The ITV programme on the rise and fall of Boris Johnson last night didn’t tell us much we didn’t already know about the worst prime minister in British history - as I think is widely recognised. Even his own party obviously now see it as a mistake and have winkled him out. However, the programme gave a summary of the charlatan's life and career was a useful reminder of how he got where he is - by connections and lying basically. He never seems to have done a good job anywhere in his entire life.
The ITV website has details of the broadcast HERE.
We also had confirmation of what he was like to work with. An anonymous source who worked (and probably still works) in Downing Street "closely" with Johnson spoke to ITV and he tells us that "He [Johnson] was completely disorganised. He would never read his notes."
The source claimed, "First thing in the morning Boris Johnson would turn up two hours late. His hair would be wet. He'd have like his zip undone or his shirt hanging out. He'd be just a complete mess all the time."
Think about that. How could you run a country when you can’t even dress yourself or bother to turn up to meetings on time? How could anybody rely on you? And meetings involving a prime minister are I assume ALL extremely important. It tells you everything about him and how he regards the rest of us.
He wasn't interested in the job at all, he simply wanted to occupy the position, be addressed as 'prime minister' and do photo opportunities driving a bus or laying a brick. He could bluster his way through PMQs by never knowingly answering a question, spouting a lot of misinformation and very often, outright lies.
Fancy trying to run any organisation when you 'never read the notes.'
No wonder he made so many terrible decisions and attended interviews and meetings totally under prepared. He’s the kind of bloke who relies on a few garbled words and his own memory rather than diligently mastering his brief.
I once worked for an MD who would send out meeting agendas which always ended with a comment which went something like this: If we all come prepared there’s no reason the meeting need last more than x minutes. Woe betide you if you turned up unprepared after that.
On the Unherd website Aris Roussinos, UnHerd's Foreign Affairs Editor, says Britain needs a Harold MacMillan now and not a Thatcher. He says this about he former prime minister who came in after Sir Anthony Eden was forced out after the 1956 Suez Debacle:
“It was Macmillan, as his biographer D.R. Thorpe observes, who led Britain from the ‘immediate post-war world of deprivation to the years of plenty’, writing in his diary: ‘We must be bold; caution is no good. All our political future depends on whether we can combine prosperity with stability.’ Drawing on his experience heading the Ministry of Supply during the darkest wartime years, Macmillan ‘understood the machinery of government and knew… how to crank it into action.’ Deployed by Churchill as housing minister, with a mission to build 300,000 new houses every year, Macmillan exceeded his quota, crushing Labour in the process.”
I am willing to bet everything I own that MacMillan never turned up for meetings two hours late, dishevelled and not having read his brief. You don't build 300,000 houses a year without having a plan and a lot of serous people around you. Johnson never understood the machinery of government because he just couldn’t be bothered to.
In my experience things get done by sheer hard, detailed work. It's a grind and 99% per cent thankless perspiration but essential to achieving anything. Thatcher would be up until the early hours assiduously reading and approving or commenting on papers in her red box. We already know his red box would be left outside his flat and would still be there unopened in the morning.
Most PMs that I can remember were always well briefed and able to give accurate and sensible responses to most policy matters and where they couldn't they would be ultra careful not to make a gaffe while sounding in control.
Johnson was the exception. He made it all up as he went along.
And his erstwhile supporters who make excuses about him being brought down over a piece of cake at his own birthday party don't seem to appreciate he was really rather lucky. Speaking anonymously, the former staffer told ITV that there "were way more" parties inside No 10 during lockdown than were revealed during the partygate scandal. I think the prime minister himself had a few more than what has been reported, privately in his flat as well."
At one he is alleged to have commented that it was the 'least socially distanced party in the country,' so the idea that he didn't know what was going on is really ridiculous. He knew everything and was front and centre of the whole ethos and attitude in Downing Street.
There are still people willing to defend him of course, but the numbers are getting smaller and smaller. His Dad and Jacob Rees-Mogg seemed to be the only ones last night..
For a more hard hitting comment, this article in The Slate takes some beating. Imogen West-Knight describes Johnsons premiership:
"And it has been disastrous. Where even to start with Johnson? His legacy is so long and so dreadful. He will be remembered for hiding in a walk-in fridge from press, spearheading one of the dirtiest general election campaigns in modern history, seeming not to know how many children he has fathered, selling off contracts for COVID testing to Tory party associates who then failed to provide anything like the testing required, trying to promote the women he was sleeping with to government jobs, having his own brother walk out of his cabinet, getting replaced by a melting ice sculpture at a climate crisis debate he refused to show up to, trying to end free school meals for the country’s most vulnerable children, lying about pretty much anything you care to name, wearing a shirt and dress shoes when he goes for a run, leading the campaign to take Britain out of the E.U. that single-handedly drove every person in the United Kingdom insane one way or another, refusing to isolate when he had COVID, writing pieces about how Black people have small brains and saying Muslim women in burqas look like 'letter boxes,' being part of a club full of rich boys at Oxford who terrorized local restaurants and homeless people, attending multiple parties during the toughest lockdowns while telling people they could not attend the funerals of their loved ones, insisting on deporting British-Caribbean people who had spent their whole lives in the U.K. having been invited to come and live in the country in the 1960s, and having really bad hair."
It’s now reported that Johnson is going to throw a party at Chequers this weekend for his supporters and their families. This is his problem writ large.
The leadership race is depressing. It’s hard to take any of them seriously. The one bright spot is that none of them is likely to win an election. The pound fell again yesterday and was trading last night at a little over $1.18 which I think shows what the currency markets think of Sterling at the moment.
Whoever succeeds will take over a poisoned chalice and will go down to the greatest defeat in British political history.
