Johnson at 10: The Inside Story: The Bestselling Political Biography of the Year

Product Information

Upon seeing the manifesto BJ was furious that none of his ambition/ideas was inserted – which is another reason why his premiership failed so badly. The manifesto did not actually contain any policies on levelling up/BJ hated it. He did not realise that it was designed to purely secure victory and be as risk free as possible – undermining his claim that he had a mandate from the British people. Carrie Simmons became increasingly involved in the campaign, and was worries about the impact that skipping an Andrew Neil interview would have. BJ to her face agreed to do the interview, only to turn around to Cain and DC and say to their face, you are correct we must not do the interview. This demonstrated a key trait of BJ and why he never could build a successful team around him because he could never trust anyone (which DC loved as it gave him more power. DC would regularly talk about the need to have a good team, but knew this would expose his own weaknesses). They shared a willingness to take enormous risks with the constitution, as with their casual relationship with the truth and malleable principles,” state the authors in their introduction. “Their ferocious sexual and financial appetites led them into deep and repetitive trouble. Both thought nothing of using powers of patronage to make outrageous appointments which were nakedly to their own benefit. Both indeed rather enjoyed being outrageous.” Boris was deeply flawed before he even came into power, a self-serving shallow but intelligent man who had the makings of becoming something great, but his small personality came into play. He could have become a good prime minister but this book takes us behind the inner workings of government, goes into all the nooks and crannies and round all the corners to take us to the truth of a poorly selected government, a PM who couldn't stand civil servants and trod them down at every opportunity, he was the main man and nobody else could challenge him. He was incapable of making decisions and waivered all the while so no decisions were being taken when they were desperately needed. The most ridiculous part of the whole book is how everyone in government has to work around Johnson, a bit like a difficult Special Needs pupil who is disruptive in class. He rarely read papers before meetings, and everything had to be shortened to suit his attention span. Ironically the people around him did get better at working around his "issues" and things did improve for a while during his time in office.

At their best when against something (getting Brexit done, against Russia, against Covid) but never for anything. That extended to his team around him, most of all DC who did not have a clue what levelling up meant. Ultimately, Johnson is little more than a bumbler. Cummings, however, is more complex and interesting. He provided “decisiveness and clarity where Johnson offered custard and frivolity” and was “evidence-driven, immensely industrious and got things done”. But he was also immensely destructive, at times unhinged, and ruthlessly removed alternative power bases within Whitehall. Johnson is viewed as being frightened of him, pathetically proclaiming that “I am the Führer, I am the King” in frustration at being sidelined by his adviser. Extraordinarily, Cummings was effectively able to remove both the chancellor (Sajid Javid) and the cabinet secretary (Mark Sedwill) and choose their successors. Cummings left both the cabinet and the civil service hollowed out and in a state of fear.It’s difficult to understand, at times, how this self centred egomaniac ended up as Prime Minister. Until one realises that without exception, every prevarication and wavering was a means to ensure that his own needs came first. Never mind what may be good for the country or the people, as long as Boris got what he wanted. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops The downfall of Boris Johnson - totally brought about by his own weak, selfish character and moral failings. Seldon had rather a generous view of Johnson's flawed character at times. There are a couple of points to be said in Johnson’s favour. He did win an election with a clear majority, which is a notable achievement even in the supposedly decisive British system (helped of course by the incompetence at the time of Labour and the Lib Dems). He was seriously committed to Net Zero, and was ready to argue the toss on climate with sceptics in his own party, though less good at doing the preparatory legwork for the Glasgow COP meeting. He came in early and strong on Ukraine’s side in the war, and helped consolidate the G7 and NATO in support. (Though there too, the UK is a smaller player compared to the US and the EU.) He lied to everyone around him: the authors point out it was more the Court of Henry VIII than a modern functioning government.

