Boris Johnson on the 2003 Iraq War
Boris Johnson was Editor of the Spectator at the time of the 2003 Iraq War and hardly surprisingly for an organ of the Tory right the magazine supported the war. Not particularly surprisingly, given its often quirky take on matters, it was also critical of George W Bush.
A more personal and revealing perspective on Johnson’s actual view of the Iraq War can be found in his novel Seventy Two Virgins. The central figure in the book as his biographer Sonia Purnell notes is a middle-aged Tory MP Roger Barlow. She also notes that ‘the similarities between Boris and Barlow are too numerous to dismiss’.
In a review of the book Douglas Hurd pointed out that ‘the book even mocks in turn ‘every possible attitude’ to the Iraq War.
20 years on this seems very much in line with Johnson’s later positions on just about everything. It didn’t really matter to him whether Britain supported the war. Any position would do depending on which suited his personal ambitions the best
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