"Unleashed" by Boris Johnson

A great chunkster of a prime ministerial memoir, but one which is anything but dry and boring to read. It races along like a well-crafted novel, disguising its underlying seriousness behind a glaze of outstandingly witty and well-crafted journalistic prose.

Boris is, of course, someone who divides opinion more than most. I have many perfectly sensible friends who persist in believing - despite all the evidence - that he is a uniquely dishonest, thick, lazy and incompetent womaniser. It is just baloney, but I am never able to persuade them otherwise. I think some of the personal antipathy stems from his electoral success which baffles and angers them in equal measure. Who knows? He is not someone who gets much by way of the benefit of doubt.

So if you think Brexit is the worst thing to befall the UK since the Black Death, prefer authoritarian conservatism to the libertarian variety, take a cynical rather than an idealistic view of government and politics, have a soft spot for Jeremy Corbyn or Nicola Sturgeon or Rory Stewart, or just have a prejudice against Etonians, you will not find much to like here. But if, like me, your views and values are more akin to those of Boris Johnson, you will finish reading this feeling frustrated that he fell from power so soon and regretful when you ponder what might have been.

The book starts with his greatest hits – the referendum and his election victories, his impressive record as mayor of London and an exposition of the Levelling Up philosophy that underpins everything he looked to do as a politician. Later, once we are in to his premiership, the book assumes a more conventional, chronological narrative structure as he discusses covid, the negotiation of the Brexit treaty and, of course, the Ukraine War. Sadly we do not get to read his take on his early life at all, and there is very little at all about here about his personal life or anything about what he gets up to when not working. One day, hopefully, we will get a further volume which fills in some of these gaps.

This one is written with huge passion. There is a lust for life, for achieving things, and a vigorous belief in the UK’s future that shines through in every chapter. He is extraordinarily generous about everyone, even those like Dominic Cummings and Rishi Sunak who ultimately brought him down. Theresa May clearly didn’t impress him and David Cameron is revealed to be not as nice as he tends to portray himself. But there is no bitterness expressed towards them. He lightly skewers them with humour. He says lots of generous things about Trump, Biden, Ursula Von De Lyon and most of the heads of state and global movers and shakers he has met. The only people who really come out of this badly – aside from Putin of course - are Michel Barnier and Emmanual Macron whose wish to punish the British people for daring to vote to leave the EU rankles badly with Boris. It does with me too, but I find comfort in the thought that one day no doubt an opportunity will come about to take some well-targeted and proportionate revenge on this pair of total shits and their camp followers.

Another feature of this memoir that is very attractive is Boris’s comfort in discussing his own flaws, misjudgements, regrets and mistakes. He skirts around nothing, being very candid about it all. Unlike much media coverage of Boris Johnson which now, as it always did, knowingly distorts the record for political reasons, he is I think very fair in his assessment of his own strengths and weaknesses. He explains all the major decisions he took, sets out what advice he was given at the time and how he used personal judgement and experience as well as the impact assessments, expert advice and other ‘evidence’ he was provided with to reach conclusions. You get a very good insight here about how prime ministerial authority is exercised, about how limited the power of the office often is at home, but also how extensive it is in the realm of foreign affairs. Personal relationships between world leaders really are important determinants of what ultimately happens.

At the end, there is a final, classic Boris booster peroration when he writes about present and future challenges. On the audio version this sounds like a conference platform speech and his analysis seems to me to be – in all the most important ways – pretty compelling. Unlike his successors as Conservative Party leader he grasps the necessity of developing a positive vision for the future which is strong enough for a coalition to assemble around. He gets how to win elections. He understands the need to articulate the truth that wealth must be created before it can be redistributed or spent on public services. He is fantastic at explaining the role of government in these processes. He also pointedly does not rule out looking one day to make a comeback. If Donald Trump can do it, then surely Boris could? It would mean him standing again for parliament and possibly an even worse Conservative defeat in 2029 than was suffered in 2024, but there is a future pathway there for him.

Were he to come back, my view having read this book is that he really needs to work on two things.

First, he is not always good at building good personal relationships with backbench MPs and (I think probably) cabinet colleagues. Covid scuppered this to an extent, but he did not in any event give it sufficient attention. Tory Prime Ministers have to gush and glad hand their troops, particularly those who are not natural bedfellows. Boris appears to have a tendency to think that his enemies in the party are in the main motivated to do him down by thwarted personal ambition. He thinks he was too trusting of them. I think that is too simplistic. Most are aware of their own limitations, but they have every right to be taken seriously, listened to, consulted and valued for their efforts and contributions. Moreover, this needs to be authentic, not phony. So definitely room for improvement there.

More generally I am not sure, having read this book, that Boris really yet gets the immense importance in contemporary politics of ‘optics’. I like that he is a cavalier rather than another sanctimonious roundhead, but he needs to pay much more attention to how his actions and decisions look, and particularly at how they may be portrayed in the media. Sadly this stuff really matters, and it can not be avoided. To stand any serious chance of mounting a come-back, Boris’s ideas do not need to change. But the manner in which he gets them over does need to. He needs to (a) take media interviews much more seriously and to try much harder at answering direct questions without blustering, (b) never tire of articulating his underpinning political vision (levelling-up, patriotism, the importance of infrastructure to long-term growth)and (c) brush his hair so that he looks much more like the statesman he aspires to be. The manner in which you carry yourself as a politician determines much and he could certainly improve there.