When Johnson came to power Seldon hoped the programme might continue – Johnson did after all have a lucrative contract to write a book about Shakespeare. There was no interest whatsoever. “Covid made things difficult obviously,” he says, “but we did come in. Johnson never once showed up. As [his school reports showed] he had no deep interest in any classical history, language or literature or Shakespeare. His examples were always for show. At his heart, he is extraordinarily empty. He can’t keep faithful to any idea, any person, any wife.” Johnson filled his cabinet with mediocrities and created a team in Number 10, including his partner/wife, whose main job was sniping at each other. (His mayorship of London had been supported by a strong team of advisers, most of whom refused to work with him again in Number 10.) His vision did not exist, beyond winning the 2019 election and “getting Brexit done”. But most of all, his personality is so flawed that he is unable to exercise leadership. He says one thing before a meeting, another in the meeting and something else entirely after it is over. He hates making decisions. He doesn’t really like or understand people in general. He has no idea how government works, and is therefore incapable of governing. Covid and Cummings are the central two chapters of the book and they complement one another perfectly. Covid would have been difficult for any PM but did not suit Johnson as it commanded too much detail. Cummings ended up running the show, and it was obvious from the daily briefings at the time that officials were having an enormous say in the decision-making during the pandemic.At times reading & re-living some of this was unsettling. It reignited the fury, contempt, disgust & disbelief I felt at the time that a prime minister could behave so badly, lie so enthusiastically and lead so abysmally. I couldn’t understand how someone so clearly incapable (to me!) of effective leadership could become prime minister and this book helped me to understand how this seeming mystery came about. This is already long enough, but I was interested in personal glimpses of two people who I know a little and a third who I am fascinated by. I knew Martin Reynolds, the Principal Private Secretary to Johnson, when he was a mid-level diplomat in Brussels fifteen years ago. He is more capable than most officials, but was nonetheless out of his depth in the sheer awfulness of trying to manage the Johnson system. On the other hand, John Bew, Johnson’s main foreign policy advisor, is one of the few people to come out of the book looking good; he gave sound advice and wrote a substantive paper on UK global strategy post-Brexit. His father was a colleague of my father’s; I last saw John when he was about ten years old, and I’m glad he is doing well. This is a tale about the court of a would-be-king, Boris, who just happened to be Prime Minister and therefore should have been working from a different job description. Appointing capable senior ministers might have compensated for some of his weaknesses. Johnson deliberately stuffed his cabinets with mediocrities who knew they were expected to be “nodding dogs” and whom he disdained as “the stooges”. “We don’t want young, hungry lions”, an aide recalls him saying when Rishi Sunak proved to be a less pliable and more popular chancellor than Johnson had anticipated.

To think of BJ as an intellect is wrong. He would name drop his admiration for Roman emperors like Pericles and Augustus, but would never engage with their leadership and achievements at a deeper level, and try to transfer their traits into his own leadership. He liked classic films like Buch Cassidy (a film choice of Jeremy Clarkson) but again was unable to think more deeply about what these films meant or represented. In short, his intellect/attempts to come across like a WC historian were shallow and vein. If he had engaged with history at a deeper level, he would have known that one of the key lessons to being a great PM was that you had to work through your team and the cabinet (a point Churchill knew) to achieve favourable policy outcomes. Covid proved him very wrong on that, though interestingly this account doesn’t pin the blame for the early mistakes made fully on Johnson. Neither does it allow him to take the credit for the thing he is proudest of, the vaccine programme, saying that this falls to Emily Lawson who actually put together the successful campaign. Survival by divide and rule and the blame game - even “her upstairs” got to carry the can from time to time! Weak and needy, hence the plethora of advisers, some more dysfunctional than others. Comparisons with other PMs, especially Lloyd George, though the authors see Johnson as a very poor second to the Welsh wizzard. Reading this is a sad experience. This is not to make a political point but to reflect how far Boris Johnson's tenure in 10 Downing Street fell short of the demands of office, which is why he fell so spectacularly from power after only three years. Johnson was a gifted orator and writer but he was hopeless at converting his woolly ideas in substance. With Johnson trust was temporary, what he believed in really was mistrust. He wanted to run No 10 with responsibilities fuzzed, everyone distrusting each other, currying favour and owing their loyalty to Johnson alone - very similar to another politician of recent times.Johnson’s Brexit deal is also charged with being inferior to May’s . Time will tell, but the logic is sound. I didn’t vote for Brexit and nothing since has changed my mind but having done it we needed to get it done . BJ was brilliant at feigning ignorance, sometimes to hide when he actually was ignorant. In Sept 2020, when discussing the trade deal, it was starting to dawn on BJ what leaving the customs union meant. “No no Frosty, what happens with a deal?”. Frost replies “PM this is what happens with a deal, that’s what leaving the customs union means”. (A side point, only in 1820 did the US realise that leaving the British empire was beneficial (they left in 1776)). Who knows, Brexit could be beneficial in 50 years? BJ, as written earlier was a very good chair of meetings when he wanted to. At the G7, he had not read his briefing papers, but still managed to survive and almost thrive. About a decade ago, Seldon, who is a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, began an informal programme with David Cameron’s government that sought to provide for the present incumbents of the highest office some history of No 10 itself and their predecessors there. He staged a series of talks from prominent historians, as well as performances of Shakespeare in the rose garden, in the belief that politicians “might root themselves in the arts, in the benchmark of what is good and true”. He recalls a performance that the RSC gave for Cameron and guests just before the former resigned as prime minister: “It was quite a moving occasion in the garden. The killing of Caesar was one of the scenes and I remember watching Cameron with his daughter leaning on his shoulder and Samantha next to him.” But of course the adolescent “disruptors” that Johnson was amused and supported by had no interest in that work. Their goal was either personal enrichment or, in Cummings’s case, the application of that Silicon Valley mantra “to move fast and break things”. Disruptive change can work in the commercial sector because you are replacing one product or technology with another in a limited market. One lesson of Seldon’s book is that to apply that idea to government is a fundamental misunderstanding of what government is. Degrading and destroying institutions is not the way to reform them.