- Boris Johnson has become the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Theresa May.
- Johnson is known for his eccentric appearance and humorous antics, such as getting stuck on a zip line during the 2012 Olympics.
- He was a key figure in the Brexit campaign and now faces the challenge of finalizing a Brexit withdrawal deal by October 31st.
- Johnson has been compared to Donald Trump, but he is more complex and calculated in his actions.
- He often presents himself as a lovable mess, but there is a strategic element to his image.
- His bumbling persona and disheveled appearance are carefully crafted to make him relatable and distract from his privileged background.
- Johnson's humorous and self-deprecating behavior may not be as genuine as it appears.

- The piece discusses how Boris Johnson may have intentionally created a viral video to manipulate Google search results.
- It highlights Johnson's history of lying and fabricating quotes, as well as his role in spreading falsehoods about the European Union.
- Johnson has also made bigoted remarks and used charm to deflect criticism.
- The article mentions Johnson's time as Foreign Secretary and his numerous gaffes.
- It emphasizes the potential consequences of Johnson's Brexit negotiation, including a possible recession and strained relations with the EU.
- Johnson's unkeepable promises and lack of goodwill make his situation challenging.
- The article concludes by stating that Johnson's charm may not work in high-stakes situations.

- Boris Johnson's plan to trade freely with the EU under Article 24, paragraph 5B in the event of a no-deal Brexit is challenged by a journalist who points out the limitations in paragraph 5C.
- Johnson's lack of attention to detail and disregard for the potential impact on millions of people is concerning.
- Parliament has rejected the EU's deal and there is no better deal available, leaving Johnson stranded with no good way out.
- Johnson's previous skills and charm will not be enough to solve the Brexit crisis.
- The situation is compared to being stranded over a volcano set to erupt in three months, with the only help coming from people he has insulted.

- Boris Johnson, known for his eccentric appearance and humorous antics, has become the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- He faces the challenge of finalizing a Brexit withdrawal deal by October 31st.
- Johnson's bumbling persona is carefully crafted to distract from his privileged background.
- The article highlights Johnson's history of lying, fabricating quotes, and spreading falsehoods about the EU.
- His charm and lack of attention to detail are concerning in the Brexit crisis.
- Johnson's previous skills and charm may not be enough to solve the situation.

John Oliver explains how Britain’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, has succeeded – not despite his bumbling persona, but often because of it.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ The United Kingdom, home of fascinating wildlife, like the fearless mating foxes of Kent.

And beautiful mountains that go largely unexplored by the carefree mating foxes of Kent.

It's also home to some of the world's most gifted artists, like whomever took this picture of the stoic mating foxes of Kent.

Is about to be completely fucked, in a way not unlike the resigned mating foxes of Kent.

And the reason for that is that this week, the U.K.

Boris Johnson took over today from Theresa May, sealing the transition of power in a handshake with the queen.

He barred, then broke the rules by telling his new staff what she said.

And it was apparently, and I quote, "'Dee's nuts.'" It's true.

She's said it to every prime minister since Winston Churchill, and she won't say why.

But, yes, incredibly, Britain's new Prime Minister is Boris Johnson.

And even if you know nothing about British politics, you're probably already vaguely aware of him.

As Mayor of London, he famously got stuck on a zip line while promoting the 2012 Olympics.

And if you've ever seen a photo of him, you will probably remember it, because it's honestly hard to find 1 where he doesn't look ridiculous.

In fact, everything about his appearance is consistently immaculately wrong.

Here he is, wearing a bike helmet that's somehow both too small and too big for his head.

Here he is, looking like what would happen if an egg could be both hairy and sad.

Even his childhood pictures are funny, because here he is, looking more like a young Anna Wintour than I'm guessing she did at that age.

You may even have seen this clip that went viral recently of Boris' endearingly weird answer to a very simple question about what he does to relax.

When I was in London, wherever I may have been, we built a beautiful, I make buses.

See, they're gonna be in Dagenham Street.

So what I do, no, what I do make models of buses, what I make is, I get old, I don't know, wooden crates, Right?

