The Cancer Sun of the NHS (UK National Health Service) sits exactly on Boris Johnson’s Midheaven with the NHS Neptune on his Ascendant. Who’d have thought that health would become the defining issue of his career and image? The NHS Mercury, Uranus, Venus (Moon) in Gemini are conjunct his Sun, Venus for a close connection though with hints of aggro from the NHS Mars in square. Most significantly the NHS’s Taurus North Node which hints at years-long struggles over money and equipment are exactly aligned with his head-in-the-clouds Jupiter opposition Neptune; with the NHS unyielding Pluto Saturn in square. There’s a savage irony about his fate being so interwoven with that of the NHS.
The relationship chart has some mutual support and luck from a composite Sun trine Jupiter; but otherwise is a complicated mess of an unsupportive Mars Uranus square Neptune; and a discouraging Saturn square Pluto.
Switching tack for a moment I was pondering on what makes Boris tick – chronically competitive, a chancer, an unapologetic liar and an inveterate and unashamed womaniser. Like Trump, the answer seems to lie with father.
Johnson senior – Stanley – was the one to instil the dog-eat-dog, cut-throat desire to win all arguments at any cost in his children. He was also a serial seducer, which according to friends drove his first wife, Boris’s mother, then the mother of four young children, into a mental breakdown and a series of bouts of depression. He had political ambitions himself but they didn’t get anywhere near as far as Boris; and he evidently bristles when referred to as Boris’s father – jealousy and an ego-clash.
Stanley has a very different sort of chart to jitterbug Boris, with a heavyweight Sun Mars in Leo in an explosive square to Uranus; with Saturn Jupiter in Taurus and Pluto Mercury in Leo. He’s incredibly fixed and obstinate and not much budges him from his chosen course. He shares an indulgent Jupiter in Taurus with Boris. But he will be a disturbing presence with his three Taurus planets falling in Boris’s 8th, and a controlling Pluto in Boris’s 10th square Boris’s Moon – suggesting he’d like to be the one with his hands on the reins of power. Stanley’s Neptune squares Boris’s Gemini Sun Venus, so he’d be evasive and tricky to pin down and most pertinently his Sun Mars is square Boris’s focal point/afflicted Mars. A combustible, rocket-fuelled chemistry with a tendency to flare up into arguments.
Their relationship chart, not surprisingly, has an incendiary composite Mars Uranus in a mutually unsupportive square to Neptune and a serious dislike square to Mars. There’s also a power-struggling composite Jupiter square Pluto. Taken altogether it suggests a fight for the spotlight which only one can win – and winning is all that matters since egos are at stake. Boris has been running on that playbook since he was knee high to a grasshopper.
And it does explain Boris’s ruthlessly unpleasant T square of Saturn opposition Uranus Pluto square Mars. His self-deprecating ‘all a jolly jape’ Sun Venus Mercury in Gemini is a camouflage for a frenzied need to get ahead of rivals using any and all tactics, no matter how questionable. A commentator once described him as a ‘man without a moral compass’. Like Trump he learned it at his father’s knee.
One thing a near death experience does – usually – is bring a reality check which strips away the ego’s defences to open up a deeper layer of meaning. It’ll be interesting to see whether he can lose the relentless gameplaying he created as a childhood defence to step out and become his own person.