Sir Anthony and Raymond Newell offer their testimonies over 600 pages in this, the latest in Sir Anthony’s mission to document the times in office as prime ministers. It started with John Major. One wonders if there will be enough material to produce Truss At 10.
Perhaps this will be a handbook. I digress.
Boris Johnson became Prime Minister on 23 July 2019, when Theresa May failed to complete her Brexit deal.
He faced the Tory MPs’ vote against Jeremy Hunt and won with 66.4 per cent of the vote.
Thus began what was a dysfunctional premiership that was met with triumph and disaster and certainly did not treat these two impostors as equals.
In his fight to get past Brexit, Johnson has refused Parliament (illegally according to the Supreme Court), to sign a letter demanding an extension to insist that Britain leaves the clutches of the European Union on October 31, 2019 – whatever happens.
In the end, another extension was requested and granted and Halloween came and went.
Meanwhile, the previous month he had removed the whip from 21 of his colleagues.
Parliament’s Fixed Provisions Act prevented Johnson from calling a general election unless two-thirds of the House of Commons voted in favor of one, or if the government lost a vote of no confidence and no alternative government was confirmed by the House of Commons within 14 days.
Finally, he secured his general election and in December 2019 the Conservatives returned with a majority of 80 seats.
We left the European Union on January 31, 2020, and so the Johnson administration’s splendor of following Conservative politics begins now that the United Kingdom is freed from the EU yoke.
This should not have happened, of course, but Johnson ran into difficulties almost immediately on the home front.
His enemies disliked the supposed influence of his girlfriend, and later his third wife, Carrie Symonds.
Once the election was won, Seldon and Newell say, tensions rose between Carey and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s mercurial adviser.
He didn’t like Carrie’s influence and she hated what she saw as her boyfriend’s disdain.
There can only be one winner.
The authors reveal that Johnson wanted a major project to have his name attached to it, such as the 2012 Olympics when he was mayor of London.
He stuck to Net Zero (even though he didn’t know what it was), Cop 26 (“Olympics Green”), the alleged bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland and HS2 much to Cummins’ annoyance and something that helped further break their relationship.
The book is full of stories of bombast, ego, and stupidity.
The authors say that Boris Johnson has had enough to be a great prime minister, and the fact that he will not be seen as such is down to Boris Johnson.
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