15. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson stood at a sacred Burmese religious site and attempted to recite a poem celebrating British colonialism
In January 2017, then-Foreign Secretary and former Mayor of London Boris Johnson embarked on an official visit to Myanmar. During this trip, Johnson visited the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in the former capital, Yangon, and a shrine of great significance to the Burmese people. In front of regional officials, having already described a golden statue of the Buddha as “a very big guinea pig”, Johnson rang an ancient bell and initiated an unplanned recital of “The Road to Mandalay”: a poem written by Rudyard Kipling in 1890. The poem captures and invokes the nostalgia of a retired English soldier reminiscing about his postings in colonial Burma, whilst Kipling himself was a jingoist and imperialist advocate, strongly encouraging the colonization and enslavement of what he regarded as inferior nations and peoples. Between 1824 and 1948, Burma was colonized by the British Empire, fighting three separate wars in the pursuit of independence during the nineteenth century period celebrated by Kipling in his poetic work. Among the lines uttered by Johnson was “the temple bells they say, Come you back you English soldier.”
The British ambassador to Myanmar, Andrew Patrick, swiftly realizing the horrendous gaffe occurring, rushed to inform the Foreign Secretary that “you’re on mic” and it was “probably not a good idea”. Bemused, Johnson responded: “What? The Road to Mandalay?”, to which an increasingly infuriated Patrick tersely informed him “No. Not appropriate”. The incident was later described as “incredible insensitivity” and a display of abject ignorance regarding the lasting effects of British colonialism. But this was not the first controversial diplomatic faux pas by Johnson. In 2016, he was criticized for a crude limerick suggesting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “sowed his wild oats with the help of a goat”, whilst, also in 2016, alongside U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Johnson was questioned about his remark that Hilary Clinton looked “like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”.