Boris Johnson always wanted to be Churchill, but this is the wrong kind of war

Boris Johnson has made some good speeches since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine seven days ago. He has spoken in the Commons, he has addressed Ukrainians in their Catholic cathedral in London, and he gave a speech this morning in Poland.

Three speeches; three different responses. In parliament, he was given unstinting support by his own MPs, who only a month ago had been on the verge of voting him out of office. The only criticism came from Keir Starmer, for the opposition, who said he had not gone far enough in applying economic sanctions to the Putin regime.

In the cathedral, where he said “I am not a great preacher” before launching into “the story in the gospel” of the Samaritan, he was greeted with a standing ovation and chants of, “thank you, thank you.” And then in Warsaw this morning, he was asked why he wouldn’t enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine by a tearful Ukrainian journalist who accused him of being afraid. He listened and explained, as mournfully as he could, that it would not be a good idea for the UK to go to war with Russia, and that it was Putin and Putin alone who must bear responsibility for the tragedy unfolding in Europe.

They were good speeches, better suited to Johnson’s oratory than many of the speeches he gave during the pandemic. The best of his pandemic speeches was when he had just come out of hospital and paid tribute to the immigrant nurses who had looked after him and the doctors – “several of them for some reason called Nick” – who treated him. In that one he managed to tell a personal and political story of his devotion to the ideal of the National Health Service: “It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.”

But for most of the pandemic, the tension between the prime minister’s liberal instincts and the desire to lead the nation in a total war – against a virus – meant that his message was confused and contradictory.

An actual war ought to be a better subject for Johnson’s Churchillian instincts – instincts that he has never hidden. It was only eight years ago, while he was still mayor of London in 2014, that he wrote The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History. It is a terrible book, put together in a hurry, and padded out by awarding “Churchill Factor” ratings out of 10 to all and sundry, but its message could not have been more obvious. I am a man of destiny, it said, ready to be called from the wilderness to save my country in its hour of need.

In a way, that is what Johnson did, for the narrow majority of his fellow citizens who voted to leave the EU. But that didn’t turn out to be a moment of moral clarity akin to standing alone against the Nazis. It turned out to be rather difficult, complicated and bureaucratic, and our Churchillian prime minister seemed rather bored by customs declarations.

Now, though, we have a war in Europe, a war of national survival. But it is a war of national survival for Ukraine, not Britain, and Britain is prevented by the reality of nuclear deterrence from direct military intervention. Again, the Churchillian template doesn’t fit. This is a war by proxy and by sanctions, fought in the belief that Putin is bound to fail and the UK should do what we can from the outside to make that happen more quickly, while we are unable, as Johnson tried to explain to Daria Kaleniuk, the Ukrainian journalist, to wage war ourselves.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Nor does the Churchillian demand for national sacrifice match the moment. We can see how much Johnson admires Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to whom he seems to speak nearly every day – a leader who is prepared to summon his people to a supreme effort of national resistance. But when it comes to asking the British people to pay a price for solidarity with the Ukrainians, Johnson has been muted.

In the Commons it was Starmer, not the prime minister, who spoke of the “economic pain” that we would have to suffer in order to put meaningful pressure on Putin’s regime. It was only in his speech in Poland today that Johnson declared: “We should recognise that this crisis will impose costs on ourselves and our electorates, that sanctions have consequences for us as well as for Russia, and no step is free of risk.”

That reference to “our electorates” was most un-Churchillian, and a clue to Johnson’s realisation that he is not going to emulate his hero this time, either. The unspoken question behind the rapidly changing foreign policy of not just Britain, but Germany, the US and other Nato allies, is about how much pain the voters in the world’s democracies are prepared to endure, and for how long. It is the question behind cutting the world off from Russian oil and gas, and in a different form, it is the question behind our policies towards Ukrainian refugees.

It is wrong to see refugees as a burden, as several MPs said in the debate in the Commons on the statement by Priti Patel, the home secretary, today, but that is nevertheless how they may be seen if the British people’s generosity is not sustained over the long run.

In his speech in the Ukrainian Catholic cathedral, the prime minister said: “Never in all my study, my memory of politics and international affairs have I seen such a clear distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and dark.” That kind of Churchillian moral clarity may be admirable, but Johnson may be wondering how useful it is as a guide to action.