The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Full Story

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The Johnson government was far from unique in having promoted a number of simplistic policies. It was, however, perhaps unprecedented in its willingness to flirt with the policy rhetoric of populism. Warning, its a bit of a Boris apology. Payne prefers to say "relationship with the truth" and "highly pragmatic approach" rather than just calling it lying. Connected to this is the notion that Johnson 'got the big calls right'. He constantly repeated this phrase, but did anyone actually buy it? His government had done well on the vaccine rollout and on responding to the Ukraine war, but (especially with the vaccines) it was pretty clear what needed to be done, and it was implementation that mattered rather than decision-making. Understanding how someone like Johnson became prime minister is both interesting and important... Gimson's tone is that of a witty and cynical dinner companion providing an insight into a famous friend... Johnson's attributes are reflected in this biography. It is entertaining and often funny.' Boris Johnson was prone to believing in political conspiracies. Many friends and former advisers attest as much. One wild and unsubstantiated rumour he voiced was that Sunak’s father-in-law, Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy, had Dominic Cummings on a retainer. There is no suggestion it was accurate. Yet ‘Boris believed it to be true’, said the senior Johnson Cabinet minister who relayed the story.

When did Sunak start thinking about the Tory leadership? And when did he start acting on that thought? Perhaps it is an unfair question. Imagine another world in which neither of these two books could have been written. Jeremy Hunt becomes prime minister in 2019. He takes a moderated version of Brexit through the House of Commons without the need to seek another mandate. There is no general election in 2019 and therefore no acceleration of the Labour recovery. In May 2022 Hunt beats Jeremy Corbyn comfortably in a general election and, six months later, he looks on as his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, delivers the Autumn Statement. Across the dispatch box the fledgling leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, contemplates the years ahead. Boris Johnson was touted as the saviour of the country and the Conservative Party, obtaining a huge commons majority and finally 'getting Brexit done'. But, within three short years, he was deposed in disgrace and left the country in crisis.

An interesting explanation for Johnson’s popularity with the Conservative party’s grassroots – those 170,000 mostly elderly people who nowadays elect our leaders – is that Johnson brought them “freedom from the reign of virtue”. They were “grateful” for the “frivolous” and the “fantastical” or, as Gimson once ventured to me on the radio, they “ wanted to be lied to”. In this strange world, virtue and the virtuous lurk as constant enemies, and any notion of public life as a bastion of morality is dismissed as dull and “goody-goody”, or even sadistic. Where once swivel-eyed schoolmasters beat their pupils to feel virtuous, Gimson recalls, perhaps from his own experience, now “such punitive urges” can be indulged by denouncing Johnson.

In February 2022, Johnson got a call from Smith. Six Johnson inner-circle figures have described it to me, most saying it happened on the day Smith’s wife, Munira Mirza, quit as head of Boris’s policy unit. Smith warned Johnson he was at risk of being forced from office, the sources said. The phrase attributed to Smith is variously quoted as ‘they’re going to get you’ or ‘we’re going to get you’. A decent book and first draft of history. It does a good job at bringing some clarity and narrative to what was an exhausting, tumultuous, and frantic period in British politics by focussing on the three Ps of Boris Johnson’s downfall: Paterson, partygate, and Pincher. That may be part of the story. But the alleged “bourgeoisification” of the red wall does not explain why, when Ronnie Campbell and his wife went canvassing in Blyth in 2019, “there were more Labour votes in the posh areas than there were in the council estates”. The true trauma of December 2019 was that Labour lost its emotional rapport with the less well-off. And throughout his road trip, Payne encounters again and again the desire for a restoration of what Phil Wilson – defeated in Tony Blair’s former seat of Sedgefield – describes as “communality”. This surely, rather than aspirational individualism, drove the Brexit revolt among the working class; a desire that places should be able to take charge of their collective destinies again. As Payne points out, Boris Johnson made sure that the Conservative party reaped the electoral rewards of the insurgency.

Did the problem run deeper? Johnson’s shape-shifting as he climbed the political ladder led some to question whether he knew what he wanted to achieve with high office. In his university days, he ran twice to be Oxford Union president, the first time displaying Tory views (and losing), and a second time aligning himself with the Social Democratic Party. That time around he won. Then, as mayor of Labour-voting London, Johnson projected a liberal vision, advocating an amnesty for illegal migrants and championing gay marriage. But as chief Brexiteer, he threw in his lot with the Tory Right. To critics, the clearest thread running through Johnson’s stances was saying what was needed to advance. This might have been award winning but it is certainly not, as the blurb claims, "explosive" nor is it, by any means "the full story." Boris Johnson was touted as the saviour of the country and the Conservative Party, obtaining a huge commons majority and finally getting Brexit done. But within three short years, he was deposed in disgrace, leaving the country in crisis. Before starting this book I thought that it might have been published too soon. Unfortunately, I was proven partially correct.