Boris Johnson’s ugly soul is visible through an unlikely window: rugby | Jonathan Jones

The London mayor is so ambitious he even wants to win a schoolboy game. But politics is not real life – and his opponents will not be so easy to tackle

Is this the famous Churchill factor that Boris Johnson has written about – the quality of leadership that sets a great politician apart? Or is it an unmistakable exposure of the kind of silliness that must have the Labour party praying Johnson becomes the next leader of the Conservative party?

Boris Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, fought in India and the Sudan, and was taken prisoner in the Boer war. Johnson himself recently offered to take part in a brigade of art lovers to defend antiquities in Syria. In reality, however, here he is in a set of risible images knocking down a 10-year-old Japanese boy in a game of touch rugby.

Related: I, Boris Johnson, have so much in common with Shakespeare | Catherine Bennett

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