“I have a dream“ Martin Luther King Jr said to the crowds attending that civil rights march in Washington in 1963. Twice in recent days came two examples of past and present leaders of the next-door neighbours using that ‘vision thing’ lever. 

In Manchester a fortnight ago, Boris Johnson, in trouble from his ankles up, one more time blustered up a speech to the Conservative Party, and convinced them that the sunny uplands are in sight and the strategy is full steam ahead.  

On Monday night the second episode of the BBC TV’s ‘Blair and Brown’ series featured a new Labour Prime Minister, bouncing into work in 1997, convinced that a good night’s sleep had refined his magic formula to fix the problem of Northern Ireland. 

After his party conference bravura, Boris Johnson this week surfaced in Spain, on a holiday break. He is staying at the villa in Marbella of Zac Goldsmith, a wealthy Tory peer and Environment Minister.  

Was it a coincidence or a lot more that on Thursday photographs of Boris, before an easel, paintbrush in hand, featured in a number of the red tops? 

Seven years ago, during his second term as Mayor of London, Boris Johnson published a well-received and commercially-successful book, “The Churchill Factor, How One Man Made History.” 

So, Boris would know how, at 40, Sir Winston Churchill turned to painting. At the time Churchill’s standing was at a low ebb. It was 1915: he was being blamed for the Gallipoli campaign during World War I and the debacle led to demotion from his role as First Lord of  the Admiralty.  

Churchill wrote in the 1920s that “painting came to my rescue in a most trying time.” He lived until he was 84 and over the decades he created more than 500 paintings.  

There was a link between the dark periods in his life, when the ‘black dog’ hovered, and his output. His most prolific time with the brush was during a 1945 holiday in Italy, after a slap in-the-face, post-war General Election defeat. 

(In a delicious link, early into his painting activities, Churchill received advice from, among  others, his London neighbour, Sir John Lavery whose portraits of those involved in our Treaty negotiations a century ago are currently on display at the Irish Embassy in London)

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Consistently in his private and public life, Boris shows Churchillian-like qualities to be energised by challenge and complexity.  

Even though he is in the late summer of that life, many of his supporters are drawn to the adolescent side of his persona. Boris the Lad.  

He is 57. With him in Spain are his wife, Carrie and their one-year son Wilfred. Their second child is due later this year. Boris was married twice before. He has children similar in age to his current 33-year-old partner. 

Boris the politician routinely sheds allies and performs policy U-turns. Dominic Cummings, the spinmeister who designed the Brexit campaign and oversaw the Boris journey to Downing Street, was ditched earlier this year. In recent months two important government ministers from the most precarious periods of the struggle with Covid-19, Matt Hancock and Dominic Rabb, got trashed.  

The Boris capacity to protect Brand Boris dwarfs all. 

In ancient Rome a combination of Bread and Circuses was the formula used to engage the masses. In today’s world, made much more complex by social media, around the clock news and the tabloid press, Boris is a phenomenon to rival any force the Romans could offer. 

The recent Conservative party conference was a stunning, sobering example of the current Johnson status in British politics. The backdrop was a combination of petrol shortages, rising energy costs, cuts in welfare payments, the prospect of empty supermarket shelves in the run-up to Christmas, clogged ports, labour and skills gaps in many key sectors. And a  damning report about government pandemic policy was with the printers, ready for  publication.  

But the litany of sins and woes made no difference to Boris. 

Wind him up, put him in front of a lectern under the camera lights in a packed arena and unleash him. On his good days, when he empties the tank, he exudes energy, humour, confidence and persuasive power.  

As he speaks and in the immediate aftermath, he has the capacity to woo his audience into considering that he has the answers to make their problems disappear. He has his listeners smiling, laughing, clapping and believing. And then to the sound of applause, he departs.  

Job done. Crisis, what crisis? 

To remain in charge and preserve authority, Boris surrounds himself with a selection of lessers. Often, they have a limited shelf-life. (Michael Gove is an exception: on several fronts, he is his equal and more).

The latest ally, prominent on centre stage is Lord David Frost. He has even less charisma than Matt Hancock but the deficit has no impact of his self-confidence. 

In his role as Brexit Minister, on Tuesday in Lisbon, Lord Frost confidently waded into battle with the EU on behalf of his Prime Minister. He did so 24 hours before the European Commission Vice-President produced his blueprint to resolve the UK’s row with Brussels over the post Brexit Northern Ireland protocol. In his pre-emptive Portuguese strike Lord Frost effectively dismissed the planned EU initiative, indicating ‘it’s not enough. We will need and we are entitled to a lot more.” 

The timing of the Frost intervention, including the leak from his camp to the Sunday Telegraph the previous weekend suggests a strategy, designed to poke Brussels in the eye and to undermine Maroš Šefčovič in his EU chief negotiator role. 

Frost’s deliberate move also re-opened the possibility that in the context of the breakdown of a London/Brussels agreement, the border on the island of Ireland might have to become the monitored frontier between the UK and the EU. 

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As last Monday night’s instalment of BBC’s ‘Blair and Brown, The New Labour Revolution’ series explained, soon after he took over as British Prime Minister in May 1997, 43-year-old Tony Blair identified ‘fixing’ the Northern Ireland problem as a possible Epic  Win. 

