| Boris Johnson's Apparently Bulletproof Political Career, Explained in One Scene From 'Chariots of Fire' |  | | Ben Cross, left, as Harold Abrahams and Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell in the film. Warner Bros. Pictures, via Photofest | | | The essential mystery of Boris Johnson, the current front-runner to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom, is how he can be so popular despite a history of scandals and gaffes that for any other politician would be disqualifying. | | This is a man, after all, who has been caught in multiple extramarital affairs with women who work for him, has fathered at least one child out of wedlock, is famous for awkwardly getting stuck and falling down in various embarrassing situations, and was even once recorded agreeing to help a school friend, Darius Guppy, locate a journalist whom Mr. Guppy wished to violently assault — because, it turned out, the journalist had uncovered evidence of the major insurance fraud Mr. Guppy had committed. (The assault never took place.) Even more confusingly, he has managed to remain popular despite his obvious ambition, a trait to which British culture is traditionally strongly opposed. | | The answer, we think, may be that his shambolic, shaggy scandalousness actually acts as a sort of protective cloaking device around his ambition. | | To understand why, we suggest that you watch "Chariots of Fire." The 1981 movie, most famous for a scene of damp men running in slow motion on a beach, follows the (mostly true) story of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, two champion British runners, at the 1924 Olympics. | | The crucial scene comes about halfway through the film, when Abrahams, the son of a Lithuanian Jew, is confronted over tea by two senior dons from Caius College, Cambridge, where he is studying. | | Is it true, they ask, that Abrahams hired a professional coach to help him prepare for the Olympics? When he replies that it is, they are outraged that he is "playing the tradesman," approaching the race like a professional rather than an amateur runner, in order to achieve personal glory. They claim to prefer that he be "a gentleman," even if that means he does not win. | | But Abrahams knows better. "You know, gentlemen," he says angrily, "you yearn for victory just as I do -- but achieved with the apparent effortlessness of gods." | | What the two dons want, in other words, is success, but without the ambition. It's a demand deeply baked into upper-class British culture, where social ideals were designed for landed gentry who lived off of rents from their lands and other capital. Working for a living was decidedly déclassé, and rising through the ranks of society was a suspect motivation. Abrahams, whom they saw as an outsider by virtue of his background, religion and nationality, was trying to do just that by hiring a coach to achieve victory. The elites did not like it. | | Today landed-gentrying isn't all it used to be, so nearly everyone must work, no matter their background. But the negative connotations of ambition, of trying too hard, never went away. After living here for more than a year, one of the biggest differences between American and British culture that we've noticed is that in America, ambitious effort is valued in and of itself, whereas here it is seen as preferable to have success without visibly striving to achieve it. | | Which brings us back to Boris Johnson. His string of scandals and gaffes, it seems, may have actually allowed him to embody that ideal of success without coaching. | | The most famous example, and one that many credit for launching his career, was his appearance on the current-events comedy show "Have I Got News For You" in 1998. Mr. Johnson responded with such wooffly self-deprecation to questions about the wiretapped phone conversation in which he agreed to help his friend Mr. Guppy, moaning that he had "stumbled into an enormous elephant trap," that he charmed the country. He cemented his image as a sort of political clown who was not so much ambitiously trying to climb the ladders of power as merrily stumbling up them after having one pint too many at the village pub. | | Since then, his string of errors and scandals has merely compounded that personification of gentlemanly amateurism, accomplishing the neat trick of making him less politically vulnerable rather than more. Criticisms of his multiple marital affairs, his false claims during the campaign for the E.U. referendum, or his political errors as foreign minister all end up seeming like killjoy complaints about his lack of seriousness, rather than substantive concerns. | | And in the current political moment, that is also a cunningly populist appeal. Mr. Johnson's misbehavior simultaneously flouts a system that people feel angry with and demonstrates that he has the raw power and privilege to get away with it. Being on his side, in on the joke, offers the vicarious thrill of kicking up at a system that doesn't seem to value you, with all the safety of kicking down from a place of privilege | | |
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