What Tony taught Boris
Seen from the suburbs, Blairism and Johnsonism look uncannily alike
IN SEPTEMBER 1995 Boris Johnson, a rising star of the Daily Telegraph’s comment pages, spent an evening with the Dulwich Labour Party. His trip to the south London suburb was an act of anthropology, undertaken to study a new tribe: the educated middle classes who had fallen hard for Tony Blair. Mr Johnson’s hosts plied him with Bulgarian red wine and taco crisps, and raged at the dying Conservative government. He was an observant visitor, recalls John McTernan, his chaperone and a future aide to Mr Blair.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “His master’s voice”
Britain August 28th 2021
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