PIERS MORGAN: The most shocking President America never had: If you think U.S. politics is a joke, wait until you hear about Britain’s Boris the Buffoon who makes Trump look like a choirboy (and is eligible for his job)

‘Who IS this Boris guy?’ asked an American friend yesterday.

To which there is no simple answer.

Boris Johnson, the man who is currently hot favorite to be Britain’s new Prime Minister in four weeks, is a complex, mysterious, Machiavellian character.

For a start, he doesn’t even call himself Boris.

His name is actually Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, and his close family and friends all call him ‘Al’.

Boris Johnson (pictured on June 22), who is favorite to become Prime Minister, is a mysterious, Machiavellian character

Boris Johnson (pictured on June 22), who is favorite to become Prime Minister, is a mysterious, Machiavellian character

Like Donald Trump (pictured together in 2017), he was born in New York, so could technically qualify to become President of the United States

Like Donald Trump (pictured together in 2017), he was born in New York, so could technically qualify to become President of the United States

Nor was Boris, now 55, born in Britain.

In fact, like Donald Trump, he was born in New York, so could technically qualify to become President of the United States.

(God help America!)

But for now, his beady ambitious eyes are set firmly on the top job in Britain, something that I and many of my fellow Brits view with a mixture of bemusement, hilarity, horror and deep mounting concern at what he may do to the country.

I’ve known Boris for 25 years and always got on well with him.

But to call him a divisive, polarizing character is like saying President Trump’s angelic halo is a little chipped.

The Boris positives are that he’s charming, intelligent, passionate, emotional, eloquent and loquacious, with a great sense of humor and undeniable star quality.

If he walks into a party – and boy, does he love to party - Boris turns heads, even if that’s just people shaking theirs in dismay.

Women are attracted to the blond-haired, barrel-shaped bulldog like bees to the proverbial honeypot, and men want to bromance him.

The Boris negatives are too numerous to fully detail here.

But his critics, as with Trump’s, would argue he’s a lying, shameless, hypocritical, racist, homophobic, sexist, unreliable and cheating buffoon.

He’s also a hard drinking former drug-abuser, and on-going sex maniac.

That last affliction is an Achilles heel that once again threatens to derail his political ambition.

Like Donald Trump (pictured June 23), he was born in New York, so could technically qualify to become President of the United States

Like Donald Trump (pictured June 23), he was born in New York, so could technically qualify to become President of the United States

Indeed, so gargantuan is his enthusiasm for womanizing that I used to include this joke about Boris in speeches: ‘In a new poll, 10,000 women were asked if they wanted to have sex with Boris Johnson, and 8567 said “never again, no.”’

(Boris used to return the favor by doing this joke about me in his speeches when I worked full time in the U.S: ‘Britain is a great exporter – bikes to Holland, cakes to Germany, tea to Boston, and we even managed to export Piers Morgan to America too. The only fear with that last one is that he might be deported back.’)

In 2004, Boris was fired from the Conservative front bench for lying to party leader Michael Howard about his affair with magazine columnist Petronella Wyatt – who had an abortion after he impregnated her, and later revealed he liked to wear a piratical bandana with skull and crossbones.

Now his sex life is back making lurid headlines again after police were called last week to the South London flat he shares with his latest girlfriend Carrie Symonds, 31, following reports of a screaming argument including plate-smashing, loud profanity and a cry from her of ‘GET OFF ME!’

The incident, which police are not pursuing as a criminal matter, could not have come at a worse time for the man who now wants us to think of him as a cool, calm statesman.

Instead of focusing on his plans to finally resolve the three-year fiasco of Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union, all the talk and media coverage has been on his private life again.

And the further you dig into his life, the murkier it gets.

His sex life is making lurid headlines after police were called last week to the South London flat he shares with his latest girlfriend Carrie Symonds, 31, (pictured together) following reports of a screaming argument
Boris and Carrie Symonds

His sex life is making lurid headlines after police were called last week to the South London flat he shares with his latest girlfriend Carrie Symonds, 31, (pictured together) following reports of a screaming argument

Twice-married Boris’s rampant affairs with myriad women have led to a unique situation where he is the first would-be Prime Minister in modern British history whom nobody is quite sure how many children he has sired.

Officially, he has four kids by his estranged second wife Marina, all with exotic names like Lara Lettice, Theodore Apollo and Cassia Peaches.

Unofficially, he has at least one lovechild from an affair with art consultant Helen Macintyre, and there are strong rumors of at least one other with another mistress.

