The Churchillian Factor

Henry Platt is a third year reading History at Exeter College.

With repetitive calls to “beat the enemy” and vows to “win this fight,” Boris has aspired to compare the challenges of the COVID crisis to the struggles of war. Aside from rallying the Blitz spirit, Boris presumably appreciates the opportunity to recall and channel the memory of his great hero, Winston Churchill.

Cloaking oneself in the legacy of Churchill is not particularly novel for a Conservative, as Boris himself noted: “the Tories are jealous of their relation with Churchill. It is a question of badging, of political ownership. They think of him as the people of Parma think of the formaggio parmigiano.” Perhaps inspired by a belief that he too “walks with destiny,” Boris has strived to establish and maintain a connection to Churchill that extends beyond leadership of the Conservatives. Indeed, Boris may perceive an analogy to charges leveled at Churchill of “being a spoilt, bullying, double-crossing, self-centered bore,” and those made, from time to time, of his own character (aside from being a bore, of course). Dismayed at this indictment, Boris, in The Churchill Factor, offers to rise to Churchill’s, and thereby their collective, defense. In his self-appointed role as “counsel for the defense,” Boris contends that his hero rose above any petty grievances with character by his ability, mainly through speeches and sheer force of will, to slay both spineless Conservatives (a charge wholly unfit for modern Tories, much less the distinguished members of OUCA) and also perfidious foreigners. 

In this sense, Boris invites the public to view him as the heir to or, perhaps more fittingly, the reincarnation of, his and our collective, hero. Let us indulge our PM and endeavor to compare the management of his war (admittedly the war metaphor for COVID is more than a bit forced) to his hero’s leadership during the war.  With an eye to avoiding any banal and laborious discussion of the differences in character between the two men, let us focus on how these two wartime leaders measure in their public addresses and their leadership of spineless party members. 

A peerless wordsmith with a remarkable talent for melding emotive language with evocative imagery, Churchill stands, rather understandably, for Boris, and I expect much of the public, as “the most glorious political speaker of any age”.  Of his innumerable and varied attributes, Churchill indeed prized, above all, his command of language, writing in his political career: “of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is as precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king.” Churchill demonstrated, I would argue, that the “gift of oratory” is more “durable” than that of any temporal power. Indeed, we remember, long after its close, the war not just for its death, destruction and countless individual acts of bravery, but also for his words; they linger in our collective consciousness and we return to them to recall the horrors and triumphs of that conflict. Churchill’s orations leave an indelible impression on the listener and indeed on the country not only for their capacity to capture emotion, but for their ability to encourage the country to continue on a clearly defined and prescribed course. Indeed, “we will fight them on the beaches”, through its powerful repetition, appealed not only to the courage and grit of the nation, but also to clearly command the country to carry on until victory was secured. Churchill’s speeches succeeded in the moment and remained relevant long after their day for their capacity to both capture the national mood and channel the country’s energies into a clearly defined course of action. 

While an inherently unfair comparison, for no one could even aspire to match Churchill’s command of the English language, Boris, in spite of his efforts to echo his hero, has failed to similarly inspire the nation or to prescribe a clear course of action in his addresses throughout the current crisis. In spite of his evocations of war in his speeches on the virus, Boris, perhaps in part due to the unfitting nature of such a metaphor, has failed to rally the nation. Calls for “us all to summon the discipline, and the resolve, and the spirit of togetherness,” while fine in their own right, fail (at least if we look at the behavioral response to such speeches) to unite the country behind a common cause. Perhaps this failure is due to the lack of a clear course of action. With speeches littered with modifiers and conditionals, listeners, or at least this one, find themselves less inspired to unite together towards a common goal and more confused about the specifics of the government’s plan (and I use that word tentatively).  

  Boris rightly celebrates his hero’s slaying of spineless members of his own party. Betraying a peculiar affinity for cheese metaphors (recall the earlier reference to parmesan), Boris denounces Tory appeasers as “stilton-eating surrender monkeys.” Unmoved by calls from members of his government to negotiate with Hitler, Churchill, wisely understanding the expediency of such a measure would only guarantee future misery, remained committed to his determination to see through the Nazi threat or, failing that, “[lie] choking in his own blood upon the ground.” Boris presumably sees parallels between the dissent of Halifax and his allies and the constant backbench rebellions bedeviling his own government. However, inasmuch as his actions on suppressing the virus offer only expediency at the cost of likely future misery, Boris finds himself sharing much more in common with Halifax than his hero. To avoid appearing as “a stilton-eating surrender monkey” himself, Boris should heed the wisdom of his backbenchers and pursue a Churchillian response which understands that the short-term pain of the virus pales in comparison to future misery resulting from a cycle of continual lockdowns. 

Boris may yet find salvation. His hero endured several public and humiliating setbacks. However, after each failure, he returned to his motto of “keep buggering on” and to his core beliefs. At heart, a libertarian (or, at least an opponent of the nanny-state) and pragmatist, Boris, I trust, will find perhaps not in Churchillian speeches but rather in the self-belief and conviction of his hero, the means from which to extract himself and the country from the depths of this crisis.