Prince Harry and Boris Johnson are more alike than you might think – can you spot the difference?
Think you can tell the two apart? Take our quiz below
I’ve thought for some time that Boris Johnson and our Lochinvar in California, the Duke of Sussex, are almost brothers in arms. For one thing, they both think the Government has hit “rock bottom”. Boris’s feelings of hatred toward Rishi Sunak, or anyone with the temerity to be prime minister, are remarkably similar to Harry’s avowed contempt for some of Britain’s institutions.
Moreover, both would like to blow everything to smithereens. Boris has morphed into the Harry of Westminster, with a morbid baggage of hysterical paranoia, wounded vanity, and the conviction that nothing is ever his fault.
Strange as they may seem as fellow pikesmen, royal biographer Ingrid Seward once commented that Harry was “The Boris Johnson of the Royal family.” There is even a suggestion that the former prime minister is related to the Duke of Sussex through George II.
Old Etonians both, and attended to by nannies, they shone first as professional buffoons. Now they are professional victims, an undignified profession for middle-aged men. But no one actually conspires against Boris or Harry. They don’t need to. After a time, they arouse such uncontrollable irritation, that you wish they’d disappear.
The latest thwarting of Boris’s desire to be King of the World has turned him into an almost deranged exile in his own country, with a persecution mania so extreme he should follow Harry’s example and seek therapy (though perhaps not with the same therapist).
Both Harry and Boris worship at their own flames; Harry has his “truth”, Boris has his messiah complex. Despite Johnson being a global elitist who, as he once told me, despises democracy, he still convinces the remaining members of his cult that he holds his puissance, and is the only “true” Tory.
Not that he has been true in his entire life. Boris is the best liar we have ever had as prime minister, and that is some distinction. But if Harry has never had an actual idea, Johnson has seldom had a Tory one, or a deep or enlightening thought.
Both make the mistake of thinking they have something meaningful to say, when they are more suited to entertainment. Harry, arguably, has had more success as a writer (Spare was the fastest selling non-fiction book in history), and commands more greenbacks as a speaker, but Boris might give him a run for his money if he pulled himself together.
Born in the US, Johnson believes in the dreams of lucre. The love of money, natural in a prince, now runs in his veins like a bacterial sickness. He was always stingy. When I knew him, his idea of a treat was Pizza Express, which, admittedly, is more Andrew than Harry. Living off the largesse of others, a very Harry habit, it seems has recently enabled Boris to buy a £3 million house in Oxfordshire.
Then there is the lure of beauty. The meretricious charms of a fair one has caused both men travails. Carrie is, in many ways, an aspirant Meghan. She, too, persuaded her husband of the woke virtues: carbon net zero, animal rights, conservation, sustainable fashion. I hear she intends to launch her own lifestyle blog, modelled on Markle’s The Tig. “Carrie loves Meghan, and wants to be a global icon,” said a former Downing Street aide. “She wanted to be like the Princess of Wales, but that was taking it a bit too far.”
Pity them, still. We speak of broken people. Harry lost his mother when he was 12 and claims to have had an unsatisfactory father. You could say that Boris’s parents were mislaid. The Johnsons lived in Devon, but Stanley Johnson was often away, pursuing a career, while Boris’s mother left the marriage. Boris has always been subject to feelings of worthlessness and the nip of the Black Dog. A plump Falstaff in public, in private he is more of an Iago; brooding, unforgiving and covetous.
Boris and Harry possess a determination that is almost awe inspiring. They cannot bear the thought that the world may have ceased to love them and their respective fat ladies have sung.
Boris occupies the wasteland of Knightsbridge like Jimmy Cagney, firing his grievances at hostile comers, and hinting of the massacre to come. Harry glares across the Atlantic from the 50 shades of green that is Montecito. But which of them is the real irrelevance, or indeed, “the spare?“
In politics, the focus always pulls away and even Churchill spent his last years cruising on Aristotle Onassis’s yacht. Boris has become the Tory that not even Tory voters want anymore, according to a new poll. Rishi Sunak, who wears the crown for the time being, appears a diligent, dependable older brother by comparison. For Boris and Harry are man-children, not grown-ups. The fairies at their christenings gave them much, but withheld wisdom and maturity. Boris can turn tricks, but he has never learned to be wise. He has no appreciation of the nature of modern democracy, and believes he has a divine right to rule, rather like a royal.
Disliking cabinet government, and pathologically intolerant of competition, from the very beginning of his disastrous premiership Boris appointed nodding marionettes to the highest offices of state. Those who have worked for Harry see the similarities. “He could be charming, but he seldom took advice,” says a childhood friend. Human beings are sort of one-lunged animals. If they show one valuable quality, it is almost unheard of for them to show another. Give someone a head, and they lack a heart. Give them a heart of ten-gallon capacity, and their head holds scarcely a pint.
The qualities Boris possesses, and which allowed him to reach the top of his profession, also sowed the seeds of his eventual downfall. He has been the most sedulous fly catcher in recent history, but his quarry was Homo Neanderthalensis. Wherever the bilge of nostalgia ran in the veins, he set his traps. But inside Westminster, his attributes were less desirable. It’s the misprision thing. I should point out that Boris never intends to lie or conceal. It is involuntary, and he can no more help it than he can help breathing.
In America, they are more forgiving. The populous desert of US politics is filled with men like Boris, who despised the dreary and bent the truth where the campfires of superstition and susceptibility flamed and guttered. Like the Duke of Sussex, his sensibilities are more attuned to those of the New World, the home of the soap opera and the melodrama.
Neither Boris and Harry are real. To sensible Britons, they often seem born in the mind of some Hollywood producer. We may enjoy the show, but we don’t like perpetual, self aggrandising encores.
