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

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I recently read the excellent Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over The UK which covers (amongst other things) Boris Johnson's formative years at Eton and Oxford, which set the scene for his later life. It was therefore an excellent, if unintentional, personal sequel. 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.” 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 had no clue how to be an effective prime minister and no idea what he wanted to do with the role other than satisfy his lust for its status and perks. One of his cabinet ministers, who was also a friend, is quoted saying: “Boris absolutely loved being prime minister, its prestige and the trappings. He revelled in it… His philosophy on the way up had been to do, pledge, say anything to get over the line because I’m the best, I deserve it. Now I’m here in No 10 without any core beliefs, I can do and say whatever I need to remain here.” Johnson deliberately stuffed his cabinets with mediocrities who knew they were expected to be “nodding dogs”

Johnson administration Extracts from new book shed light on Boris Johnson administration

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. Why did Britain get the Covid pandemic wrong in the early stages and did the government learn from its mistakes? The third is a moment in which Seldon and Newell analyse one of the elements in Johnson’s downfall. This is what they say: 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). How did Johnson play upstairs-downstairs between his Cabinet and his new wife, Carrie? To what extent did Johnson prefer infighting rather than coherent government?Cummings was one of the few participants in that Downing Street and Whitehall farce who did not speak to Seldon. The author does not feel that the omission is significant, since Cummings has written so very much about this period, “and his footprints are over everything anyway. People will make their own judgments,” he says of what he discovered, “but I don’t think that it’s remotely unfair to Cummings or for that matter to Johnson.” Do not do a Dan Rosenfeld and give a speech to N10 saying what good friends you were with a colleague everyone knew that you hated. Just keep quiet. Partygate, the most important of the scandals that finished him, was an appropriate nemesis for such a lawless regime. A spokesperson for Johnson told the Times, which has serialised the book, that the revelations were “the usual malevolent and sexist twaddle” from the former PM’s enemies. People we spoke to were afraid of Cummings, personal fear,” he says. “And to an extent of the whole Johnson court. In the seven books I’ve written, we saw some fear of some of the people around Gordon Brown, but this was off the scale. And that’s a deeply unhealthy facet of modern government that you let in people who are using fear as a method of control. Quite a lot of that was misogynistic in what we saw.”

Johnson at 10: The Inside Story — Brexit and buffoonery

This is hardly the first book about Johnson, with plenty of ink being spilled over the politician’s tumultuous childhood and his rise to power, and indeed his downfall. Johnson at 10 wisely summarises the other accounts of his early life, and focuses instead on the psychodrama of his time at the top. The related tragedy was the national one, in which we are still living. Whatever you thought of Brexit, Seldon argues – he thought it was a bad idea – it did provide “the overdue opportunity to modernise the British state and Britain’s institutions. There was a desperate need to bring the civil service up to date,” he says. “To forge better connections between universities and public life, to rejuvenate professions.” 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. The authors do apportion some praise as well as criticism. His greatest accomplishments were on global issues where broad brush strokes were needed and not the fine detail he struggles with. Getting a deal on Brexit, Net Zero and Ukraine is what he'll be remembered for. With the right team and without Covid (which saw off Trump too) he could have been a better PM, but his decision-making around appointments sounds consistently poor. 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.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.” 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.) Indeed, Johnson relies heavily on brilliant people around him who by and large lose patience with the operation they have to deal with, if not the man himself. What makes this book so worth reading is that so many of these brilliant people have chosen to talk to Seldon and Newell, some of them unusually on the record. For instance, Graham Brady, chair of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, tells the story of a “grovelling apology” from the PM after Cummings banned Johnson from speaking to him.

Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon, Raymond Newell - Waterstones Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon, Raymond Newell - Waterstones

Johnson got away with the big things where others bailed him out but it was the smaller decisions which were just down to him which really let him down, and ultimately lost him his dream job. Barnard Castle was the perfect opportunity to get rid of Cummings but he dithered. It was the same with Patterson, Partygate and Pincher - all things which could have been dealt with far better but blew up into much larger issues than they actually were. 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. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. 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.”

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It was interesting to read such an immediate review of Johnson's time at No 10, the conclusion written just over a month ago. There was a lot here that was familiar and anticipated, but also a lot of fascinating detail that fleshes out the picture.

Johnson at 10, review: Rings with disapproval at Boris’s Johnson at 10, review: Rings with disapproval at Boris’s

The most dispiriting thing about reading the book is that dawning sense that all your worst imaginings about the conduct of that government were, it seems, played out in real time. Seldon argues that the double act in the oven-ready years of prorogation and Barnard Castle really did deserve each other, even if none of us deserved them.

First night reviews

The book states that Johnson described his then-fiancee Carrie as “mad and crazy” as he used her as an excuse to avoid confrontations. 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. This mirthless farce had tragic real-world consequences. Utterly unsuited to handling a crisis as grave as the pandemic, his endless prevarications and about-turns cost lives. “He wildly oscillated in what he thought,” observes one official. “In one day he would have three meetings in which he would say three completely different things depending on who was present, and then deny that he had changed his position.” His personal brush with Covid encouraged some to think it might prompt a reform of his behaviour. They were disappointed. Even coming near to death couldn’t remedy character flaws that were so deeply ingrained. 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?