Talk:Boris Johnson

Semi-protected edit request on 10 June 2023 (2)

get rid of mp by his name and hon friba — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vauxhallinsig (talk • contribs)

No, because he is still an MP. See the two discussions of this above. Grachester (talk)

Splitting proposal - new article: "Early life and career of Boris Johnson"

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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There has been a {{very long}} template on this article since added by User:Tim O'Doherty in June '23, and User:Tpbradbury has just updated the template's word count to 19,000. (Thanks both!)

Based on the rule of thumb at WP:SIZESPLIT that pages over 15,000 words "almost certainly should be divided or trimmed", I propose that the Early life and education and Early career sections of this article be split into a seperate page called Early life and career of Boris Johnson.

The rationale for turning those two sections into that specific page is that:

• they are two of the largest level 1 heading subsections of this article that don't link out to a seperate article on the topic, eg. in the way the Mayor of London (2008–2016) section links out to Mayoralty of Boris Johnson.
• there is precedent for this type of spinout article for world leaders, eg. Early life and career of Joe Biden, Early life and career of Barack Obama.

I believe Johnson's early career (especially Spectator/Henley) is notable enough, well-sourced enough, and these sections large enough, to make its own page.

Your thoughts welcome.

Jonathan Deamer (talk) 20:52, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jonathan Deamer - Nice to see some action being taken, good on you for that. I'm not sure an entire new article's the best solution, but it's certainly an option. I think there is a lot of cruft and detail then can be condensed or removed in the article itself, certainly later down too. I might pursue that first. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:03, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Support: I was thinking of something very similar to this just the other day. It would be a strong step in the right direction to address the prose size issue, so I can get behind it since it's also been done for other prominent leaders. TheBritinator (talk) 04:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Oppose - I feel this is an article about Boris Johnson as a person and politician, it should stay here but I'd suggest trim it a little. Lagwerious (talk) 19:26, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

No. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7C:DB33:8300:7033:EFA6:551A:4312 (talk) 00:00, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

• oppose - The solution to excessive page length is to make the page more concise. Also there's at least a bit of question-mark over stand-alone notability for this topic since BoJo is not Churchill and his early life is rarely talked about as a notable topic in and of itself. FOARP (talk) 12:22, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

  That could also work, but I find a separate page to be more suitable. TheBritinator (talk) 15:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - Entirely agree with FOARP. The solution is to make the page more concise. His main notability is due to having been PM, and that was for only 3 years. The page is currently far too long and detailed compared with the equivalent sections for other modern PMs, say, Churchill (8.5 years), Wilson (7.5 years), Thatcher (11.5 years) or Blair (10 years). Masato.harada (talk) 10:08, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

  To be fair this recentism bias is everywhere in Wikipedia. It's not just there being more information, it's about partisanship meaning that fact X has to be included despite it being undue in a encyclopaedia article, which in turn means that fact Y also needs to be included to give "balance". Historical subject matter is dealt with more objectively.

  Take, for example, the statement in the lead section that "Johnson is seen by many as a controversial figure in British politics". Do we bother including a statement like this about Ramsay MacDonald or Ted Heath? Despite both being "divisive" - a banal and unrevealing statement about most politicians who have fought competitive elections? No because there is no group of partisans who wish to indicate that Heath or MacDonald were unpopular. But the statement that BoJo was "divisive" then needs to be balanced out with something else, so instead we have the statement right after it. All of this leads to massive bloat of the article. Additionally, it's anachronistic as polling seems to show the public pretty united on the topic of Boris Johnson. FOARP (talk) 10:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

