Will Boris Johnson deliver Brexit? Critics say new U.K. PM has 'been making up fiction' for decades
Johnson campaigned on the promise of liberating Britain from EU by Oct. 31
Boris Johnson handily won the Conservative leadership race on Tuesday and will succeed Theresa May as U.K. prime minister within a day.
But will he be able to lead Britain out of the shadow of one of the most turbulent junctures in its post-Second World War history?
Anne Applebaum, global opinions columnist for The Washington Post, believes his reputation for bombast and bending the truth elevated his campaign to success.
She warned, however, he won't have the legs to enact real change amid the Brexit stalemate.
"The oddity is that he's continued. He's been making up stories, he's been making up fiction for many decades that I believe the Conservative Party is now voting for him not despite that, but because of it," she told The Current's guest host Anthony Germain.
"They want somebody to make them feel better. They want someone to say, 'It's going to be OK.' And that is really the only rationale for choosing someone like that to be their leader and then, of course, the prime minister."
Journalist Ian Dunt believes the party has voted to "put a giant clown face on top of the country" who won't be able to deliver on his campaign promises.
Despite this, he cautioned that Johnson is not to be underestimated.
He's kind of pulling the strings of this clown persona in order to pursue a political agenda.- Ian Dunt, editor of politics.co.uk
"Even his very closest allies will constantly say, 'Oh, you know, he's very clever. He's very smart,' which is implicit in this idea that he's kind of pulling the strings of this clown persona in order to pursue a political agenda," said Dunt, editor of politics.co.uk and author of Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?
"He's always had sort of self-interest at the heart, but he's quite canny at knowing exactly when to step away from power, when to fire shots at a prime minister, when to utilize this idea of simplicity."
Johnson worked as a longtime columnist for the Daily Telegraph from Brussels, before entering politics in 2001. He's served two terms as London mayor, sandwiched between two stints as a Conservative MP.
'He won the party but not the country'
According to CBC's senior correspondent Susan Ormiston, winning might have been the easy part for Johnson.
"He's won the party but not the country," she said, pointing out the Opposition Labour Party was swift in its response to his win.
Minutes after the announcement, shadow chancellor John McDonnell, the second most powerful figure in the party, took aim at the new leader. He wrote on Twitter that Johnson's victory speech was "excruciatingly and embarrassingly underwhelming."
This first Johnson speech is excruciatingly and embarrassingly underwhelming. It was a like an ill prepared after dinner speech at the local golf club.
—@johnmcdonnellMPBrexit: Johnson's rise and potential fall
Throughout the campaign, Johnson repeatedly promised to lead a liberated United Kingdom out of the European Union with or without a deal — "do or die" — by Halloween.
His leadership victory now catapults Britain toward a constitutional crisis as lawmakers have pledged to bring down any government that tries to leave the bloc without a divorce deal.
Brexit has already toppled two Conservative prime ministers: David Cameron in 2016 and May in 2019.
Dunt predicts that Johnson's time will be no different, thanks to the tortuous negotiations with the EU that lie ahead.
"I think we'll be in exactly the same situation that we've been in so far," he said.
Further, the incoming prime minister may find that vow hard to keep.
"There's lots of great stuff about global Britain and the future, but there's never any actual explanation of what he is going to do and how he's going to do it," Applebaum said.
"It's almost like he's offering [Conservative Party members], you know, look, if you wish hard enough, if you want it to happen hard enough, we can make it better."
The chances that Britain's 27 EU partners would consider reopening the legally binding divorce agreement appear thin at best.
Johnson's Conservatives also have a slim majority in Parliament.
In order to get back to Brussels and make changes to the 585-page Brexit deal, the Conservatives will need the support of 10 lawmakers from Northern Ireland's Brexit-backing Democratic Unionist Party — an "insurance policy," as Dunt calls it — to help round out their numbers.
Even then, Dunt paints Johnson's plan as a long shot.
"I mean, every option has been blocked off and not just by reality, and not just by Brussels, and not just by MPs; they've been blocked off by [Johnson's] rhetoric," he said.
"So on that basis, it's very hard — and I think you'd have to be very optimistic — to think they could come out with a better outcome than the previous prime minister."
Written by Amara McLaughlin, with files from Thomson Reuters. Produced by Adam Killick and Imogen Birchard.