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

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Rarely in 300 years and never since 1916 has a Prime Minister been so poor at appointments, so incompetent at running Cabinet government or so incapable of finding a stable team to run 10 Downing Street. The book states that Johnson described his then-fiancee Carrie as “mad and crazy” as he used her as an excuse to avoid confrontations. Could he have been a better leader, if he had paid more attention to his briefs, liaised closer with his own cabinet ministers, MPs and cabinet staff, despite Covid and the war in Ukraine? The fact is,” he says, “people come into No 10 knowing less about [complex organisations] than most people running companies employing less than 20 people. That’s forgivable. What is unforgivable is that almost without exception, they do not want to learn how to do it. They think they know best. They are often snide, poisonous, dismissive of previous teams, particularly teams from their same party. And they come in with frothing adrenaline and swagger.” Boris Johnson and wife Carrie on their final day in Downing Street. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Johnson’s inadequacies meant that Cummings was perhaps a necessary evil. To the extent that Johnson had priorities, he could achieve little without Cummings’s support. The prime minister was incapable of determining what he wanted to achieve and how to achieve it and needed someone else to do the work. He did not understand the detail and could not be bothered to master it.

I suppose at least Cummings did believe in Brexit, although ultimately, really, did he?” he says. “From everything we heard [for the book] it just seemed Cummings was full of hatred. He probably hates himself; he certainly hates other people. He wants to destroy everything. Johnson in his own way never knew what he stood for, but he shared that contempt for the Tory party, contempt for the cabinet, contempt for the civil service, contempt for the EU, contempt for the army, contempt for business, contempt for intellectuals, contempt for universities.” Politics Inside 24 hours of Westminster chaos as Boris Johnson tried to spin the Sue Gray report to MPs Read More Why did Britain get the Covid pandemic wrong in the early stages and did the government learn from its mistakes? Johnson’s eventual solution to getting Brexit done as prime minister was to bring in Cummings to do the work that he had no appetite for, in the full knowledge that his chief adviser was a wholly destructive force. That, Seldon, suggests to me, was another first for British political leadership:Cummings also barred Johnson from meeting Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, it states. “It was a very odd insight into the mentality of No 10 and resulted in a grovelling phone call of apology,” said Brady. “Cummings had contempt for our MPs and thought that we should be grateful for being in government, for the general election result, and that our job was now merely to behave.” He was exceptional. . .. he was ‘exceptionally bad’ as commented by Jenny Jones on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions’ in July, 2022: In the end was his beginning as Anthony Seldon puts very succinctly. The PM BJ most resembled was Lloyd George in both his character (serial womanisers) and governing approach (candidate approach to Britain’s institutions). However, where Lloyd George triumphed in WW1, BJ failed miserably in his war moment - Covid. BJ was an insider desperate to be seen as an outside, while LG was an outsider desperate to be seen as an insider. A PM (or any leader really) is only as good as the team they have around them. LG understood this, BJ did not. BJ thought that governing was like his time at City Hall, a lot of PR, ceremonies and popularity, with no need to have the desire to do the hard work to solve policy issues. BJ was definitively supportive of staying within the EU. In a 2001 book about his Henley constituency, his said that to exit Europe was to lose influence over a continent that it was in Britain’s interest to keep onside. He secretly despised the ERG, but knew his future depended on them. Of his time in the Foreign Office, the book says: “Johnson had forged some important personal relationships that were to bear fruit later, but had learned little of value as foreign secretary about leadership to take forward with him into Downing Street, least of all about the kind of people on whom he would have to rely, and about how to define strategy then to deliver it.” This, we are told, was a “squandered opportunity that was to cost him dear”.

Levelling Up was Johnson's great vision but fizzled out with no plan and Sunak denied it any money after the covid costs. Decisions were made in smaller meetings or Johnson bypassed department heads and spoke directly to their staff. Cabinet went almost 2 years without debating anything substantial, almost unbelievable. 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. 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. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? An obvious lazy approach/clear avoidance of doing the tough boring work. Implementation, and strategy he avoided at all costs.Despite the fact that Liz Truss said, ‘Boris, you are admired from Kyiv to Carlisle’, to what extent was Truss loyal to him?

It is a book to be appreciated for all of the diligent hard work that the authors have put into it though. The book describes how after the 2019 election Cummings assumed universal power across government as Brexit and then the pandemic unfolded. (Johnson at one point raged impotently that: “I am meant to be in control. I am the führer. I’m the king who takes the decisions.”) Unwilling to confront his chief of staff directly, it is said that Johnson frequently employed the excuse that he was subject to the “mad and crazy” demands of Carrie, his fiancee upstairs. (In response to the book a spokesperson for Johnson described that allegation as “malevolent and sexist twaddle”.)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.) Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops

A desperate desire to hold court/power over his court. In some way BJ revelled in the chaos of having three different factions within his team, as shown by the story of Carrie and DC. It actually gave him protection and an ability to blame others. Similar to Hitler, who was well aware of the egos/dislike many German generals had for one another. If you have been paying any attention to the British political landscape over the last seven years nothing in this detailed book will come as any surprise at all. Secondly, it refutes the dangerous myth that Boris Johnson was foiled by a remainer establishment, rather than his own incompetence. His former chief of staff Eddie Lister declares that there is “no evidence that the civil service impeded the delivery of Brexit” and the authors conclude that if Johnson didn’t always get what he wanted from Whitehall, that’s because he led it poorly. Everyone he dealt with sooner or later found him dissembling, because he was only ever willing to commit to a position if he thought there was some immediate personal advantage or because his hand had been forced. One of his officials says he lied “morning, noon and night”. He lied not just to the public, but also and often to his closest associates.Why would a previously serving Foreign Secretary ask civil servants to write him a 3,000-word essay on what his foreign policy should be as PM, when he had previously served in the role under Theresa May?