The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Full Story

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In the end, neither of these books is able to escape the limitations of the genre. Political reporting has become a discourse in which civil servants are always “shadowy” and reporters are always “tenacious”. Good politicians are always “the best of their generation” and bad politicians are always “defenestrated”. Everyone in these books departs office by the window. The question they leave is not about Johnson or Truss but about the broken relationship between politics and journalism. The catalogue of horrors overseen by him and his regime are well documented here: trying to change the rules of ministerial conduct for Owen Paterson who was unapologetic in his flouting of them for personal gain, the "partygate" scandals where he and others gleefully broke the COVID rules that they had put in place then repeatedly lied about them to the apparent final straw for his party when he again lied about and sought to protect Chris Pincher ("Pincher by name, pincher by nature" apparently falling from his lips as he joked about this serial sex predator). The fact that it took so long for enough to be enough is appalling, as is the fact that the most odious and fawning apologists for him (Jacob Rees-Mogg et al) never got there at all. An entertaining description of the politically chaotic times the UK found itself in during 2022. The reader gains an insight into Boris’s mindset and approach - whether you agree with him and his followers or not, it’s an essential read to try and understand just how much we have moved away from the traditional political practices of the past. Despite the absence of proof, the idea of great forces thwarting him – money, a rival and a former adviser turned nemesis all wrapped up together – somehow appealed.

That afternoon things got worse. Sunak was on the brink of resigning. Those at Chequers recalled a fraught Johnson, one saying it was ‘very clear’ that Rishi might walk. A Sunak insider confirmed this was correct, explaining: ‘He believes a lot in upholding rules.’ Such a development would have been disastrous for Johnson – if the Chancellor was quitting over the fine, why wasn’t the Prime Minister? Payne’s thesis is that these one-off factors – the wrong Brexit policy, the wrong leader (and the charismatic appeal of Boris Johnson, who Gray believes is forging a new politics combining one-nation Toryism and old Labour values) – map on to a deeper problem that should have Labour deeply worried. Structural, economic and societal changes, he writes, have changed the makeup of constituencies such as North East Derbyshire and North West Durham. The old industrial way of life – steel, coal, ships and the rest – inculcated a sense of communal pride and mutual dependency. The Labour party was its political expression. But Payne suggests that this collectivist culture has been replaced in many areas by relatively prosperous commuter belts and more individualistic lifestyles and forms of work. The “Barratt Britain” of private housing estates and comfortable homeowners has crept up on the red wall, and superseded old loyalties in the postindustrial age. Significant parts of Labour’s lost England are becoming more middle-class and therefore more well-disposed to the Conservatives. “Many of the places that voted Conservative for the first time,” Payne writes, “are content, and the dystopian version of society painted by Labour in 2019 was sharply out of kilter with the world they know. This suburban lifestyle is where future elections will be fought.” Jeremy Corbyn with former Blyth Valley MP Ronnie Campbell at a 2017 election campaign event. Campbell lost his seat in 2019, having been Blyth’s MP for 32 years. Photograph: Scott Heppell/AFP/Getty ImagesParliaments, which are supposed to hold governments to account on behalf of the public, need to assert their power. The British parliament may have acted to remove a prime minister who looked like an electoral liability but a more important role for parliament to play is to challenge policy proposals that are clearly not thought through or are offered as mere crowd-appeasing gestures. For much of his premiership Johnson saw his relationship with Sunak as one of ‘mentor’ and ‘mentee’, according to one Boris aide An interesting explanation for Johnson’s popularity with the Conservative party’s grassroots – those 170,000 mostly elderly people who nowadays elect our leaders – is that Johnson brought them “freedom from the reign of virtue”. They were “grateful” for the “frivolous” and the “fantastical” or, as Gimson once ventured to me on the radio, they “ wanted to be lied to”. In this strange world, virtue and the virtuous lurk as constant enemies, and any notion of public life as a bastion of morality is dismissed as dull and “goody-goody”, or even sadistic. Where once swivel-eyed schoolmasters beat their pupils to feel virtuous, Gimson recalls, perhaps from his own experience, now “such punitive urges” can be indulged by denouncing Johnson.

