The trouble with the Boris Johnson stuff is it's going to play well with his core constituency, and he knows it. It's pure populism - you pitch yourself as the champion of the people facing down an out of touch Establishment elite. Trump did it. Rob Ford did it here in Toronto.
Thatcher also did it. She raged against civil service mandarins, and also Tory grandees. (With some justification, probably, the British establishment in the late-1970s were hardly entirely comfortable with a woman as PM).