Boris Johnson: New UK Prime Minister's Relationship with Uganda

By Dennis Katungi

I have seen off 6 British Prime Ministers so far, in my life-time; Boris Johnson is the 7th.  I settled in UK early 1990, Margaret Thatcher was the all-powerful Prime Minister nicknamed the Iron Lady.  

In one of her famous speeches to the Conservative Party Conference – she said: “U-turn if you want to, the Lady is not for turning”. This was in response to opposition to her liberalisation of the economy. Unemployment had earlier risen to 2 million by the autumn of 1980 and the economy had been in recession. But her speech was warmly received by the Party faithful and she received a five-minute standing ovation.

Eventually, the iron lady melted like jelly when it came to her differences with cabinet colleagues on Europe. Her Deputy, Sir Geoffrey Howe gave an iconic resignation speech on November 13th 1990, making him the fourth member of Cabinet to walk out on her. I was one of four students at the London School of Journalism, who sat in the Strangers gallery observing the drama.

Sir Geoffrey virtually closed the door on the Thatcher regime. He was the final member of her original 1979 Cabinet to resign, having served as Chancellor and Foreign Secretary before.

He delivered a famous cricket metaphor on the British negotiations on Europe to a parked House of Commons: “it is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain”

Sir Geoffrey’s blow was enough to prompt the UK’s longest-serving Prime Minister to withdraw from contesting as Party Leader and her Premiership ended on November 22nd 1990. 

John Major; then Chancellor, was elected PM and presided over the British participation in the Gulf War in 1991. He also negotiated the infamous Maastricht Treaty. Major led the Conservatives to a record fourth consecutive electoral victory in the 1992 general elections.

His Premiership was marked by Britain’s exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) on a day that was labelled ‘Black Wednesday’ in September 1992. This led to a loss of confidence in the Conservative economic policies. I used to admire John Major’s sharp Secretary of State for Employment - Gillian Shephard, now Baroness of Northwold – so much so that I named my daughter Gillian Katungi after her. A pristine Oxford graduate, Ms Shepherd was impressive at the dispatch box. My Gillian did not disappoint either; she wound up with a first class degree from the University of Sterling and appears keen on Politics.

I participated in the 1997 general election on the campaign team for my MP Stephen Timms, current Labour MP for Eastham. We badly wanted the Labour Party to end the 18-year Conservative grip on power.  Under the new charismatic leadership of Tony Blair and a revitalized ‘New Labour’, we could smell victory. In the event, we ended up with a landslide, winning 418 seats in the House of Commons, the most the Labour Party had ever won in post-war Britain. That night of Thursday 1st May 1997, we did not sleep as results trickled in, we simply savoured the victory flavor on Lager & Guinness at the Labour Party arranged dungeon in East London.

Tony Blair had adopted a centrist policy platform under the ‘New Labour’, moving away from the traditionally left-wing stance. This, coupled with his pledges on creating a National minimum wage, devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales and his own personality appeal - turned out to be a vote clincher.

Insert Gordon Brown’s short uneventful Premiership as the successor to Tony Blair. His was a continuation of the Blair years.

David Cameron won the general election of 2010. The youngest British Prime Minister since 1810 sought to rebrand the Tories, embracing a liberal position - beholden to the Liberal Democrats with whom he had to govern in a coalition to avoid a hung parliament.

He faced the effects of the financial crises of the 2000s that led to large deficits in government finances – which his government sought to reduce through austerity measures. He introduced changes to welfare, immigration, education policy and healthcare. He is on record as the PM who legalised same-sex marriage in Britain and also intervened militarily in Libya. He resigned after the leave vote in a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.

Theresa May became Britain’s second female Prime Minister after Mrs. Thatcher in July 2016. She is the only woman to have held two of the Great offices of State as Home Secretary and Prime Minister. She survived a vote of no confidence from Conservative MPs in December 2018 and a Parliamentary vote of no confidence in January 2019. She carried out the Brexit negotiations with the European Union, which resulted in the draft withdrawal agreement between the UK and the EU. This was defeated by Parliament recently and led to her downfall as Prime Minister.

The new kid on the block Boris Johnson is many things to different people. Among his early appointments, this week was Priti Patel, a Ugandan by birth of Indian origin as the powerful Home Secretary. She moved to the UK from Uganda as a baby in 1972. I found Mr Johnson’s writings on Uganda interesting, to say the least. You do not know where to place him when you read his blog on Uganda. He defended the colonial project thus:

“Consider Uganda, the pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. Are we guilty of slavery? Pshaw. It was one of the first duties of Frederick Lugard who colonised Buganda to take on and defeat the Arab slavers. And don’t swallow that nonsense about how we planted the ‘wrong crops’ in Uganda. You will find fruits rare and strange, like the jackfruit, hanging bigger than your head and covered with green tetrahedral nodules. Though delicately perfumed, it is, alas, more or less disgusting, and not even Waitrose (a British supermarket) is pretentious enough to stock it. So, the British planted coffee, cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right.”

Let’s watch Mr Johnson’s foreign policy thrust. Having been her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Foreign & Commonwealth, he knows a thing or two about international politics.

The writer works with Uganda Media Centre.

@Dennis_Katungi