to license vaccines weeks and weeks earlier, at a time when hundreds and hundreds of people were dying every day. So it's about a project to liberate Britain, but also a project to unleash the potential of our country.
Washington Reporter:
One of the points that you wrote about in your book is the 2011 riots in London, and how you handled those. Fast forward to 2020: we had Black Lives Matter riots in America. Fast forward to 2024 we have Free Gaza riots in America and also in England. Do you see parallels from what you dealt with overseas? How would you have advised Americans to handle these?
Boris Johnson:
The way to handle riots is to treat them as criminal acts and not to start twittering on about the causes. Do not get into ‘we must address the underlying causes.’ When people riot, they're breaking the law. Put them in prison. And that's what we did after 2011. Now today, there is some question about how we started to lock people up because of what they wrote on social media. I didn’t hear the evidence, but I’m instinctively a bit suspicious about that.
Washington Reporter:
One of the other things that you wrote about was bicycling and how that played a role in your mayoral campaign. Are you still cycling?
Boris Johnson:
I’m a militant cyclist. I've always been an eccentric in the Tory Party. Not a lot of Tories are massive cyclists. I used to be the motor correspondent for GQ Magazine, so I love cars. But I love the inner city. I love the pleasure of cycling. I love the physical exertion. I love arriving at my meetings full of events and different ideas, irritatingly confident. But also, I like not being trapped in some traffic jam or some public transport that's been delayed. Bicycles are the most beautiful machine for human liberty, apart from the motor vehicle. But I love bicycles, and they are very safe, and we made them much safer. There’s a story I tell of how we were very worried about people being killed, particularly young women who were losing their lives tragically, on bicycles, and we sorted that out and it’s about making cycling safe.
Washington Reporter:
What do you make of the proliferation of bike lanes that you've probably noticed as you've been traveling across America?
Boris Johnson:
I don’t know about across America, but I put in some absolutely vast bike lanes, imperial bike lanes, in London. Taxi drivers really wanted to see the color of my insides for a long time but they calmed down. The traffic speeds actually increased during my time as mayor, from 9.3 to 9.4 an hour. The bicycle is a libertarian thing, and I hate being stuck in public transportation. Do you cycle?
Washington Reporter:
I militantly anti-bicyclists. I want bike lanes abolished. I think it's part of the left's war on the suburbs.
Boris Johnson:
No! The suburbs should be full of happy cyclists.
Washington Reporter:
Bicyclists never abide by the laws of the road. They think they're above everything. When they go through a red light, they should be pulled over just as if they were a normal vehicle.
Boris Johnson:
Shoot them if they go through a red light. I am perfectly happy with that.
Washington Reporter:
Okay, then fine, we found the happy medium here.
Boris Johnson:
You have to encourage cycling.
Washington Reporter:
I'm not anti it per se, but I just I'm anti it's like Crossfitting, how much people obsess about it.
Boris Johnson:
Do you bicycle?
Washington Reporter:
I do not. You wrote about how the European Union, and elites in Britain, who kept conspiring to keep Britain in the EU when the Brits voted against this. When you were at the lowest point in trying to push back against that, how did you decide to push through and keep going?
Boris Johnson:
I just had this sense of superhuman invincibility, because I knew all the time, I was like those Kenyan warriors who coated in peanut butter and who charged the machine guns, because I just knew that we had the law on our side. Even though they did get me in the end, at the time, I knew that we were right. They had been defeated in the argument and they couldn't get over it. A lot of people say there is something uniquely appalling about the January the Sixth events and the refusal of Donald Trump to accept defeat. And I've always disagreed strongly with what happened, and made my views plain ever since I was prime minster; it happened when I was prime minister, and I think Donald should have accepted that he lost. But here's where I think there's a parallel. The left, are not without their own lawfare. When it come to trying to reverse the popular decision after Brexit, they really spent years trying to stop it.
Washington Reporter:
Where did the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’ come from?
Boris Johnson:
That came from focus groups before the 2019 election. We were focus grouping how to win the election. We were focus grouping the people's impatience with politics at the time. I think it's one of those things that came up, ‘just get Brexit done, just get Brexit done.’ And that worked.
Washington Reporter:
You were mayor of London. How have you seen that city change in the time that you were running the show there?
Boris Johnson:
It was an Augustan age. There is so much to say about it. We did a huge amount of stuff, and I became convinced that 90 percent of change is driven by the private sector, by free markets. But to trigger that you do need government to get some things right, and you need a mass transit, good planning laws, skills. You need some things that governments do. And when I became Mayor of London, we had four of the six poorest boroughs anywhere in the country. By time I stopped at eight years later, we had none of the poorest 20. And the whole city got richer and the poorest people got richer too, and their life expectancy increased the most. Male life expectancy went up 19 months, female life expectancy went up 18 months. And it really moved. The kind of inner donut of London, the poorest boroughs, they boomed. But partly as a result of the Olympic Games; the 2012 Olympics were a big counterexample of the classic free market arguments against doing things like Olympic Games. Actually, it did stimulate a lot of investment. So sometimes it can work, but you have to have a very clear program and a very clear vision.
