The Road to Number Ten

There’s a magic in the metre, in the Kipling rock and roll,
The rhythm that you learnt at school, the soundtrack of your soul;
In the old Moulmein Pagoda, where it’s perfect to declaim –
You can’t help it, you’re an addict – Boris Johnson is your name.
“This is not the time and place”, there’s a disapproving face
From the apparatchik next to you, but then
These are foreign office minions with inferior opinions;
They don’t realise you’re bound for Number Ten.

You wrote this EU column, of frothy comic stuff
But then you made a quote up and The Times had had enough.
As Mayor of London photo-ops you had a busy time.
Though you didn’t cut pollution and you didn’t sort the crime
But you knew you couldn’t fail on the LEAVE campaigning trail
When the old charisma bubbled up again
You were winning and on track when a knife stab in the back
Put the mockers on your rise to Number Ten.

Churchill is still your hero in an old colonial dream
Obama is part-Kenyan, and the picanninies beam
In Tokyo street rugby’s not a game, more like a fight
As a ten-year old gets clattered by your tackle in full flight.
The upbeat tone, the floppy hair are great on screen, superb on air
Olympics, on a zipwire, hanging…when
You give that boyish grin ‘cos you know you still can win
And get back on to the road to Number Ten.

There’s controversy attaching to a limerick that you wrote
In which the Turkish premier had relations with a goat.
“Never came up” you chortled. “We’re good friends, we start anew
And the UK’s backing Turkey as it tries to join EU.”
Europeans watch you swerve, they’re disgusted by your nerve
“Mr. Johnson’s changed positions, yet again.
When you’ve said you’re on your way you don’t get the right to say
Even if you aim to get to Number Ten.”

The articles keep coming, and your chutzpah doesn’t die
Big money for the NHS, that old familiar lie.
So says the back seat driver who seeks to navigate
“There must be no backsliding – we have to seize our fate.”
If negotiations stall you’ll be ready for the call
You are chosen, and you’re on the rise again
So who cares if what you say undermines Theresa May?
You’ve got one more chance to get to Number Ten.