On his mother’s side he had Protestant family roots in Co. Donegal. In Downing Street he quickly decided he was willing to bypass family wariness towards Irish republicans, instilled in him during his early years.  

He recognised that successfully delivering a political settlement in Northern Ireland could help his reputation not just domestically but internationally as well. Blair was also keen to establish his credentials within an EU club that was basking in glory after what amounted to its game, set and match victory in the Cold War.  

That Blair-EU chemistry is a complete contrast to what influences Boris Johnson’s behaviour. It actually boosts the popularity of the current British prime minister and is entirely consistent with his past when he picks a row with those he calls “our friends in Europe.” 

When there is any danger of the Brexit adventure or indeed any other Boris policy giving rise to political difficulties, a guaranteed quick bounce comes when Lord Frost is wound up to dunt the Brussels dog. 

Peace on the island of Ireland, good relations with the neighbours became a Blair priority and he pursued it single-mindedly. 

With the current British government, when the bottom line is to retain power, tension on the island next door may seem an acceptable collateral damage factor. 

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Two episodes of the 5-part Blair Brown series have been screened. One recurring theme is the difficult relationship between the pair. In his first days as Chancellor, Gordon Brown boldly gave the Bank of England independence from government to set interest rates. It was far from clear what advance knowledge his boss had about the move. 

At one point Blair accepts the advice of his advisors that it makes political sense to publicly make peace in the spat with his man impatient to replace him. On the campaign trail he buys two ice-cream cones and publicly presents one to Gordon. The Chancellor doesn’t know what to do with the 99.  

This was the same man who in 2008 intervened to invest billions in UK banks that were at most hours away from meltdown during the financial crash. Monday’s documentary also suggested that Brown was the character who decisively gathered international leaders to London – Chinese and US representatives included – where they agreed a trillions initiative which effectively saved the world’s capitalism operating systems. 

The Blair featured in the series is the person I saw close-up, many times, during Brussels and Belfast years. On the Irish question, he inherited the good work of Conservative British prime minister, John Major and indeed, some strands of Margaret Thatcher’s activities before that.  

On the Irish side, he had the fruits of the labours of Albert Reynolds, John Bruton, Charlie Haughey, Garret Fitzgerald and many more. Blair bought into the John Hume template. He also decided to test the idea that republicans were prepared to end their war and concentrate on politics. For what he saw as their own good, he was prepared to push unionists beyond their default position of saying ‘no.’ 

Blair’s efforts would probably have ended in failure if he didn’t have a partnership with Bertie Ahern’s administration, the heft of the Clinton administration in Washington and the EU dimension that took the centuries-old conflict beyond the context of a squabble involving the factions of two islands. 

At the most crucial moments when the project could have hit the buffers, he was prepared to gamble. With Ireland, when he was down to his loose change reserves, all his numbers came up. 

As was suggested in Monday’s BBC programme, Blair actually believed he had a messianic touch. When courting him to commit the UK to joining US intervention in Iraq, George Bush persuaded Blair it could be seen as a Holy War. That gamble of the Crusade badly backfired. 

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Boris Johnson’s policies, shaped by the since cut-adrift Dominic Cummings, have reduced the Labour party threat factor to low risk status. He has tapped into the fertile English nationalism factor. He has managed to convert many traditional Labour constituencies well north of Watford to the Conservative party he leads. 

The combination of Scottish disdain, an unusual spike in Welsh dissatisfaction and the backing of all the Northern Ireland MPs who vote, would struggle to tip the scales in favour of a Tory General Election defeat. 

Boris is entitled to believe that he could call an election any time soon and win.

    

To unionists in Northern Ireland, facing into Assembly elections, worried they might be in the frame for some of consequences of Brexit, Lord Frost must seem like the cavalry arriving over the hill.  

Such a conclusion would make perfect sense if a majority of citizens of Northern Ireland had voted for Brexit and if the Conservative party under Boris Johnson had a reputation of keeping its word. 

The DUP once ditched the Conservative government led by Theresa May, transferred its  support to Boris Johnson and was duly abandoned when DUP usefulness ran out.  

The Good Friday Arrangement Tony Blair and others championed 23 years ago may well be approaching its sell-by date. But the Border Poll provision it created draws closer.  

A long read written by Shane McElhatton on the RTE website, ‘Signing The Irish Treaty 1921:  Into the Lion’s Den’ makes for fascinating reading. One of the factors it conveys is how huge numbers of Irish citizens felt their negotiators had been bullied into signing an imperfect settlement in London 100 years ago while others felt the British deal amounted to a sell-out. 

A century may indeed dull those memories but what is below the surface is not necessarily dead. 

To Lord Frost, testing the resolve of Brussels and putting strain on British-Irish relations may seem like justifiable, even clever tactics, consistent with the wishes of his boss. 

But ultimately honour has a value greater than expediency and those who practice it.

In the meantime the picture paints itself. Boris the serial ditcher is on course to cut adrift someone or something. The target will depend entirely on what best suits his needs.  Nothing or nobody is safe – Lord Frost included.