GLASGOW (Aftenposten): A failed climate summit will be his biggest defeat. A success will take Boris Johnson to new heights. In a few days we will have the fasit.
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NEWS ANALYSIS: This is Boris Johnson’s greatest opportunity to deliver on the two slogans he himself has formulated: Leading by example and Global Britain.
The week before the climate conference, he launches another slogan: If Cop26 is to be a success, the world must deliver «Coal, cars, cash and trees» -coal, cars, money and trees.
Johnson has put the list high in a familiar style. Thus, the fall height is correspondingly large if he fails. And he needs this success to show that he is more than a campaign prime minister and a slogan machine.
To get Brexit done was such a slogan. The climate crisis is something completely different.
1. The slogan machine
The most important speech before the climate summit was given by Boris Johnson at the UN earlier this autumn. It was a classic Johnson speech, full of swell rhetoric: “Cop26 will be the turning point for humanity,” he declared.
Then he lowered expectations. When he visited a school class last week, he thought an appointment in Glasgow was unlikely. At best, it can go all the way, a little “touch and go”, as he said.
–And on Monday, during his opening speech, he compared himself to the manager who has to take the tough wardrobe talk during the break: – We are below 2-5. The risk of defeat is great, but not all hope is lost.
2. Diplomat or bully?
The really big question is whether Boris Johnson is capable of showing political and diplomatic leadership. It has not been his strength so far, neither as foreign minister nor prime minister.
During the Brexit negotiations, he largely stood out when the crises escalated or derailed. He was the greatest “dramaqueen” of them all.
He was also a great disappointment as Foreign Minister. Some believe he was a disaster.
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