Sadly we in the United Kingdom are getting all too used to the wind of guff that comes out of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s facehole. Sometimes what Boris Johnson says is entertaining and illuminating such as his use of classical language and references in his put downs of others in the political field which can be put down to the type of high quality rounded education he had and the fact that for years he was a professional wordsmith. But there are other times when his words have had devastating and negative effects on Britain’s economy, society and energy security or just make the country look like a laughing stock.

A good example of the latter where he elicits the response of WTF and speaks utter nonsense comes from some comments he allegedly made to German reporters at the recent G7 conference. He said that Vladimir Putin was an example of ‘toxic masculinity’ and that the Ukraine war would not have happened if ‘Putin had been a woman’.

Sky News said regarding his comments:

He (Johnson) described the conflict as “crazy, macho”, and told German broadcaster ZDF: “If Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn’t, but if he were, I really don’t think he would’ve embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has.

“If you want a perfect example of toxic masculinity, it’s what he’s doing in Ukraine.”

He also suggested that there should be more women in positions of power and added that the West must support Kyiv in its military strategy to help change the dynamic of the conflict, and to get Mr Zelensky “in the best possible position to talk if and when talks eventually come”.

Methinks that Mr Johnson has failed to examine history. He fails to see that there have been female leaders of countries or of political movements that have been just as aggressive, sometimes justifiably and sometimes not, across the span of history. He forgets that the big British revolt against the Romans was led by Boudicca who was a woman or that Elizabeth I was engaged in conflict with the Spanish, that Mary I justifiably earned a reputation for excessive bloodshed or that the British Empire was at its most expansionist during the reign of a female monarch in the form of Queen Victoria. Boris Johnson also seems to forget that one of his predecessors, Margaret Thatcher, fought a defensive war half a world away in the Falkland Islands or that Israel was led by a woman, Golda Meir, at a time when the neighbouring nations wanted to destroy that nation. Laughably Boris Johnson has even appeared to forget that it was the Russian Empress Catherine the Great who expanded the Russian Empire to the South by beating the Crimean Khanate, to the West by seizing the land that now comprises Poland and even managed to expand her empire to Alaska in the Americas.

Boris Johnson also has failed to comprehend that it was Indira Gandhi, a female leader of India who sent troops into the holiest places of the Sikhs and caused much bloodshed and rancour because of that action. He also seems, at least going by his comments to the German media, to be completely unaware that there have existed terrorists and terrorist supporters from Bernadette Devlin through to Leila Khaled in the context of Irish Republican and Palestinian terrorism respectively.

In politics Boris Johnson doesn’t seem to be cognisant with the fact that for many years Germany and by extension the European Union was run by Angela Merkel, a rule that has left Europe with a number of seemingly intractable problems with regards to energy security, excessive migration into Europe and terrorism. Or what about the aforementioned Margaret Thatcher? Apart from the Falklands War her policies turned the UK from a manufacturing nation into a service economy which as we can see now has left the UK reliant on sometimes hostile countries for vital supplies and goods.

Both male and female leaders or countries can be warlike, aggressive or expansionist. For a leader to be such depends not on what genitalia they have but on the political, cultural, religious and economic circumstances which their nations or groups are in. In a polity in which being warlike or aggressive whether in a defensive or offensive context or for a nation to be expansionist is a positive thing, then it could be a woman just as much as a man who occupies the position of either leader or driver of that society.

Sadly Britons have had to get used to a lot of guff coming out of Boris Johnson’s mouth (and I speak here as a former supporter of the man), everything from ‘great green jobs’ that end up costing rather than making money, through to the rapidly dying policy of levelling up those areas of Britain that have been economically damaged for decades. Unfortunately Boris Johnson has excelled himself with regards to nonsense guff coming out of his mouth with his comments about female leadership to the German press. It makes me wonder whether these are words that he has had written for him by speechwriters and which he has spoken without thought or contemplation, which makes him look weak, or worse they are the manifestations of his own thoughts in which case makes him appear to be somewhat of a misandrist. If nothing else, Boris Johnson’s words have shown him to be no Margaret Thatcher a person who stood no nonsense, for both good and ill, from either the men or women with whom she worked.