Sir, – Finn McRedmond compares Boris Johnson to Cicero: “his words echo the Republican orator Cicero, stripped of all the genuine virtue” (“Sunak ascends but Johnson remains the Japanese knotweed of UK politics”, Opinion & Analysis, October 27th).
I’m afraid there are no echoes of Cicero in Boris Johnson’s actions or deeds: only one of them had integrity, always putting the public good before his personal interests.
In his book on Roman history The Dream of Rome (2006), Boris Johnson has this to say about Cicero: “The trouble with Cicero is that, for all his rhetorical brilliance, he was a second-rate politician . . . He was fundamentally right, but always let down by his own vanity and self-importance”. For Boris Johnson to accuse anyone of vanity and self-importance defies belief, but anything goes in UK politics today: plenty of circuses, and not much bread. – Yours, etc,
Dr VITTORIO BUFACCHI,
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Department of Philosophy,
University College Cork.
