Two showmen depart

Few die and none resign, as Thomas Jefferson noted. But two men who have enlivened, or perhaps blighted, the politics of western Europe over the last thirty years have just departed from the scene.

First was the resignation from parliament of Boris Johnson. Johnson spent three years as Britain’s prime minister, and prior to that had spent two terms as mayor of London and two years as foreign secretary. But his achievements in office, while significant, will probably take second place in the historical record to his role as an agitator: as a reporter and columnist for the Daily Telegraph, and as a leader of the campaign to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum.

The constants in Johnson’s career were the love of controversy and the complete lack of loyalty to anything beyond himself. He made a name for himself as the purveyor of (mostly fake) horror stories about the European Union, helping to convert the Conservative Party to Europhobia. When the referendum came, he picked his side on the basis of what would best advance his political interests, with no apparent thought to what was good for the country.

That, of course, was on the (widely shared) assumption that the “leave” side would lose. Instead he was left, as I said at the time, in “silent horror that something that started out as a lark had actually borne fruit and taken him prisoner.” But although the road was a rocky one, he was eventually able to parlay the referendum result into the prime ministership, making him the man who “got Brexit done” – before his ultimate and inevitable disgrace and deposition.

On that occasion I summed up in a way that still seems true and important; the lesson of Johnson’s career is above all a lesson for commentators:

It’s an old saying that the problem with political jokes is that sometimes they get elected. The great failing in the Johnson story is not that he was a joker, but that so many people who knew that none­theless supported him, because they thought that a good joke was more important than good policy, or honesty, or integrity.

Johnson may not intend his departure to be permanent; it’s quite likely that he has his eye on some sort of comeback, although its chances would be slim. No such option though for Silvio Berlusconi, media tycoon, playboy and three time prime minister of Italy, who died yesterday at the age of 86. He had been ill for some months with complications from chronic leukemia.

There are obvious similarities with Johnson. Like him, Berlusconi was mostly out for himself; both pioneered a style of politics that the media love to call “populism” – or perhaps “right-wing populism” – and have been fingered as precursors of Donald Trump. Trump’s recent indictments make the comparison with Berlusconi even more apt: the latter spent much of his final decade defending himself from assorted prosecutions and lawsuits, although only one (for which he performed community service) ever reached a final conviction.

But Berlusconi was a much more serious political player than either Johnson or Trump. Unlike Johnson, he loved wealth and power more than he loved making trouble; unlike Trump, he had the ability to succeed in pursuing them. His reorientation of the Italian party system has had lasting effects, although there are doubts as to what will happen to his party without him.

It may be partly a difference in national cultures, but it’s noteworthy how many personal tributes have been paid to Berlusconi since yesterday, of a sort that it’s very hard to imagine for either Johnson or Trump. Unlike them, he seems to have had the ability to inspire loyalty in a number of different quarters; he too was a rogue, but a more likeable one.

One tribute, however, stands out: Vladimir Putin was unstinting in his praise of his “true friend”. Like Trump, but quite unlike Johnson (who as prime minister was one of the most forthright supporters of Ukraine), Berlusconi stayed loyal to that friendship, opposing sanctions against Russia and cheerfully delivering the Kremlin’s talking points on the Ukraine war.

Centre-right parties across Europe, whatever their other problems, have mostly been solid in standing up to Putin over the last year or two. Berlusconi is the exception, even within his own party; instead in Italy it is post-Fascist prime minister Georgia Meloni, with whom Berlusconi ended up in coalition, who has led the pro-Ukraine tendency.

But in contrast to Trump, Berlusconi never seemed to want to govern as a Putinist. His governments pursued normal centre-right policies; he bent the rules to try to avoid legal trouble for himself, but not to establish an authoritarian regime. As I said a decade ago, “his abuses of power were mostly about personal gain rather than persecution of his opponents.”

History will have much to say about him, mostly critical. But it is only fair to note, as I did back in 2010, that the playboys are not our biggest problem:

Compared to many less corrupt and more principled leaders, the harm that Berlusconi has done barely registers.

George W Bush and Tony Blair never took bribes or cavorted with prostitutes, but they caused untold human suffering and laid waste whole countries. Our own John Howard, faced with a refugee problem several orders of magnitude less than Italy’s, chose to thumb his nose at international law in a way that horrified European opinion.

The demonstrators on the streets of Rome may not appreciate the point, but when it comes to politics, the corrupt are the least of our worries.