He did not form a serious relationship with any of his international peer group.
“Put down in 3,000 words what you think my foreign policy should be,” he told startled officials at Number 10 soon after becoming prime minister. “Wow, where the hell did that come from?” was the reaction from his staff when he suddenly announced that he had a plan to fix social care.
Most of the time, he was just making stuff up as he went along. “Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge” was his motto for governing, aping a line from one of his favourite films, the sports comedy Dodgeball. He was almost pathologically incapable of making and sticking to decisions, especially when confronted with choices that were in any way difficult. He was as woeful at applying himself to official papers as he was hopeless at assembling a stable and productive team at Number 10. 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” 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. 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 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. I’m the king who takes the decisions.” The would-be great dictator was never in control because he was incapable of performing even some of the most basic functions of a leader. While this necessarily means that a lot of the sourcing is anonymous, it all rings horribly true.ĭuring one of many episodes of derangement in Downing Street, Johnson is to be found raving: “I am meant to be in control. The authors say they have gathered testimony from more than 200 witnesses, a lot of them officials and aides, “the silent voices of those who will never publish memoirs and diaries”. That may not be a wholly original observation, but the great merit of their account is the weight of evidence they marshal to support the contention that Johnson was an utterly incapable prime minister. It was an anarchy presided over by a fervently frivolous, frantically floundering and deeply decadent lord of misrule.Īs Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell relate it, never in modern times has the premiership been occupied by someone so fundamentally unfit to hold the office. This is an authoritative, gripping and often jaw-dropping account of the bedlam behind the black door of Number 10 and it confirms that we did not really have a government during his trashy reign. I f the reign of Bad King Boris looked dreadful from the outside, it was even more diabolical viewed from the inside.
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