OK, that's what you do to enjoy yourself.

I paint the passengers enjoying themselves...

But 3, if it were true, I now want nothing more than to see 1 of those fucking buses.

Because if they're terrible, that's weird.

But if they're impressive, that's somehow weirder.

The very idea of the new prime minister painting crate buses in his spare time to relax is just endlessly fascinating.

But Boris is so much more than the potential Michelangelo of vehicular crafts.

He was an absolutely crucial leader in the Brexit campaign, famously riding around in a gigantic red non-crate bus with a complete lie splashed across the side of it.

And now, he is Prime Minister and has to face the challenge of finalizing a Brexit withdrawal deal by October 31st, which is less than 100 days from now.

And the consequences of messing that up could have catastrophic ramifications for Britain, Europe, and the world.

So tonight, we thought it might be helpful to explain who exactly Boris Johnson is.

And let's start with the fact that, given that Britain's new leader is a clownish ficker with silly hair and a passing relationship with the truth, You may already be thinking of the person you're almost always thinking about anyway.

There have been countless headlines comparing Boris to Donald Trump.

And just this week, Trump did it himself.

They're calling him Britain Trump, and people are saying that's a good thing.

They don't like you over there, and no 1 ever says, Britain Trump, Unless it's in the context of a sentence like, I'm getting the fuck out of Britain, Trump is coming to visit this weekend.

But, but to call Boris Johnson, Britain Trump, is neither exactly wrong, nor exactly right.

Johnson is actually a lot more complex than Trump in a number of important ways.

For 1, while Trump tells you he has the best words, but doesn't, Johnson is more than happy to show you how erudite he is.

Just watch him charmingly drop some sporting trivia ahead of the London Olympics.

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England, ladies and gentlemen, in the 19th century.

And there, I think you have the essential difference between us and the rest of the world.

Other nations, the French looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner, we looked at the dining table and saw an opportunity to play whiff-waff.

Look, yes, I will admit that is objectively funny, although I'm not sure that That whiff-waff anecdote reflects quite as well on the British as he's implying there.

The French looked at the dining table as a canvas upon which to create exceptional cuisine, and the British saw a way to basically invent mouse tennis.

And look, Johnson is more than happy to look ridiculous.

It's enabled him to not just survive when he fucks up, but actually benefit.

That absurd zip-line photo from the Olympics would have killed most politicians' careers.

But Boris found a way to laugh at himself and charm everyone.

Just watch how it got covered on the news at the time.

This is a man who's summer tipping as a future prime minister.

I'm a man who's a man who's a man who's a man who's a man...

Look, I think if anyone has won the Olympics, I would say it's Boris Johnson.

If anyone won the Olympics, to be clear, people definitely won the Olympics.

And in a nutshell, that has been the root of Boris' appeal.

A lovable mess, weathering adversity, with humor and good cheer.

But, the truth is, there may be a great deal more calculation behind that image than first appears.

Because Boris learned at an early age the benefit of making yourself the butt of the joke, as his own sister remembers.

He discovered he could make people laugh.

When he was in a French play, and he had to recite Moliere,

and he hadn't bothered to learn his lines, and he hid behind a pillar reading them out.

Which was obviously much funnier than if he'd learned them perfectly, and had stood on the stage...

It's always funnier when things go wrong, like in this photo of Johnson shaking hands with the Queen.

And by the way, how are neither of you into this?

Boris actually learned a great deal from that incident, as he himself will admit.

Do you think that you learned something for later life from acting in plays at Eton, that you could actually get more laughs by looking as if you don't know your lines than actually remembering them?

Well, I certainly think that, as a general tactic in life, If that's what you're driving at, it is often useful...

To give the slight impression that you are deliberately pretending not to know what is going on.

Because the reality may be that you don't know what is going on, but people won't be able to tell the difference.

And that, right there, is the key to Boris Johnson.

Presenting his own lack of preparation so charmingly that you actually doubt he's unprepared, but he is.

-♪ ♪ -♪ It's an incredibly powerful trick.

