Who benefits the most from Boris Johnson’s support of Ukraine?

Having the former prime minister in full flight on the other side makes life that bit more difficult for those of us trying to argue against escalation, writes Mary Dejevsky

As with so much Boris Johnson, it has always to be borne in mind that something could go drastically wrong (Reuters)

Whatever you think about Boris Johnson, you cannot doubt either his way with words or the force of his advocacy. It was his campaigning, quite as much as his opponent’s weakness, that gave the Conservatives their unforecast landslide in the 2019 election.

Now, evicted from No 10 and facing a privileges committee inquiry – maybe even the loss of his parliamentary seat at the next election – he is placing the gamut of those skills at the service of Ukraine. His plea for the West to give Ukraine “everything it wants to win – now!” commanded the front page of the Daily Mail this week, and it was vintage Johnson: powerful, emotive, peppered with words, such as “cryogenic”, from outside the mainstream journalistic repertoire, and replete with vivid images, including tanks uselessly “guarding North Rhine-Westphalia, protecting Tennessee, prowling the villages of Wiltshire”, rather than “helping Ukraine bring this agony to an end”.

His support for Ukraine seems absolutely genuine, as does his friendship with Volodymyr Zelensky. The cause of this small (though not that small) country fighting heroically for its very survival against big bad Russia has not only a very clear moral dimension, but a romanticism that Johnson surely understands.