Boris Johnson's new Ukraine documentary proves a very simple lesson in politics

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

A friend of mine called it back in 2013: “Boris Johnson will be prime minister, you watch. People vote for someone they can recognise.” Were we talking about the same person? The befuddled, hair-ruffled, pantomimically posh buffoon more suited to a circus than any corridors of power? I’ll put my pen down and let the next sentence write itself…

And so it came to pass. Johnson became our premier, a leader who refused to take anything too seriously, from Peppa Pig to lockdown parties, offering one-man proof that being an instinctively great communicator is an essential facet of 21st-century power, but far from the only one.

Now, four years after his ignominious exit from Number Ten, he steps into his third act, travelling as a self-described “journalist” to the battlefields of Ukraine for the 5 documentary Boris Johnson: into Ukraine’s Kill Zone. While his attempts at foreign policy were more hindrance than help for many, from Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to pretty much everybody in Africa, the one place he never wavered was Ukraine, so it is a fitting locale for his first foray into post-PM primetime.

The documentary makes its position clear from the off: this is Johnson’s own, highly subjective perspective on show. Some observers may wish The Daily Telegraph had included a similar caveat in his pre-Brexit reports on the EU and rules concerning the shape of bananas, but we are where we are.

Johnson begins, unseen, providing voiceover narration detailing a horrendous Russian attack on a Ukrainian passenger train. It’s brutal footage, but Johnson’s voice is too distinctive for its own good. We’ve heard so many vagaries, disseminations and quips delivered in those same uniquely plummy Eton tones, it can sometimes be hard to believe him, though even he can only be playing this one straight.

Scenes of him in Ukraine are far better, as he settles into a straightforward telling of the human cost of war. Accompanied by his generously credited team, Johnson meets soldiers standing in snow shooting down Russian drones. He visits a makeshift hospital and a supermarket that refuses to close its doors even with missiles flying overhead. He meets church officials who haven’t been told which VIP to expect. “We were hoping for Yvette Cooper,” they tell him. “Sorry to let you down,” he replies with some winning King Charles-esque side-eye.

But when he reaches the front line – specifically the bomb factory where soldiers make plastic explosives and land mines, what they call “toe poppers” – even Johnson doesn’t have the stomach for a gag. His cheekiness, when it does emerge (eating someone else’s Snickers bar, complaining about a housemate’s snores), is a good match for the gallows humour of the men around him. Even as he struggles to put on a flak jacket, the environment bestows its own Boris-proof dignity. He’s a long way from a dangling zip wire.

“I’ve not forgotten the UK’s promise to this country,” he says, reminding viewers of this rare unblemished mark on his political record. Many a politician has travelled to Kyiv for a filmed handshake with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy; anybody who goes further east and south merits admiration for their courage.

Whether this is Johnson’s definitive career pivot, or merely a primetime pitstop between past and future tilts at power, it’s effective. And while Ukraine slips ever further down the news agenda after more than four years of war, the country could have a far worse ambassador for its cause. Sometimes it pays to be someone people recognise.

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Boris Johnson: Into Ukraine’s Kill Zone airs at 9pm on Friday 24 July on 5.

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