And incidentally, it's clips like that that are 1 major reason why Boris is not the Britain Trump.

Because can you imagine Trump having that level of self-reflection?

Look, with Kefefe, the tactic was to present myself as a kind of subliterate clown to distract you from the fact that I'm a mound of skin tautly stretched across the howling chasm of the space where a soul should be.

It's a very useful tool when deployed well.

The point here is, though, Johnson's bumbling persona is a carefully calibrated act.

Multiple people have said he actually messes it up on purpose.

A BBC producer tweeted that he'd always ruffle it right before the camera started rolling, which kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

He's been on TV hundreds of times, and he always looks like a mess.

What were the chances that before every 1 of those appearances, he combed, gelled, and carefully parted his hair, only to then be hit in the face by a goose...

He's often seen outside in eccentric, chaotic outfits.

He just also knows that that is a more relatable image than this 1 from when he was in the notoriously elite Bullingdon Club at Oxford University with his friend David Cameron.

Now, that photo was a huge liability for Cameron, but not for Johnson, because he's cleverly inoculated himself against that image of astonishing privilege by presenting himself as a cartoon Englishman who dresses like a raccoon who just emerged from David Foster Wallace's trash.

And once you realize what he is doing, It makes you question everything that you previously found charming about him.

Remember that clip where he's talking about painting buses?

But, some in Britain have pointed out that it might have been an attempt to change the Google search results people receive when they look for something like Boris Johnson bus, meaning that people would see that delightful clip rather than this significantly less delightful bullshit.

It's impossible to know, but you can't rule it out either.

And once you see the possibility that his gaffes are in fact calculated manipulations.

It's like looking at the FedEx logo and finally noticing the arrow.

Or looking at the Starbucks logo and finally noticing Robert De Niro's face.

You can never look at it in quite the same way again.

And beneath all of Boris' surface charm are some truly nasty elements.

As a young journalist, he was fired from his first job at the Times of London for completely making up a quote.

In fact, his editor claimed Johnson was the single worst employee he's ever had and skipped many work days to hang out with his best friend, Jeffrey Epstein.

It's not true, I just made that quote up.

But now, you can see just how irresponsible it is to fabricate them.

And from there, Johnson failed upwards to a job at the Daily Telegraph, where he built a following on a series of flagrant falsehoods about the European Union as their Brussels correspondent.

Falsehoods that would help lay the groundwork for the Brexit vote decades later.

Johnson even admits that he had something called a save-get.

It's a key command, like a copy-paste of a phrase that he liked to use to paint a caricature of the EU.

I had a sort of, save-get, you still have save-get keys, a save-get kind of intro, which was, Britain stood alone last night, as...

And then I would fill in whatever it was, as Europe proceeded with plans to abolish the prawn cocktail flavor crisp or...

So, first, for those unfamiliar, prawn cocktail crisps are real.

And to explain how it happened, it's what happens when a country looks at a dining table and forgoes food in favor of playing with flack.

But Johnson actually did write a series of columns claiming Europe was attempting to ban the prawn cocktail crisp, which was a complete lie.

Europe was never planning to abolish them, and they immediately pointed that out.

But, Boris' allegation spread like wildfire and became a popular example of an out-of-control EU.

And as recently as 2016, a full 25 years after his bullshit was completely debunked, Boris actually cited the Great War against the British prawn cocktail crisp as part of his case for Brexit.

And by the way, If there ever is a great war against the prawn cocktail crisp, there will be no winners, believe me.

-...it's like eating a cremated mermaid, but...

Look, look, it would be bad enough if Boris were just a liar, but He's also been more than willing to tap into outright bigotry to get ahead.

He's made repeated references to some immigrants as people that want to leech off the state, and over the years, he's made references to Pekingese.

He said the people of Congo had watermelon smiles.

They look like letterboxes, Boris Johnson wrote on Monday.

He even compared women who wear them to bank robbers.

That is an appalling comment that leaves a truly disgusting taste in your mouth, much like the shrimp crisp dust that has very much voted to remain on my fucking tongue.

