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British PM Boris Johnson’s dad becomes French

The Brexit-supporting father of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has acquired French citizenship, a French justice ministry source told AFP.

Published: 20 May 2022 09:10 CEST

British PM Boris Johnson's dad becomes French

Stanley Johnson, father of Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, speaks to delegates on the third day of the annual Conservative Party Conference in 2021. Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP)

A Conservative who once worked for the European Commission in Brussels, Stanley Johnson opposed Brexit at first but swung behind the EU departure project following 2016’s narrow referendum vote that was championed by his son.

The elder Johnson’s ties to France are through his French mother, and he speaks the language.

Le père de Boris Johnson, obtient la nationalité française !

Il est l'invité de @BFMTV ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/pf9xkDHqq6

— BFMTV (@BFMTV) May 20, 2022

The 81-year-old filed his citizenship application at the French consulate in London in November last year, with a six-month deadline for the justice ministry to object elapsing on Wednesday.

“Based on the facts in his application, and without a refusal by the justice minister, Mr Stanley Johnson acquired French nationality on May 18 2022,” the ministry told AFP.

“This decision concerns only Mr Stanley Johnson and does not extend to his descendants,” it added.

The most common ways of acquiring French nationality are through residency in the country or marriage to a French citizen.

However it is possible to become French through family connections, although France accepts only a French parent – not a grandparent like Ireland or a great-grandparent like Italy – in these types of application.

French law normally prevents children of its citizens from claiming nationality if their family has been abroad for more than 50 years without making use of their rights.

But their applications can still be considered if they can prove “concrete ties of a cultural, professional, economic or family nature” with France — a clause Stanley invoked in his application.

“I’ll always be European, that’s for sure,” Stanley Johnson told RTL radio in French in a December 2020 interview.

He had come under fire at home for his plans, announced at the same time most Britons were losing the right to travel freely across the European Union as a post-Brexit “transition period” ended.

“It’s not a question of becoming French. If I understand correctly I am French! My mother was born in France, her mother was completely French as was her grandfather,” Stanley said.

“For me it’s a question of obtaining what I already have and I am very happy about that,” he added.

Around 3,100 British people acquired French nationality in 2020, according to the latest figures available from EU statistics agency Eurostat, making France the second most popular choice for acquiring European citizenship, after Germany.

Stanley Johnson has become a public figure in Britain following his son’s political rise, appearing on a celebrity reality TV show in 2017 and appearing regularly in the media.

His ex-wife Charlotte Fawcett — Boris’s mother — told a biographer recently that Stanley had beaten her many times, breaking her nose on one occasion.

Last year two women, a Conservative MP and a journalist, accused him of groping or touching them inappropriately.

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With his emphasis on, “strategic autonomy” for Europe in the economy and defence, many see subsequent events like the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine validating Macron’s vision.

But the minister acknowledged that the president’s star power might be “less powerful than in 2019”, when voters last picked the Brussels parliament.

Macron’s popularity has been battered by two years of minority government and contentious reforms on issues including pensions and immigration.

Polls show that inflation driven by successive crises is also a top concern for people feeling the pinch in their weekly shopping.

Surveys point to support in the high teens for Macron’s centrist party, well below the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) at around 30 percent, while the Socialists are snapping at the presidential camp’s heels for second place.

“It would be a real earthquake if the president’s majority came third” in the European elections, said political scientist Bruno Cautres.

The head of the governing party’s list for the elections, the little-known Valerie Hayer, is failing to make an impact, especially in the face of high-profile figures leading the rival lists in the shape Jordan Bardella, 28, for the far right and Raphael Glucksmann for the left.

It now appears Macron is ready to wade into the campaign in person.

On Thursday, Macron “wants to reclaim the initiative, avoid humiliation and try to keep the number-two spot at any cost,” Cautres said, noting that there was little hope his party could overtake the RN.

Heading into the European election, “Macron is hanging on to the core of his base”, said communications consultant Marie d’Ouince, a veteran of French centre-left politics.

“It’s still very early” in the campaign, she added, suggesting that support for the president’s party, “may crystallise bit by bit, but you need the right arguments”.

“We’re organised, we have the right candidate… above all we have the right ideas,” Macron said in Brussels last week alongside Hayer, a sitting MEP who has never held a government post.

For d’Ouince, “with recent international events, since Covid, Europe has become part of everyday life for French people”.

Macron should use the speech to “tally up everything Europe has contributed for France”, she said.

“Macron has always been at the cutting edge on the European question,” lending his voice weight at “a grave moment” for the bloc, Cautres said.

But he will have to remember he is addressing the French voting public, not just a prestigious university or think-tanks in Paris and Brussels.

Macron “has to be simple”, using “sentences… with a subject, a verb and an object,” d’Ouince said, citing a maxim of former president Francois Mitterrand.

“For instance, ‘If we hadn’t had Europe, we wouldn’t have had the vaccines'” against Covid, she suggested.

The eurosceptic, anti-immigrant RN has its riposte to Macron prepared. “This speech, whose content I can anticipate… will also mobilise our voters,” figurehead Marine Le Pen said this week.

She added that RN would call for France’s national parliament to be dissolved for new elections if the president’s party suffers a crushing defeat.

With three years until France’s next presidential election, Macron will hope to avoid setting up the RN for a win after twice selling himself as the man to exclude the far right from power.

He cannot run again in 2027, which adds the challenge of fending off a succession battle in his own camp that could leave him a lame duck.

Recent polls show his approval rating at just below 30 percent, leaving the risk that “his unpopularity wins out and people don’t listen to him”, d’Ouince said.