Washington Reporter:
While you were Mayor of London, you referred to some members of the London Assembly as ‘great, supine, protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.’
Boris Johnson:
They were. In my time in London, I cut huge amounts of public spending. I abolished about 40 separate entities. I sold off, and this is controversial, I sold off a huge amount of this state real estate. I got rid of loads of fire stations, police stations, office blocks that were unneeded. Sell, sell, sell. And it was brilliant. The UK, and I can't speak for America, has far too many people in the public sector. What I wanted to do, had I been spared by my party, was to do the same in the UK. The public sector is way too big. We have a massive, massive shortage of talented people who need to work, who can work in the private sector. That's where the growth will be. The push for working from home full time is insane. You go to any office, it's deserted because everybody's ‘working from home.’ They’re not working. It's all gone crazy and the taxpayer should not be funding this. I like the look of what Elon Musk said he’s going to do. I believe in that. I think two trillion is a lot, but that should be where conservatives are going.
Washington Reporter:
What is your favorite insult that you've levied at an opponent of yours?
Boris Johnson:
I think the one that really got underneath the skin of the current prime minister was when I called him ‘Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest.’ He's very slow on the turn, and I call him the ‘human bollard’ and various other things. There’s something rather stolid and surprised, he has a look of ever so slight moral designation. And I think I said he looks like ‘a bullock having a thermometer unexpectedly shoved in its rectum.’ He has that faint air of lefty, finger wagging, moralizing coupled with a slight bovine imbecility.
Washington Reporter:
Do you think in 2024 Boris Johnson could be elected Mayor of London, or has the city shifted too much to the left?
Boris Johnson:
Everyone always said that London was a Labour city, and I won it big. It depends on where the people are; the people were fed up with the left. I think they're gonna be way, totally fed up with the left, by the time of the next mayoral election. It’s a big opportunity for conservatives. London is a huge, diverse city, but fundamentally, when you walk up and knock on door in the London suburbs, it’s the same worries, same needs that you see anywhere in the country. They’re worried about crime. Labour is pathetic on crime. They’re worried about taxes, Labour is terrible on taxes. The next election is going to be a big opportunity for conservatives.
Washington Reporter:
What was your perspective on Israel when you were prime minister? And where do you see Britain on this issue? The current Labour government is pushing for an arms embargo with Israel.
Boris Johnson:
It’s horrendous. How can you have an arms embargo on Israel while Israel is under existential threat? Having to say that you’re standing with Israel, which is what the current Labour government in the UK said, when they’re cutting arms to Israel, is horrendous, and it's all about party management within the Labour Party, and dealing with these creeps, many of them anti-Semites on the left of the Labour Party, rather than thinking about the interests of freedom and democracy around the world, or the interests of the UK, the greater interest of the UK, which are to stand with Israel. You don’t stand with Israel by continuing to trade with Israel and continuing to support Israel, and then you announce that you're blockading certain arm supplies to Israel. If you’re not standing with Israel, you're standing with Hamas. It’s an utter disgrace.
Washington Reporter:
What do you see is the nature of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the UK moving forward?
Boris Johnson:
The relationship between the UK and the United States is huge and transcendent. It has been for the last 150 years, transcendent of wars. It was the cable that kept the world together in the 20th century, through World War One to World War Two, and the Cold War as well, and it’s still true. The UK and the U.S. are still collaborating intensively around the world. There’s no point in being sentimental about it, it’s not driven by sentiment, it’s driven by cold, mutual interest, and the US needs a reliable European partner, and the world needs the U.S.
Washington Reporter:
Labour almost infamously sent some of its people to the U.S. in the home stretch to door knock for Kamala Harris.
Boris Johnson:
It’s an enormous mistake.
Washington Reporter:
Why do you think that?
Boris Johnson:
The UK, the U.S., Australia, Canada, we're friendly governments. We love each other, right? The relationship between the U.S. and the UK is far more important than party politics. I don't think that governments in the U.S. of the UK, should intervene in domestic politics of the other country. My job as Prime Minister of the UK was to be friendly and supportive of American presidents of both parties, and I was. Now, today, I'm most anxious about Ukraine, and most anxious about where that might go. I think the prophecies that Trump would necessarily be a disaster for Ukraine are off the mark just because of what I saw the Trump administration do when I was in office. I may be wrong about that, in which case I will be grief stricken, but I don’t think I’m wrong.
Washington Reporter:
What were your interactions with the Trump administration like, and what were your interactions with the Biden administration like?
Boris Johnson:
Both were very good, and all of this is in Unleashed. I found that Joe Biden stuck by what he said he was going to do. He was very solid on the Atlantic Alliance and he was very solid on a lot of stuff. He was dead set on pulling out of Afghanistan and we underestimated how literally determined he was to do that, and I think that was a mistake the way it happened.
Washington Reporter:
Was there communication with you as a NATO ally?
Boris Johnson:
There was, but I don’t think we fully grasped the unconditionality of the plan. We assumed that some of the Doha Agreement conditions remained alive. It wouldn't be quite so precipitous. I think we were also wrong in thinking that the Afghan army would be sufficient.
Washington Reporter:
How often did you interact with Kamala Harris, and what was that like?
