Johnson and Macron have been saved by Ukraine

So, it turns out that when he first sat down with Vladimir Putin at that famous long table in Moscow, France’s Emmanuel Macron thought the Russian leader was, at heart, a good European whose motivations could best be measured against the writings of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. 

This, at any rate, is the story doing the rounds in Paris, and it may not be that far from the truth. 

Boris Johnson, by contrast, would have seen Putin through the prism of his classical education and looked more to Cicero’s warnings concerning the death of the Republic and the emergence of dictatorship. 

Given the events of the last seven days, most independent observers would say that Johnson got it right while Macron got lost in a romantic haze. 

But given also that neither the French nor the British leader foresaw the invasion of Ukraine and that they were equally unable to do anything to prevent it, the distinction is moot. All that can reasonably be said is that the pair have ended up on the same page, on which might be discerned Cicero’s O tempora, O mores as well as references to both War and Peace and Crime and Punishment. 

The fact is that Macron and Johnson, though very different in style and temperament, have been liberated, even reset, by what has happened in Ukraine.    

Three months ago, Macron was looking ahead with trepidation to this spring’s presidential elections, the first round of which will be held on 10 April. His first term in office had been blighted by a series of unforeseen events. First there were the gilets-jaunes, genuine working-class populists, whose uprising struck at the heart of the President’s near-fatal self-regard. Next, the trade unions, backed by both the hard left and the far right, took to the streets to protest his controversial plans to increase working hours and reduce public sector pensions. Finally, Covid-19 hit, exposing a government woefully ignorant of what had to be done. 

Macron – reviled for his arrogance, slapped in the chops by an indignant protester – eventually came through, aided by the fact that the pandemic was eventually brought under control and the surprise revelation that the French economy had come out the other side in good shape. But no sooner had he moved into recovery mode than he was thrown by the choice of Valerie Pécresse, head of the Île de France regional council, as candidate for the centre-right Republicans.

Pécresse was bright, attractive and an experienced administrator. She was also the first woman, other than the perennially frustrated Marine Le Pen, to stand a real chance of making it to the Élysée. Her problem, through no fault of her own, was that, gender aside, she was without a unique sales proposition. Worse, she lacked pizzaz. At a time when the Right’s appeal was being stretched to breaking point by the noisy feud between Le Pen and the still more extreme Éric Zemmour, Pécresse totally failed to blaze her own trail. The far-right were dismissive of her cynical attempts to cash in on the key issues of Islam and immigration, while more traditional conservatives struggled to see her as anything other than Macron-Lite. 

It was a given that in the first round of the presidentials, Macron would be the winner. What was much less certain was how he would fare against the surviving candidate from the right, whether Pécresse or, more likely, Le Pen. 

But then along came Vladimir Putin with his will-he-won’t-he plan to invade Ukraine. It was time for Macron to shed his party clothes and act presidential. While his appearance as the patsy at Putin’s big table had its comic aspect, there was no doubting his seriousness of purpose. 

As far as the French public was concerned, it was their President, not the British Prime Minister or the German Chancellor, still less America’s Joe Biden, who was straining every sinew in the pursuit of peace. Yes, it didn’t work out, and in the end it came to nothing. But at least he was in there slugging, which was more than could be said for his rivals. Just as important, it was he to whom Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled leader, later turned as his ongoing conduit to the Kremlin. 

Macron as statesman, risen above the vulgar fray of political infighting, was now a man indifferent to his fate, concerned only to bring peace to the world. 

He wasn’t the only one. At the same time, in Downing Street, the same magic was taking effect, but from a very different starting point. Two weeks ago, Boris Johnson was finished. He may have Got Brexit Done, but, by common consent, his principal supporting role in Partygate, the Tories’ very own lockdown drama, combined with the general realisation that if he ever told the truth it was by accident, had made his removal from office just a matter of time. 

Instead – hey presto! – Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine and Johnson’s rehabilitation was at once underway. Partygate? Be serious. Posh wallpaper for the Downing Street flat? Do me a favour. Contracts for cronies? Questioned by Plod? Well, pardon me for breathing while I get on with my mission to save Europe from Putin’s hordes. 

Gone was the Johnson of Africans as “piccaninnies,” Muslim women as “letter-boxes” and gay men as “tank-topped bum-boys”. No more would his response to criticism from abroad be, “Prenez un grip” and “Donnez-moi un break”. In place of Cartoon Boris was Bulldog Johnson, who wouldn’t rest until Ukraine was freed and Putin was up before the beak in The Hague. Like Prince Hal unexpectedly elevated to the throne after years as the nation’s number one rascal, Bojo was now in pursuit of Agincourt, if not the Holy Grail. 

The irony is that he is actually pretty good at being serious. He would genuinely like to help the people of Ukraine and make Putin answer for his crimes. It’s just that being serious is not his default position and there is always the chance that he will accidentally revert to type and introduce slapstick into tragedy. 

Shakespeare would have known how to put it: two leaders unalike in dignity, fated like star-crossed rivals to open themselves anew to the world’s scrutiny. Can they carry it off? Will their commitment to a better world produce lasting results? We can only hope.