Boris posing thumbs-up with Trump is the perfect portrait of his utter irrelevance

As the former prime minister addresses a near-empty room at the Republican National Convention on the heels of his widely criticised ‘shabby’ appearance at a super-rich wedding in Mumbai, he is cutting an even more threadbare than usual figure on the world stage, says Sean O’Grady. Are his years of wild opportunism finally over?

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee (Ross Kempsell/PA Wire)

I can’t remember who said it, but now that we have more living former prime ministers than ever before, the phrase “There’s nothing so ‘ex’ as an ex-prime minister” keeps coming to mind.

Count ’em: Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak. It’s going to make their turn at Remembrance Sunday a bit overcrowded. Still, they have their roles to play, and their wisdom to dispense and their memoirs to sell. Some, it is fair to say, are more publicity-conscious than others.

For example, Liz Truss, now an ex-MP, posing outside the Republican National Committee Convention for no good reason. Plus, in a kind of Tory PM ‘bogof’ offer to their American soulmates, Boris Johnson, if you can remember him.

There’s a highly embarrassing, even humiliating picture of him addressing a meeting sponsored by the American Vapor Technology Association, a trade body, with an audience of about two dozen people. It’s only a couple of years since he spoke at the UN General Assembly about the transcendent threat to humanity of climate change (and, making sure he got the attention he thinks he deserves, adding a little Kermit the Frog joke).

I wonder whether, as per usual, he’d been too lazy to write and prepare his speech to the American vaping executives, and had to ask them, by way of buying time: “Anyone been to Peppa Pig World?”

Wisely, Johnson hasn’t highlighted that low point in his career on his social media channels – but he did post an image of himself with Donald Trump, thumbs up all around, in which he characteristically oversold his influence on the past and perhaps future president.

Looking especially slovenly against the immaculately tailored Trump, Johnson seemed more diminished than ever. We all know that Trump has no use for a has-been and loser such as Johnson is now, and took no notice of any advice about Ukraine. Trump and his outrider JD Vance think the war is unwinnable, and even if Johnson was still in No 10, there’s nothing he could do to change their minds. What Johnson should have done is ask Trump for the name of his tailor because his suits really don’t fit very well.

It must be strange for Johnson. He is now utterly irrelevant. Even if, by some miracle of politicking, he ever managed to get back into parliament and resume the party leadership, the “prize” would be worthless; years of being leader of the opposition, taunted and tortured by Starmer and Farage, culminating in yet another, possibly worse, general election defeat. His political career is over.

So what’s left seems to be a series of photo opportunities and increasingly demeaning guest appearances. The latest was a bizarre turn by Boris and Carrie at a wedding party thrown by an Indian billionaire, attended by Kim Kardashian and David Beckham. As it happens, Sir Tony and Lady Blair were also there, looking as dignified as they could manage in the circs. Johnson, however, cut a rather Falstaffian figure – or, in more contemporary terms, looked like one of the “sympathetic” characters out of a Harry Potter film, the old retained cobbler at Hogwarts, whose magical powers have sadly long since waned but who hangs around dreaming of a grand comeback. It’s also becoming apparent that the trick of ruffling his (surely now dyed) blonde mop is merely a futile attempt to disguise the onset of male pattern baldness.

Johnson turned 60 earlier this year and, still fairly vigorous, he must wonder what life holds for him. A self-serving memoir, the predictable and unrevealing newspaper columns, trips to Kyiv (until the Russians move in), some hack biographies and the speaking circuit. But actually “doing” and achieving things? Really not that much, if the recent past is anything to go by.