Boris Johnson:
Only once. Frankly, she seemed to be on top of it. It was not a very memorable conversation.
Washington Reporter:
In 2016, you famously gave up your citizenship here because you don't want to pay taxes in America.
Boris Johnson:
It had nothing to do with Donald Trump. It was purely because I was being hammered by taxes.
Washington Reporter:
That is a very American thing to be frustrated about.
Boris Johnson:
I was being hit on the sale of my primary residence by the U.S. tax authority, even though I hadn’t lived in the United States since I was five years old.
Washington Reporter:
Did you consider a Boston Tea Party moment about that tax?
Boris Johnson:
Well, I did. But I've never, never known of a complaint that would have fallen on such deaf ears. I inspired the sympathy of absolutely no one.
Washington Reporter:
I ask this because you're not in the government right now; if you still had your U.S. citizenship, who would you have voted for in our election?
Boris Johnson:
I think this was for the American people to decide. There’s something a bit odd about people who don’t have a stake in your elections telling you how to vote.
Washington Reporter:
You have a chapter about how you came to be a crusader against global warming. Why is this important to you?
Boris Johnson:
I’m with Elon.
Washington Reporter:
Okay, explain.
Boris Johnson:
Elon, Elon, Elon. If there was a scandal about Elon, it would be called ‘Elongate.’ I think Elon is brilliant. He talks about how the sun produces enough energy in one minute to power the entire world for a year. We can fix this thing. I’m like Blaise Pascal, I kind of take a wager. If it isn’t true, and we invest in clean technology, we cut pollution, we drive loads of jobs, then we've probably lost nothing anyway. If it is true, and we do that, then we fix it. This is like Pascal’s arguments about the belief in God. I'm a technological optimist. I really am. Just being in America, and going to things like the Henry Ford Museum, and seeing what Americans have done, the genius way in which they fix problems, we can fix this thing. Within the climate world, I don't like the sort of Marxist, horrible, constricted approach of eco-warriors, who are trying to basically stop us from doing a lot. But nor do I like the kind of sneering knuckledraggers who say that technology will never fix it. I think that is wrong. I think technology will fix it.
Washington Reporter:
Where do you fit China into that? Obviously, that's always the elephant in the room.
Boris Johnson:
On China, I don't agree that China overtakes America as the global hegemon. I think that's not true. It’s not true culturally, economically, politically; it just is not going to happen in my lifetime, probably not in your children's lifetime, either. For all sorts of good reasons, America is the place to grow. So I don't mean to worry so much about China. You need to watch China, but you also need to trade with China. Eighty percent of Walmart's manufacturing comes from China. If you’re decoupling with China, and you're destroying huge amounts of value. You're impoverishing hundreds of millions of people in America.
Washington Reporter:
You attacked Keir Starmer a lot in some colorful language; are you mounting a comeback?
Boris Johnson:
Me? I'm having a blissful time. It's all in Unleashed.
Washington Reporter:
Here’s my final question for you: Have you seen Black Mirror?
Boris Johnson:
I saw one once. Why? Do you like it?
Washington Reporter:
I love it. I think it’s Britain’s second most famous export, following you.
Boris Johnson:
It’s good, I thought it was clever.
Washington Reporter:
The most famous episode is about the British Prime Minister, where bad guys kidnap the princess and he has to have sex with a pig on live television or they will kill her. And if he does that, they will release her. Have you seen this one?
Boris Johnson:
No.
Washington Reporter:
You were obviously the prime minister. If you were presented with this scenario—
Boris Johnson:
Was I forced to have sex on live TV with a pig?
Washington Reporter:
I hope not, but I feel like a former British prime minister has never been asked about this episode.
Boris Johnson:
A problem has never been presented to me in quite that way. But there’s no question that you get some pretty nasty dilemmas, like going against all your instincts and locking down society is about as horrendous as being force to have relations with a pig on live TV. The nature of the job is that sometimes you have to do some very difficult things.
Washington Reporter:
Did you know that a different one of the episodes is based off of your career?
Boris Johnson:
I did not.
Washington Reporter:
It’s called the Waldo Moment. In this episode, an animated bear who was a character on the SNL of Britain runs for Parliament and is ultimately elected. I was going to ask if you’ve seen that.
Boris Johnson:
It’s based off of me?
Washington Reporter:
They said it’s based off of your career. But in that sense, looking at your career, what would you say to yourself back in the Oxford Student Union days about career advice?
Boris Johnson:
This will be a terrible thing to admit. But most people have their success depend on some sort of grand plan, like Michael Heseltine, on the back of an envelope. I never had any such plans. I’m like Bismarck in this sense: I do things that I believe I can add value to, and which I know I will enjoy, and where I think that my skillset may actually be useful to the occasion. If it’s useful, I do it. If I think I’m not going to make any difference for the better, then I don’t do it. So with my political career, there were a couple of times when the Tory Party was really stuck, it was stuck for a mayoral candidate, and it was stuck on how to do Brexit, and in desperation, they turned to me.
Washington Reporter:
Well, desperate times call for Boris Johnson. Thanks so much for chatting, Prime Minister Johnson.