And look, when reporters camped outside Johnson's house, he really turned the cartoon version of himself up to 11.

Ruffling up his hair, donning an absurd outfit, and waddling out to charm them.

And just watch how depressingly effective it winds up being.

If I have a cup of tea, will you answer my question?

No, I'm here solely on a humanitarian mission, because you've been here all day, and you've been incredibly patient and incredibly...

And I feel very sorry for you, because I have nothing to say about this matter except

Don't take the tea and do not thank him for it, because think about what just happened there.

He referred to Muslim women as letterboxes, and in the space of 30 seconds, he had them laughing along with him.

He was in trouble, he put on full Brit face, and those journalists fucking fell for it.

We can say it together, you can't say it at all.

But unfortunately, Boris, the prime minister, may have just hit the limits of where that charm can take him, because crucially, he now has less than a hundred days to negotiate a Brexit deal.

And his well-engineered, clumsy Brit persona does not necessarily travel well.

We saw that during his time as Foreign Secretary.

In 2017, he was in Myanmar, where for some reason, he kept muttering Rudyard Kipling's colonialist poem Mandalay to himself.

Come you back, you've read the New English, so...

ambassador is quick to spot that reminding their hosts of British rule might not be wise.

Is it good stuff, Or is that actually bad stuff?

Because I would argue as a Foreign Secretary, it's best not to remind people of when your country subjugated theirs for more than a century.

It honestly would've been more diplomatic at that point for him to recite the lyrics to, my neck, my back, parenthesis, lick it, by Kaya.

My neck, my back, lick my pussy, and my crack.

Johnson's time in the Foreign Office was littered with gaffes, as this journalist explained with the help of a visual aid.

I've spoken to 1 figure who said that working with Boris Johnson is like walking a few feet behind a horse, shoveling its shit.

Although I'm not really sure why that journalist felt the need to be next to a horse to deliver it.

How did he pitch that to the stable owner?

Look, I'm just worried that people have forgotten what horses look like.

So please stand aside while I humiliate your animal on the news.

And the problem is, if Johnson messes up the Brexit negotiation, the pileup of shit could be considerable here.

As most economists believe, a no-deal Brexit would cause a deep recession, and the EU may be extra immune to Boris' charms.

Remember, he was a key figure in the Brexit campaign and has lied about them for decades in his newspaper columns, on top of which, he has privately referred to the French as turds, and publicly compared the EU to Hitler.

So, he's not working with a lot of goodwill at this point.

And Boris has made extravagant, unkeepable promises, including that he will somehow devise a way to sever Northern Ireland from the EU without creating a hard border with Ireland.

And EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker has responded pretty clearly to them.

Juncker reiterated that the EU's position that the withdrawal agreement is the best and only agreement possible.

In other words, Juncker said no to Johnson.

So Johnson is shit out of luck at this point.

His bumbling charm may work wonders in low-stakes situations, but that's not where he is now.

Hugh Grant is delightful in romantic comedies.

The stammering, the hesitation, the inability to relate to his immediate surroundings with any level of competence.

You want to see Hugh Grant in 4 Weddings and a Funeral, but no 1 wants to see him in United 93.

Because the context would make his character a lot less charming.

Sorry, I just, well, this is a really stupid question, but particularly in view of your recent jihad.

But I just wondered if by any chance, in the words of David Cassidy, when he was still with the Partridge family, I believe, you might be persuaded to, should Allah will it, obviously, land this plague.

Allah, as I believe you say it, kapar, because...

Because Johnson cannot get what he wants or has promised here.

And his only hope of avoiding complete catastrophe is through focus, discipline, and detail.

1 of his great plans for mitigating the potentially catastrophic effects of a no-deal Brexit is to suggest that if the UK misses that October deadline, it could simply trade freely with the EU under Article 24, paragraph 5B of this existing trade agreement.

But, and You do not need to know the details of this.

The very next paragraph, 5C, makes it clear that that is simply not possible.

And just watch as a journalist who actually understood that challenged Johnson on it.

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Boris Johnson: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)