And yet it’s actually the chapter on Ukraine that is the most revelatory, for it tells the story of when Boris got it right. He was decisive. He cut through the red tape. His issue knowledge was exceptional: one Foreign Office advisor recalled that when they studied the maps “Boris knew where everything was - the villages, historical monuments, it fitted into a particular part of his brain.” And for a man dismissed as “wanting to be liked”, he was unyielding in his diplomacy, convincing sceptical leaders that the only acceptable strategy was “Ukraine must win”. Those reasons could be accurate or could be nonsense, but combined they make up almost as much analysis as Payne offers in an entire book. Lots of his analysis also relies on the usual tropes about Johnson and his character, rather than events as they happened.In the end, Sunak made the eye-catching move of drafting a full resignation statement. The words were shared with Lord Hague, the former Tory leader and a Times columnist, who had preceded Sunak as MP for Richmond. Soon, with more people at the company also having separately found out about the draft statement, whispers of the dramatic move were spreading among senior figures at Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper. This might have been award winning but it is certainly not, as the blurb claims, "explosive" nor is it, by any means "the full story." After reading the first volume of Margaret Thatchers biography, I thought I'd read a more modern book concerning a Prime Minister. I must admit I got this book purely on the basis that it was about Boris Johnson. Yes, it's not a book that is from his better days but it is a necessary read.

A decent account of Boris Johnson's downfall, even if we learned little which was new given the book was essentially a collation of tweets and news articles. Engaging, perceptive and often funny. Gimson, a former parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph, has an eye for detail and a sense of the absurd...littered with entertaining and revealing vignettes'Surrounding himself with acolytes meant his messaging was hopeless. In the pandemic, it was always going to be a problem that the rules implemented had a massive impact on a huge number of voters (many not interacting with anybody except those they lived with), whereas those working at No 10 continued in a Covid-existence that was very similar to their pre-Covid existence (even if we exclude the parties from the equation). There was a total failure to understand how the rules they enacted actually affected people, and a total failure to realise how their messaging would go down with voters. The real problem – and root of Johnson’s demise – was nothing to do with Sunak. ‘He kept making the same mistake, which was getting himself into a terrible position by not telling the truth, getting other people to go out and say the same thing, then the house of cards collapsing,’ the former leader said. Warning, its a bit of a Boris apology. Payne prefers to say "relationship with the truth" and "highly pragmatic approach" rather than just calling it lying. In the deadline-driven world of journalism he had a reputation for filing just under the wire. It was the same in government, as one Number 10 adviser explained: ‘One of Boris’s techniques is where the system leans towards taking decisions early, he will try to leave it as long as possible.’ The Fall of Boris Johnson is the explosive inside account of how a prime minister lost his hold on power. From Sebastian Payne, Director of Onward and former Whitehall Editor for the Financial Times.

It is clear that Payne doesn’t quite believe in his own project. By the epilogue he is still oscillating between tragedy and thriller. He concludes that “few anticipated just how chaotic it would be”. I’m afraid that simply isn’t true. That was, indeed, the principal objection to Johnson. Payne then fizzles out in a series of lengthy anonymous quotes and concludes lamely that Johnson’s fall was not inevitable although it was always quite likely.Wilson makes his observation over lunch with Payne in his local pub. Their conversation is one of countless enlightening discussions in the book, which take place amid various levels of Covid restrictions in art galleries, pubs, cafes and community centres. Payne’s passion and personal engagement with his subject seems to charm many of his interviewees into opening up in fascinating ways. Labour’s crisis in the red wall, and the party’s attempts to resolve it, will shape the future of English politics. This engrossing, warm and insightful work is an indispensable guide to how it came about.