When historians reflect on the political career of the most gifted and most flawed Prime Minister of the century so far, at the top of the list will surely be the speed at which it all went wrong. To convert an unleadable party into one with an 80-seat mandate from the public and then allow his personal recklessness and taste for mendacity to – in his odious phrase – spaff it all away takes a truly George Best-like degree of self-destructiveness.
But Best – of whom, if you will excuse a hoary journalistic cliché, it was famously asked, as he lay on a bed sipping champagne with Miss World, “where did it all go wrong?” – had not only charm, brilliance and a restless libido, like Johnson, but as much regard for convention as the outgoing Prime Minister.
In youth – the age of oats-sowing, headline-making and cutting a dash – that is an electrifying thing, something for us rules-following little people to admire and dream of emulating. But it is something to be grown out of, and in late middle age, it can be pathetic, making maudlin drunks of the brightest stars.
What happens to Boris Johnson now will be fascinating. If he writes his memoirs, he will be consoled by his many remarkable achievements. He excelled and was popular at school and university. A likeability and a distinctive way with words assured him a rapid ascent in journalism. Yet here, where the averagely gifted would not have dared cut corners, he was inclined to take the more entertaining route, not merely tarting up stories and quotes but falsifying them. OK, we were all young once, but this surely was a warning to the country.
Lessons learned, supposedly, he went on to edit The Spectator with élan and spark, and perhaps life as an editor/columnist is where he should have been satisfied. Johnson, though, has never had much use for restraint.
David Cameron used to say there were journalists who wanted to be politicians and politicians who wanted to be journalists, and sometimes they should simply stay put. It is hard to help thinking he had Johnson in mind. But the view of so pedestrian, so conventional a figure as Cameron – as Boris then regarded him – was never likely to hold him back. He became MP for Henley, and then mayor of traditionally Labour-leaning London.
He had broken the mould. Words like “maverick” and “one-off” failed to convey the breath of fresh air brought by that reassuring comfort in his own skin; that “I’ve arrived, the party can start” self-belief. What did he stand for? Where more plodding politicians learned over time that “policy definition” (i.e. clearly setting our your intentions) was a dangerous straightjacket, to Johnson that vagueness came naturally. Evasiveness was second nature, and he had the chutzpah to carry it off.
Was he pro or anti immigration? Was man-made climate change a religious belief or a scientific fact? Was he a One Nation Tory or a market-mad right winger? These were trifling details, the hobgoblin of petty minds, as his hero Churchill might have put it. Brighten up! Look at the bigger picture!
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Even he couldn’t duck the biggest choice of all, in 2016, to stay in or leave the European Union. His writing of two articles – one pro, one anti – supposedly to help him make up his mind, in anyone else would have looked liked vacillation. But, blessed is the person who can make the world see him as he sees himself. As with the famous picture of him on the tripwire, it was carried off with aplomb.
This was, of course, a statesman pondering with due solemnity the big issue of the day, and he came down on the side of Leave. (Will his memoirs admit that in his calculations he preferred to be a gallant and principled loser than be saddled with a gloating and victorious Cameron, keen to usher George Osborne into No 10? Don’t hold your breath.)
It was probably the most significant piece of personal decision-making in 50 years of British politics. His support for leaving the EU, in defiance of his own background, culture and party leadership, was pivotal. Brexit would not have happened without him. The reader will have views on whether that is to his credit.
Theresa May made him Foreign Secretary, a job requiring far more application, diplomacy and attention to detail than he possesses, though of course that was always going to be a mere stepping stone. Still his carelessness with facts – though widely known about but scandalously ignored – was no impediment to his advancement to a Tory Party desperate for stardust, a leader who could add a spurious sense of conviction to “Brexit means Brexit” slogans.
And then in 2019, he won his 80-seat majority. Ever-mounting electoral volatility was made for Johnson’s eccentric populism. Here was a “Bullingdon toff” who spoke human. Where Cameron had gone against the common belief that there would never be another Etonian in Downing Street, somehow Johnson went even further, making people forget the entitlement and the tailcoats. Here was a guy you would have a drink with, and Labour’s “Red Wall” was as charmed as most people are when they first encounter Boris Johnson (long before the herd-blaming Julius Caesar we see now). What a bright, funny, empathetic guy, and what’s more, he delivers. A cut above those disappointing, trimming careerists you usually find on the ballot paper.
But that was the front of house stuff, the campaigning. What about the grafting, the boring detail? Rarely has someone so ill-suited to government have flown so high and been found out so quickly. The shopping-trolley decision-making, the distractions in his private life, the obsession with opinion polls, the cronyism, the corruption, the lofty inattention to detail and above all the casual (let alone foxhole) mendacity was a mix that even 80 seats couldn’t hide.
No wonder his colleagues despaired, though most should be ashamed that it took so long. Where did it all go wrong? The moment he walked through the door.
James Hanning is co-author of ‘Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative‘
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