Is Boris Johnson a Winston Churchill as rewritten by Monty Python?

‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice," Karl Marx wrote in a justly famous passage from his essay "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon." "He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Marx had in mind the immense discrepancy between Napoleon I and his nephew Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, later Napoleon III. A latter-day Marx might make precisely the same point about Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson, except that Johnson preemptively published his own biography of Churchill, insisting on a parallel that could only be unflattering to himself.

So here I sit, unable to shake off the sinking feeling that we are about to witness the Monty Python remake of the movie "Darkest Hour."

Yet it would be a mistake prematurely to write off Johnson's premiership. Boris has needed a lot of luck as well as charisma to get to the top of the greasy pole. Moreover, despite his reputation for disorganization, he opened strongly last week. We have all seen too much of Boris the bluffer and bungler, not least in his recent wretched stint as foreign secretary. It was easy to forget that, when he is conductor as opposed to second fiddle, Boris knows how to assemble a strong team and inspire them to give of their best.

This is not May 1940. France is not collapsing as the Wehrmacht sweeps westward. We don't need to evacuate our army or brace ourselves for invasion or blitz. Nevertheless, the new prime minister finds himself between more rocks and hard places than a lost hiker in the Cuillin hills of Skye.

The stated game plan is to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union laboriously if unskillfully negotiated by Theresa May. What are the chances that the European negotiators will agree to scrap the dreaded backstop, which would keep Northern Ireland under single market regulations and the whole of the UK in a customs union with the EU until an alternative arrangement can be found that avoids a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic? I'd say pretty much nil. Why would they give Boris (whom they all despise) the break they denied Theresa May?

If there are rocks overseas, there are hard places at home. Parliament is now in its summer recess, but when it returns on Sept. 3, the Johnson government will swiftly feel the weakness of its position. All those ministers dismissed from the government will form a buzzing hive of resentment — and opposition to a no-deal exit — on the backbenches. With his majority probably down to one, Johnson may be forced into an election soon after Parliament reconvenes, through a vote of no confidence.

Johnson knows this, which is why his government already has the look of a campaign machine. But the road to an election victory — before or after Oct. 31, when the UK is scheduled to leave the EU — looks pretty rocky, too. Yes, I get it: Boris Johnson is candy floss the way Theresa May was cough medicine. He looks like an election winner. And a bounce in the polls is guaranteed.

But let's look a bit more closely at the British electoral map. The Tories are not the only party with a new leader. Even before the Liberal Democrats picked Jo Swinson, their revival was cutting into Conservative support across centrist, college-educated Britain. Moreover, another leader has a new party. Nothing short of an electoral pact with the Brexit Party will prevent the Tories from losing seats to — or because of — Nigel Farage & Co.

If Johnson can win a majority, he can free himself from Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists and tack toward the EU's opening offer of a trade deal for Britain and a special status for Northern Ireland within the Single Market. But that's an "if" the size of Boris's ego.

The one crucial piece of luck Johnson has going for him is the parlous state of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, the most left-wing leader in its history. Two years ago, Corbyn enjoyed a strange bout of popularity that scuppered Theresa May's bid for an increased majority. Today, irreparably damaged by charges of anti-Semitism and rumors of ill health, Corbyn is the perfect opponent for the rambunctious Johnson.

Also in "The Eighteenth Brumaire," Marx wrote one his most famous observations:

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances directly encountered and inherited from the past.'' It is not too much to say that Boris Johnson is about to put the Marxist theory of history to the test. I wish him luck — because if he loses, a Marxist wins.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Niall Ferguson's latest book is "The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook." (Buy it at a 50% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 74% discount by clicking here). He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies, Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History.