His former editor at the Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings, has said of him: ‘I wouldn’t trust Boris with my wife. It’s hard to believe that a man so conspicuously incapable of controlling his own libido is fit to be trusted with controlling the country.’

When he’s not having affairs with journalists, Boris has been known to actively support violence against them.

In 1995, Boris was caught on tape agreeing to provide an old university friend, Darius Guppy, with the address of a News of the World journalist who had been investigating him and who he wanted to have beaten up.

Boris’s gigantic ego makes Trump look modest.

When he was asked as a young child what he wanted to be when he grew up – a state he may not yet have reached - Boris replied: ‘The World King.’

And also like Trump, he is prone to making derogatory remarks.

Indeed, the charge list of offensive comments against Boris is arguably even worse.

He has branded black people ‘piccaninnies’ - a North American racial slur against dark-skinned children of African descent. He accused the President of Turkey of defiling a goat, called Barack Obama ‘part-Kenyan’, said a Libyan city would be great ‘once they clear the dead bodies away’, boasted about whiskey tariffs in a Sikh Temple, and recently mocked Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’.

He’s even labelled gay people ‘tank-topped bum boys’.

Boris also admitted, to me in a British GQ interview back in 2008, that he took cocaine and cannabis as a student.

(Trump’s never touched alcohol or drugs).

As for his Trumpian propensity to lie, Boris was sacked from the Times newspaper as a young journalist for making up quotes. And he’s been exposed for telling many more untruths since then.

But it’s far more consequential mistakes in his political career that worry his sceptics most.

His worst moment was to erroneously state, as Foreign Secretary, that a British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, jailed in Tehran on bogus spying charges, had not been holidaying as a tourist prior to her arrest, as she and the British government had repeatedly insisted, but was there to teach journalism to students.

The Iranians have not only used this hideous error to keep Nazanin in prison, but have now threatened to increase her sentence specifically because of what Boris said.

It’s hard to imagine a worse thing for a Foreign Secretary to do then leave a citizen incarcerated in an Iranian jail because he couldn’t be bothered to read his briefing notes properly.

Boris was fired from the Conservative front bench in 2004 for lying to party leader Michael Howard about his affair with magazine columnist Petronella Wyatt (pictured in 2015)

Boris was fired from the Conservative front bench in 2004 for lying to party leader Michael Howard about his affair with magazine columnist Petronella Wyatt (pictured in 2015)

Boris is the first would-be Prime Minister in modern British history whom nobody is quite sure how many children he has sired. Officially, he has four kids by his estranged second wife Marina (pictured in 2018)

Boris is the first would-be Prime Minister in modern British history whom nobody is quite sure how many children he has sired. Officially, he has four kids by his estranged second wife Marina (pictured in 2018)

Unofficially, he has at least one lovechild from an affair with art consultant Helen Macintyre (pictured in 2011) , and there are strong rumors of at least one other with another mistress

Unofficially, he has at least one lovechild from an affair with art consultant Helen Macintyre (pictured in 2011) , and there are strong rumors of at least one other with another mistress

And that goes to the central core of concern about Boris Johnson as he steams towards the door of No10 Downing Street.

Yes, he’s smart, funny, hugely charismatic and undeniably popular with voters (he was re-elected Mayor of London and is generally considered to have done a reasonably good job running England’s capital city)

But is he also a chaotic, bumbling loose cannon about to unleash yet more devastating turbulence on an already Brexit-ravaged Britain?

When I interviewed him for GQ, I asked him directly: ‘Do you think this country would ever elect a buffoon as Prime Minister?’

‘Have I over-buffooned it?’ he chuckled. ‘It’s very difficult to be both, I agree. Mind you…many great men have an element of comicality about them.’

‘I don’t really buy into this buffoon thing,’ I replied. ‘I think you play it all up to make money and charm the public when underneath lurks a calculating, ambitious and very serious brain.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ he responded, ‘but you must consider the possibility that underneath it all there really may lurk a genuine buffoon, and that be why I am finally prohibited from getting very much higher because it may be the psychological effort needed to haul myself into a more serious gaffe-free zone proves too difficult.’

That is now the big question dominating British conversation.

Is Boris Johnson a genuine buffoon who is going to turn us into a global laughing stock?

Or is it all an act?

As we debate this, Americans should stop worrying so much about President Trump.

By Boris standards, he’s a choirboy.

 

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PIERS MORGAN: If you think U.S. politics is a joke, wait until you hear what's happening in Britain

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