In Germany, TV presenters openly laughed at the news of Boris’s appointment. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s initial reaction was worthy of Boris: He mocked Johnson for having skipped out on his duties to lead Britain after the Brexit vote and having “instead played cricket,” which he called “outrageous.” Later, he took a more diplomatic, if still dim tone: “Boris Johnson is a shrewd party politician who knew how to use the Euroskeptic mood for himself. But now there are completely different political tasks in the foreground.”

Former Swedish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt went to the photo archive to belittle Boris, using an image from the moment when the then-mayor of London was trapped on a zipline:

I wish it was a joke, but I fear it isn't. Exit upon exit. pic.twitter.com/8qmlSkQNRj — Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) July 13, 2016

Czech Member of European Parliament Pavel Telička quipped that although Prime Minister Theresa May was said to lack a sense of humor, “By appointing B. Johnson she proved the opposite.”

And those are just the putative allies.

What about Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, Boris called “a ruthless and manipulative tyrant,” despite “looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf”? (It’s a legit comparison.) Actually, the Kremlin seemed ready to welcome Boris, a reaction conditioned less by the familiar first name and more by Russian officials’ singular loathing for his predecessor, Philip Hammond, who has been named chancellor of the Exchequer.

Less pleased were the Turks. Although Johnson’s great-grandfather was a Turk, he’s no fan of current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and in fact won a vulgar poetry contest about Erdogan this spring. Prime Minister Binali Yildrim took the high road, saying of Johnson’s appointment, “May God help him and reform him.” A Turkish official suggested to the BBC that Ankara, too, would suck it up and deal with Boris—even though he rhymed its name with “wankerer” in his limerick. “His negative comments on Erdogan and Turkey are unacceptable,” the official told the BBC. “However we're sure of one thing, that British-Turkish relations are more important than that and can't be hostage to these statements.”

Johnson has reserved some of his most racist and reprehensible comments for Africa. In 2002, for example, he wrote that “it is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies,” adding that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair would enjoy a trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo because “No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”