Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell
I wasn’t intending to read this 500 pages plus account of Johnson’s disastrous tenure as Prime Minister. After all, I lived through the scandals and incompetence, the dishonesty and chaos; and, like many people, I understood that this was all so predictable from the very moment he replaced May. There was his well-documented record of sexual incontinence, lies and dysfunction, even though he managed not to bungle being London Mayor. His only ministerial post as Foreign Secretary was a total, unmitigated disaster.
But you know all this, and so did I, and I wasn’t keen, therefore, to plough through a detailed account of how he managed to add to this record of infamy and catastrophe as PM. In addition, there was another reason why I was wary of this book, and it doesn’t reflect well on me. Seldon, as I’m sure you know, is a prolific political historian who has also been a successful headteacher. Now as someone who also held this latter role, there is no way I would have had the intellectual and physical energy to write books even if I had the talent to do so. Jealousy, therefore, has always kept me away from his books.
Luckily for me, therefore, my friend Mark, who shares my interest in contemporary political books, persuaded me to read this. And how grateful I am that he did. This is a hugely well researched book, with access to all the key players, who have revealed the murkiest details and secrets from within the heart of government. It is also very well written – drat Seldon – and narrates the machinations of those around him and by Johnson himself, with brio and flair. It also achieves the impossible – no, don’t worry, it didn’t make me like or sympathise with Johnson - it did make me aware that things were even worse than I could have imagined. However, it was more than just a sensationalist expose. The writers are fair to Johnson by setting out what they considered to be the qualities and skills needed to succeed as Prime Minister within the specific context and events he faced. Such an analytical, objective approach makes the conclusion, therefore, that he was totally lacking any of those qualities and skills needed to be effective even more damning.
Memory is a funny thing: it seems as if the events between Johnson’s ascendancy in 2019 and downfall in 2022 were from pre-history bearing in mind the speed with which events have tumbled one upon another since – an endless Tory election campaign, Truss and her mad budget followed by the economic crash, the ongoing impact of events in Ukraine and Gaza, oh and then a remarkable election outcome, with the electorate showing little enthusiasm for any party … and then there’s the monarch’s death and the riots. Nevertheless, as I stated at the beginning, we think we know the narrative arc of Johnson’s story. If you are a supporter of his – and despite Mad Nad’s protestations, the Tories got rid of him because it was the public not the herd that turned against him – then you might see him as a tragic hero who got the big calls right, was the people’s premier and fell because his fatal flaw undermined his great qualities. Indeed, I was gobsmacked to read that one of his inner circle, on the day of his resignation, touchingly explained to Johnson that his problems were all because he was too kind, too loyal, too trusting. Johnson’s shameless resignation speech and subsequent petulance seems to suggest that he concurs with this theory that he was brought down by those around him even though he was doing a great job.
The evidence set out in this book points in another direction – Johnson brought himself down. He had no thought through vision about what he wanted to do for the country and, therefore, there was no strategy to do anything beyond slogans, publicity gestures and one-off gimmicks. He was lazy, lacked intellectual resilience and focus and valued his instincts and enthusiasms over evidence. Most damagingly, though, and by far the most interesting and damning section of this book was his inability to build up an effective team of advisors and cabinet around him as well as establishing an effective, accountable working relationship with officials and the government machine.
He ran his government like a personal fiefdom with courtiers swirling around him seeking his attention and favour. There was a huge paradox at the heart of the No. 10 operation. On the one hand, Johnson was always craving a Willie Whitelaw or Angi Hunter figure, who was totally loyal and able to turn his incoherent and capricious wishes into effective actions and policy. Yet, on the other hand, he was often swayed on a course of action by the last person he had talked to and so constantly shifted his position on issues; and he also enjoyed keeping his advisors wrong footed by creating different cliques. These power bases were often in conflict with one another because Johnson was incapable of clearly setting out areas of responsibility and accountability. The arguments about who should be at this meeting, or who was briefing what about whom must have reminded Seldon of the playground disputes with which he would have had to deal. It did me, anyway, and it was pathetic because these weren’t school children but, supposedly, the brightest and best.
The worst thing is that Johnson seemed to encourage this argy bargy between his advisors, cabinet and senior civil servants but then when it all got too messy he would swoop in and, with exasperated petulance, take personal control of the issue under discussion. The problem is that for most of these issues he had not done the work to have any mastery of the situation and, perhaps Ukraine aside, he quickly lost interest. And yes, it was that bad.
As you can see, this book made me rather cross. Not just at Johnson but at the way our politics is organised that allowed this buffoon to become prime minister. If you’ve read Rory Stewart’s memoir or Isabel Hardman’s ‘Why We Get the Wrong Politicians’ then you will be familiar with the problems in our parliamentary democracy. And no, I can’t chuckle about the entertainment he provided, not when you read the section on his handling of the second wave of Covid in the Autumn and Winter of 2020. His failings as prime minister at this time and his inability to take certain decisions most likely led to more people dying than should have done. It’s perhaps best, therefore, if you have high blood pressure not to read this book. If you have any residual sympathy for Johnson, though, perhaps you should.
If you do get hold of a copy but don’t want to plough through pages of immorality and incompetence, can I recommend you read the excellent section about Cummings’ time as his main advisor. Now I can accept that he is an extremely clever man with some interesting ideas about how to improve the government machine but as one official reflects in the book, it was obvious that he was psychologically and emotionally dysfunctional and would inevitably blow up damaging everything around him. It is well documented here that the blow up was around a power struggle with Carrie Symonds and her supporters. Playground behaviour, again, although I have perhaps been a bit hard on the pupils at my school in this comparison.