The unflushable Mr Johnson

(This appears on TCW: Defending Freedom today)

ESTIMATES of the numbers killed in the Russia-Ukraine war vary considerably. Nevertheless, it is certain that hundreds of thousands have died, figures possibly reaching a million. In the autumn US official figures give up to 300,000 Russians killed, wounded and missing, detailed here and here. Ukrainian sources doubled that number, claiming in excess of 600,000 Russian casualties. For comparison, the UK suffered 750,000 military casualties during the six years of World War II. At least 50,000 Ukrainians, soldiers and civilians, have lost limbs since the war began according to the Ukrainian Health Ministry.

If you or I were directly responsible for much of this mutilation, death and destruction, no doubt we would suffer from a pang of conscience – to put it mildly.

Others, however, feel no such compunction in sending others to their gruesome end on Ukraine’s plains and amid its grey, ruined cities.

One such individual has re-emerged. He is one of the ‘unflushable’ politicians who never seems quite to disappear.

This is, of course, Boris Johnson, who, it is claimed by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov (and there is apparently no evidence to the contrary), three long years ago in Istanbul convinced the Ukrainians not to make a peace deal with Moscow one hour before they were due to sign it. Johnson’s ego, Lavrov said, doomed Ukraine to eternal conflict.

On the anniversary of the war’s start, Johnson has made a ghoulish return to Kiev, like a murderer going back to the scene of a crime.

Innumerable sons of the city will have died in the fighting of this unwinnable war at the behest of our former Prime Minister.

For Johnson, who harbours desires to be a statesman of Churchillian status, the chance to lead his own pet war was simply too great. Letting Misha, Vova, Pavel and Andrei have ordnance dropped on their head and having limbs spontaneously removed in the hell of artillery fire? A small price to pay.

Not thinking this death and destruction enough, Johnson has demanded that defence spending be increased apace: 3 per cent of GDP cannot come fast enough, according to him. No doubt to add to the £7.8billion Britain has already given Ukraine in futile military support.

For many of a conservative disposition, such an increase should be welcome after decades of whittling down the armed forces to fund migrant hotels, gender-affirming care and DEI operatives. However, given that this is now being proposed to defend the rolling plains of eastern Ukraine (for what reason?), a large number will be questioning this promised increase. After all, power in idiots’ hands is a dangerous toy.

Johnson has also, it seems, taken exception at President Trump’s characterisation of Zelensky as a ‘dictator’. Whether someone who bans opposition and prevents elections is a dictator is beyond my pay grade to discern; however, what I can say is that the tyranny of Covid – at Johnson’s behest – saw many of the same features of dictatorship willingly applied at home: mandatory house arrest, a crushing of freedom of expression, and the violation of bodily autonomy and all but mandatory vaccination.

Not that Starmer has any money to do this anyway, at least, not after Johnson helped knock a few more holes into the hull of the already listing HMS Britannia. Covid cost us between £310billion and £410billion according to the government (what’s £100billion between friends?). According to the Telegraph, the proposed defence spend increase would be only £20billion extra per year. Small change, in the scheme of things.

Perhaps within that £20billion there will be enough to fund Johnson’s uniform, webbing and rifle for when he inevitably decides to place himself on the front line. After all, a man of such steadfast convictions would surely demand to do the fighting himself, like his hero Churchill who fought fearlessly on several front lines including the trenches of the First World War. One so sure of the righteousness of the cause would surely not let the working-class lads of forgotten towns go on his behalf. Or perhaps he would. After all, to such men the world is merely a stage upon which to prance around and ostentatiously display their virtue like puffed-up peacocks with hideous plumage.

Given his track record – with the blood of thousands on his hands – together with his central role in covid and his obsession with the civilisation-ending perversity of Net Zero, one can only wish that Boris Johnson would crawl into the nearest foxhole and never return.

As one of the unflushables, however, there is no doubt that he will keep coming back.