Boris: Toff With The Common Touch

Could this be the next Prime Minister?

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has had a fantastic summer, using the Olympics to upstage the Prime Minister David Cameron, repeatedly. 

His season of triumph climaxed with a rabble-rousing speech on Monday outside Buckingham Palace, when he congratulated the British Olympic team like this: "Speaking as a spectator you produced such a paroxysm of tears and joy on the sofas of Britain you probably not only inspired a generation you probably helped to create one as well."

And then he turned his head and added: "I can get away with that." Indeed he could. Almost everyone, including the athletes, loved the notion of the entire nation having a bit of how's your father simultaneously as Jessica Ennis threw her javelin. 

Of course part of the joke is that we all know rumpled Boris has some difficulty keeping his own trousers on. 

Even Princess Anne cracked a smile.

But Boris's supporters have their eyes on a higher prize than mayor of lovely London. All summer the press has been full speculation about Boris vs Dave. 

Could unkempt, bumbling. buffoonish Boris really be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? Judging by his rapport with the crowd, if we had a presidential system of election, he might be a shoe in. He's got the political x-factor – a combination of sex appeal (yes! it's incredible but true), charisma, word wizardry, brains and lovableness – that reminds me of Hillary's husband. The shambolism is all his own though, and very English eccentric, and so is his wit.

He has won the hearts and loyalty of Londoners by representing the city to itself as it would like to be seen: a bit of sauce, a bit cheek, a maverick, but clever. He manages to be intelligent without being "too clever by half". One of his greatest assets is that he never sounds like he's reading from someone else's script.

Birth time courtesy
Astrology for the 21st Century.

Now the person who has suffered most from Boris' summer of love is his old frenemy David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who has stood around looking like a spare wheel on all the important Olympic occasions. The PM's lack of the common touch has been horribly highlighted by Boris. What's interesting about this is that on paper the men are cut from the same bolt of silk.

Both are posh-boys, born two years apart, educated at Eton and then Oxford. They've known each other since they were teenagers, but Boris will always be two years older.

Astrologically, they are similar too. They both have charming, political Libra Rising, and that intense mid-60s Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo opposite Saturn. 

(Both birth times are probably rounded off anyway: they are on the hour. So take them as approximate.)

What's intstructive is to see how the same transits have had different effects on both men. 

Saturn has been passing through the first house of both chart for about two years. For Cameron, it's also been on his Sun – and frankly, after the first flush of winning last year's election and creating the coalition, it's been nasty. Saturn certainly brought responsibility. But things have not gone well for the coalition government despite a Royal Wedding and the Olympics, circuses which ought to have lulled the populace into submission. It's lurched from one fumble to the next with a bit of tripping over the feet in between.

Meanwhile, BoJo has also had Saturn in the first but the planet of growing up has beamed a pleasant trine at his solar stellium in Gemini, and hasn't he matured over the past two years? When he first became mayor of London in 2008, there was a lot of eye-rolling. How was this mop-headed TV personality going to run one of the world's great cities? By May 2012, Boris had proved he could do it and he beat off the opposition easily for a second term in office. 

Saturn through Boris' first has settled a mantle of gravitas over him. OK, maybe not gravitas exactly, but Londoners trust him to run the city effectively, which means that he's achieved some real authority. 

It's going to go over his Moon now or very soon, which is somewhere around that degree. I can't help wondering if his long-suffering wife will finally call it a day. Saturn-Moon contacts are always about emotional maturing (good or bad), and in a man's chart, the woman or women in his life. Women are Boris's weakness. It's not so much that he seems incapable of fidelity, but that he seems to hurt people so. He has four children with his wife, whom he married in 1993 when Saturn (commitment) trined his Venus in Gemini and his Moon in Libra (probably) from Aquarius. He's had several well-known affairs since then. He seems to go in for long-lasting subterfuge that's resulted in various claims of paternity. This is emotionally messy. Luckily for him, the public is used to it.

(I welcome your thought on his Moon sign. I feel it's likely to be Scorpio, because of the sexiness, emotional cruelty and subterfuge, but Scorpio Moon is very loyal. I suppose that's tempered by all the planets in Gemini.)

With that Jupiter in Taurus his appetites are likely to be large, and it's in the 8th house of sex. What's more that magnifying Jupiter is exactly opposite glamorous Neptune in the 2nd. He's attracted to glamour. He's been married twice and both wives are the daughters of famous people. That Neptune placement also gives him glamour. It's in his house of talent and income. And he's made a good living in the media.

Right now, Uranus is going through both Cameron's and Boris' seventh house of partners and rivals. Apparently, they have never gotten along. Boris says Cameron is boring. Cameron says Boris is silly. 

Uranus is the planet of shock and surprise and it's currently squaring Pluto (as we all know) and opposing Cameron's natal Venus. Uranus describes Boris in Cameron's life perfectly. He's the unexpected, unpredictable  – and he's right in Cameron's face.

But why this outpouring of love for the Mr Bean of politics? For one thing, Jupiter, the planet of gushing champagne, is on the magical midpoint between the lovers Venus and Mars in his natal chart. Natally, he also has Venus conjunct his NN close to his MC, which does symbolise a beloved public figure.

But that's not enough. I've watched the footage of the his speech at Buck House again and the energy of the crowd is incredible. The last time I can remember a politician getting this kind of positive reception from the public was 1997, and that politician's name was Tony. All leaders are more or less parent figures. We get the kind of Daddy or Mummy we want at the time. Right now, our leaders are a combination of bland and nasty, like processed sausages, so we're looking for someone refreshing, seemingly natural and who is not a product of spin-doctors plotting.

Could Boris Johnson soon be having weekly chats with the Queen, living at Number 10 and being best buddies with Angela Merkel? Oh yeah, and rescuing the economy...

His progressed chart looks OK too, with Mars-Venus-NN conjunct in an applying opposition to the UK's Sun. This trend will last for years, so I'd expect him to carry on doing well in the public eye. His synastry with the UK chart is also good, but not remarkable. I suspect Johnson's affinity is with London – for which I have no chart – and perhaps not with the rest of the country. 

However, there is one other Boris factor that political commentators tend to shy away from. He is weirdly reminiscent of the most revered Prime Minister of the 20th century, another rumpled, eccentric toff with the common touch who started life as a journalist, Winston Churchill. Everyone thought he was a fool too, until the country needed him.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.