  I disagree that making the main article more concise is somehow incompatible with this proposal. If anything, the reverse is true. It allows us to retain notable information about his early life on Wikipedia without contributing great length to the article. By spinning-off a section, you always give far greater liberty for that section to be made concise. SecretName101 (talk) 17:42, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support There's enough verifiable material from RS to support such an article. ~ HAL333 17:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support as a reasonable way of dealing with excessive page length. Andysmith248 (talk) 14:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - make this page more concise - as argued by FOARP. Having more than one page on Johnson may look ridiculous in a few years: he is rarely mentioned in the media already. His early life is hardly notable and can be usefully "pruned" here - compare its length with that of (say) David Cameron, PM for 6 years (although we know BJ wishes to compare himself with Churchill !). On top of that, there are already articles such as the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. Roy Bateman (talk) 03:24, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support per WP:SIZESPLIT, more detail can be moved to another such page and it can be written in summary style here.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 17:05, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose - the solution to this tricky issue is not another article. The solution is cutting, condensing and trimming. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 17:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose - the article reads like one of Johnson's own statements. The solution is to make the page more concise. As with any other encyclopaedic WP article, just because there's "enough verifiable material" for a new article doesn't mean there should be one. Masato.harada (talk) 17:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This bloated monstrosity for a relative lightweight politician is laughable. Radical cutting is the answer, not splitting and further bloating. - SchroCat (talk) 01:15, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose - In my opinion, the topic of 'Boris Johnson's early life and career' is not, in and of itself, notable - in a nutshell, I don't think anyone really cares about it much anymore. The cause of this article being too long is that there are extremely long sections on topics which already have main articles. For example:
  • The Mayor of London section is very long, despite there already being a main article Mayoralty of Boris Johnson.
  • There's a long section on his spell as Foreign Secretary 2016–2018, despite there already being a main article Boris Johnson's tenure as Foreign Secretary.
  • There's a long section on his premiership, despite there already being a main article Premiership of Boris Johnson.
  • There's a long section on Partygate, despite there being a main article Partygate.
  • There's a substantial section on his political positions and ideology, despite there being a main article Political positions of Boris Johnson.

There's probably more examples. I think the best way forward to reduce the length of this article is to cut & paste large chunks from these sections into the corresponding main articles. Mmitchell10 (talk) 16:52, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
PS. The correct process for cutting & pasting chunks from one article to another is outlined at WP:SECMOVE. Mmitchell10 (talk) 07:10, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per Mmitchell10's argument. Johnson's early life and career aren't independently notable enough to warrant an entire article and a lot of the puff on this page is down to unnecessary info throughout the article that can be moved to the other articles like much of the Premiership stuff and so on. ThatRandomGuy1 (talk) 17:35, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  These are largely notable facts about Johnson's biography. Boris himself is notable. Notable facts about him should be included on the project.

  The question of "how the man was made" is a pretty big point of discussion/speculation for those who rise to lead G7 nations.

  However, great details on these facts are not the prime area of interest that many people come to his page to read. Many are more interested in his national political career. Hence why spinning this content off to be independent is useful: people can still find information/answers about this point in his life on Wikipedia, but others won't need to scroll past all of that detail in the top of his article. SecretName101 (talk) 17:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Does any one actually call Boris Johnson "BoJo"

Particularly anyone outside of Australia. Seeing people say Boris Johnson is nicknamed "Bojo" just looks like someone is trying to crib Scott Morrison's style by applying the formula of his nickname (Scomo) to Borris Johnson Soft and Stout (talk) 09:44, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Probably more when he was Mayor of London rather than during his term as PM, but I've heard it quite a lot. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 16:05, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

American here who is a somewhat regular reader of British news. Pretty popular news media and tabloid shorthand. Also common online/social media parlance about him. I sense that it is at least sometimes derisive, seeking to paint him as diminutive and as a tabloid figure rather than a distinguished statesman. I'm not sure if anyone uses it as a term of endearment or reverence about him, perhaps some do. And perhaps my read that it is sometimes derisive is completely off-base. SecretName101 (talk) 17:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

This is obviously more anecdotal, but I call him that all the time, and no one ever bats an eyelid when I do. Probs more common than "Johnson" in everyday use (apart from in specifically formal newspapers or whatever), and I don't think many British people would be familiar with "Scomo" for Scott Morrison (I certainly wasn't), so I doubt it was specifically based off that. Farleigheditor (talk) 13:06, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it was used quite a lot back in the day, when he was fairly popular. Certainly where I live, people tend to use more pejorative terms about him now. Black Kite (talk) 13:10, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Other areas to shorten

"The subsections of "First term: 2008–2012" could do with some chopping/summarizing, especially since this is a spun-off topic.

The second term section seems an acceptable length. SecretName101 (talk) 17:51, 4 March 2024 (UTC)