That moment when you confront a fraud, they agree the game is over – you caught me! - but they never acknowledge the damage done. Even as you show them the door, they quote the mass of people who fell for the scheme as evidence of their success. Never once apologizing to those duped, for the energy and resources they wasted on his merry dance. They chose me, he boasts—still believing that cunning should be rewarded above honesty.

If this ever happened to you at school, you’ll maybe remember that the brief moment of triumph, when a fraud or bully was called out, is short lived. Pretty soon after, he’d do it again or someone else similar would rise to take his place. Deep inside, your faith in the school system to adequately deal with bullies disappears.

More dismaying was the ongoing ease with which the schemer could have their way with the classroom. People kept falling for his charm and the manipulative powers of his humour. Or the ability to make light of things that matter to the weaker or more vulnerable people in the room.

If that person is your Prime Minister, it becomes vital that the impact of such fraudulence is spelt out, because lives are at stake - particularly at a moment in history when the stakes are so high. Every decision made by the head of the fifth largest economy in the world (third, if cross ranked with GDP per capita) is going to impact the fate of the planet, specifically the human species. Every lie told by the Mother of Parliaments in the most influential language in the world will shape thinking – for good or bad – the planet over.

When Boris Johnson resigned the Premiership on July 7th, 2022, he laid bare not only his duplicitous nature but the impact of that over his time in office. To ward off those who might think this is conspiracy theory – the idea, for example, that he lied methodically like Mussolini – we might refine the terms of our charge. Johnson’s behaviour was more opportunistic, reaching for the lie that would give him power over others. Saying whatever was needed to win the vote, however undeliverable that promise was. Johnson had few powers of discrimination between right and wrong; he always prioritized winning at all costs.

Many will remember the infamous Brexit Bus which knowingly misled the public on how much UK revenue was being spent on the EU every week – a figure that was then promised to the NHS after we left Europe. A wizard wheeze—but not remotely deliverable. Promising to Get Brexit Done has also not proved easy to do: the Northern Irish protocol remains an obstacle to this day.

Others will recall the promise to ‘level up’ Great Britain – redistribute resources from the affluent to the long-term poor towns and cities. These are the promises that helped him, in 2019, to win over swathes of life-long Labour voters. In the ensuing years, it was Tory councils that benefited from the money. This isn’t levelling up, it’s bribery. Having touted himself as the champion of climate change in Cop 26, Johnson did not hesitate to switch back to fossil fuel priority when the war with Russia broke out. He says whatever is needed at the time, switching priorities whenever he’s in need of a popularity boost.

But this is not about Johnson’s failures to deliver on his pledges, which were many and manifest, detailed here – that is a debate for party politics. No administration escapes this kind of reckoning. Nor it this simply about the claims to success he made in his outgoing speech, which do not add up when fact checked. Our focus is more on the impact of running such an opportunist government at times of great consequence.

The ‘brave’ commitment to going it alone in the world—freeing up the UK to cut free from Europe and pivot to the wider global market—was only an aspiration, not a clear choice. To date we have only managed to replace those trade deals we already had with Europe, but on worse terms. There is no new deal with the US (why would they) or China – the latter unlikely to happen on principle. Instead we find ourselves with all the problems of loss of workers and markets, along with the costs of extra legislation. Compounded by the disruption of Covid, Britain now finds itself with the highest inflation in Europe.

But as a corollary, these actions have also undermined important relationships – the trust between countries in the EU – not only with the UK but with each other too.

Although many say Johnson ‘made the right calls’ on Covid and Russia, will history see it that way? Before the vaccination, Britain made grave misjudgments leading to the highest death rate in Europe for a period of time. How ironic that Johnson was recommending ‘herd immunity’ in the early days of his Premiership and blaming ‘herd instinct’ for his resignation at the end.

On Russia, it remains to be seen whether or not his stance will prove to be most helpful to the Ukrainian people. No one should question the humanitarian response to a country that’s been so brutally invaded. But is the insistence on NATO’s growth the right strategy – given Russia’s long history as a geopolitical outsider? What are the peace prospects of the future? We never explore them beyond the old and failed theory of containment.

Western reliance on the miliary industrial complex and fossil fuels, as cornerstones of the global economy, remains an obstacle to peace. Certainly, any channeling of Winston Churchill or revelling in the challenge from Putin sets the wrong tone for a world trying to evolve away from violence. Not to mention the existential peril of nuclear bombs in the mix.

Behind both Brexit and the war in Europe is the bigger prospect of threatening the ‘rules based international system’ (RBIS) - the international norms, laws and institutions that have helped to shape, influence and regulate relations between countries since the end of the Second World War. When David Cameron originally offered the referendum on the European Union, he either ignored or was ignorant of the difficulty the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement would present to the result. For those who were paying attention, it was predictable that Brexit could not be legally delivered right from the start. It may be that Cameron’s misplaced confidence in a Remain vote – reinforced by his victory in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 - allowed him to overlook it.

However, there can be no such excuse for Boris Johnson. By the time he was promising to “Get Brexit Done” the brick wall was clearly visible. He tried to get round it in several ways but there was no way to avoid resuscitating the animosity on both sides of the Irish border that the Peace Agreement had resolved. And indeed, there have already been momentous shifts in the political settlement between the Republic and Northern Ireland since then.

Most recently however, Johnson went a step further. When warned by the US, UN and the EU that forcing through any legislation designed to put the Irish problem aside would be illegal, he refused to back down. At that moment, without any explicit backing from the government or the electorate, Johnson put the UK above the RBIS, for the sake of his personal popularity at home. We might ask: isn’t this very similar to the behaviour he ascribes to Putin?

This willingness to act in the face of global institutions to achieve only partisan gains within a nation is what makes Johnson similar to Trump—a wild card, dangerously self-obsessed, unable to see the impact of his willfulness. At best, a global player, willing to take a punt (“them’s the breaks”, he quipped at the podium last week) and fuelled by populism. At worst he’s a child—one that’s trapped in extreme privilege, willing to take the world down with him.

But like the disillusioned victims of the playground bully, no longer able to trust the school system to protect us, we too must question the political systems that keep throwing up such leaders. At the sharp end we are talking about a first past the post mechanism plus the mainstream news media model. Combined, they result in elections becoming a choice between two personalities. In this reality, charm and promises play too large a part in the decision-making of voters.

But in the wider context of a growth economy that makes everything about numbers and speed, the crucial elements of wisdom, insight and patience are lost. And in the social context of inequality, monoculture and patriarchy, we find it hard to see and promote the new kind of talent that leadership now requires.

Maybe most crucially: as long as there are no social structures that can, using the tools of the internet age, develop and organize the growing agency of individuals, we appear chaotic – even to ourselves. Our lives are not our own and we will keep choosing Prime Ministers who promise us a world that they have taught us to want. The one that is killing us.

Whoever succeeds the joker Boris Johnson as PM, let’s be clear. We don’t need any more undeliverable promises; we need to divert our gaze. To shift our attention to the new ways of being and acting together – cosmolocally – that help us to become stronger and more creative as we face the future. Despite Johnson’s clownfall, that’s where the real fun begins.

Alternative Editorial: Charm and Promises