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Kintsugi politics. Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images
When Boris Johnson’s Unleashed was announced there were arguably grounds for believing it might be, in the Daily Mail’s hyperventilating guff, “Political Memoir of the Century!” Surely this self-caricaturing rogue, this Falstaff of British politics, would have some crazy stories to tell. Even if, like Shakespeare’s boastful narcissist, he was just making them up.
Unleashed. Grr, like some gnarly XL Bully about to go mental in a shopping centre. Or as it turns out — unbothered? A well-fed Labrador wanting a tummy rub. Low-impact bombshells detonated ahead of publication included a “manly chat” with Prince Harry that…may have happened? A “daring plan” to raid a vaccine warehouse in the Netherlands, i.e. the prime minister airily floating the idea and military chiefs dismissing it as balls, an account of which appeared a year ago anyway. Netanyahu improbably-maybe bugging a bog. Cackling enemies, with their “grid of grossly exaggerated stories” to leak to the media. Cameron saying he’d “fuck you up forever” if Johnson backed Leave. Sunak promising loyalty then scuttling off with the other 50-odd members of staff who’d had enough by the summer of 2022.
Criticism so far has been largely negative: the book’s boring, it’s whiny, it’s 770 pages of tedious summing-up by a tetchy counsel for the self-defence. As rough guides go, that’s not not fair. You do wonder how Ed Balls was persuaded to call it “absolutely, totally, mind-blowingly explosive…” Perhaps he hadn’t read it, or he was off his tits on psilocybin, or there was an Ed Balls anecdote Johnson chose to leave out.
Will anyone though spare a thought for satirists? When this masterpiece by the Bullingdon Pericles was announced, I agreed to do a parody called Unhinged. Without a copy of Johnson’s book I thought I’d better go big, he’s larger than life, I’ll anticipate his crazy retelling of the Covid and Brexit years. After all, he’s certain to reframe everything as a tragedy with him as heroic victim.
I mean I was right, everyone was, but his account is oddly enervating. Say what you like about Johnson, he was always showbiz, always clever, always funny. Wasn’t he? So many of the similes, metaphors and gags just don’t land. His recent media round has seen him repeat this skein of bollocks from the book: “I used to claim that my chances of becoming PM were about the same as my being reincarnated as an olive or decapitated by a frisbee.” It just doesn’t work. On the basis of this magnum opus, satirists who’d pointed their lances at some imaginary political giant were in fact tilting at a windbag.
The idea was that my parody would be a pretend self-improvement book: you know, Be More Boris. Life lessons from the master of what we might call Kintsugi Politics. “What’s that?”, you ask. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Something broken and repaired in this way becomes more precious than something that’s never been broken. And that’s what he did, didn’t he? He smashed all the protocols he could find, especially those concerning public trust, and then fixed them again with government contracts for party donors. Let’s be honest, has trust in politicians ever been higher?
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SubscribeLook at who’s in 10 Downing Street now. The keening and regrets already are being heard.
Of course, terrible, beastly Brexit lies at the heart of the story. Why is Unherd letting someone with Boris derangement syndrome onto its site? I could read this sort of thing on any news site from the Telegraph to the Guardian to the BBC or hear it from any North London dinner party bore, though perhaps they would be a little more coherent. Still, I enjoyed it, a little taste of what Boxing day with the extended family will be like. Maybe the Unherd editors had a roguish twinkle in their eye when they decided to publish after all. Well played.
Yeah. Say what you like about Boris, but he “Got Brexit Done”!
Yes, and he´s got the Conservative Party done, too. This once powerful party is now a shambles, a rump after all the senior members were defenestrated. I put that sad state of affairs down to the Great Liar´s inability to manage; it is no surprise that it was not the voters who ejected him, but those close to him who could no longer stomach his lack of relationship with the truth.
They got rid of him because he was never supposed to win the leadership contest in the first place.
And he also got the Tory Party “done” – it is now a wreck, and he is responsible.
Johnson is a terrible fraud still indulged by the media.
I totally agree. Loved by journalists who have as little grasp of the issues as he has.
Johnson has no intention of returning to politics. He pretended to be preparing for a return just to ensure that his book was not ignored.
I don’t think so. He’ll be up the Downing Street stairs like a rat up a drain if he’s given half a chance.
All the character deficits about this lying charlatan were known before he became Tory leader and then PM. The fact it would end in a shambles pre-ordained by the mere fact of that character.
There is much post facto re-writing. Many supporters now say they held their nose because he got Brexit done. Debatable of course as the promises are still awaited and we’ll be renegotiating the TCA next year. So it didn’t ‘get done’ in anything like the way it was promised. He himself avoids answering the question fully on what it’s delivered. He’s stated 100% delivered ‘constitutional’ purity but of course everyone knows that not why it won a referendum. Had that been the driver most wouldn’t have bothered going to the ballot box. Nope it was reduced immigration, a wealthier country with better public services. And where are we on those three? Yep total reverse. But I guess at least we can decide how many E numbers we like in our prawn cocktail crisps.
Knowing this Bojo latches onto our earlier AstraZeneca Vaccine roll-out – led of course by Kate Bingham and something we could have done whilst still in EU. But nonetheless this was a tremendous initial British success. Whether the ‘nationalist’ card he then played and rammed down other Countries throat helped encourage it’s uptake elsewhere v debatable and in fact as a ‘marketing’ pitch he was probably wholly unhelpful. It is of course quite a dilemma for some of the Right ‘conspiratorial’ Anti-Vaxxers that one of the only positives Bojo can point to is a vaccine.
We knew. We still went with this narcissistic clown. We deserve what we got.
If it hadn’t been for Boris, Britain would still be in the EU….
With more influence, richer and with less immigration from non western Countries. Well done Bojo.
London might be richer, but not Britain.
If London richer the revenues associated benefit everyone. It’s pretty clear the wealth generated by London is not all spent in London, although parts of it do well. We do need a rebalanced economy though.
Thus de facto you recognise we would be richer overall.
Sorry, I tried to reply ro Mr Watson but message was “replies to unapproved comments are not allowed”?
No idea what it is about.
Covid policies were total waste of money and led to many more deaths due to luck of medical treatment for many younger patients.
Never mind the facts that vaccines did not stopped transmissions and trials data was fabricated.
Still your claim that uk could had done covid vaccines rollout so quickly within EU is just nonsense.
Why did EU fail to do it quicker than UK?
I’ll wait for the “ordinary” reviews on Amazon. All too often what the pundits and critics love and hate is the exact opposite of what readers hate and love. The Rotten Tomatoes (film review) paradox: if a subject involves politics, a controversial figure or “explores” identity, the critics’ scores become inversely proportional to the audience scores. It’s not much of a paradox though: the critics can’t offer an honest opinion because their next paid gig depends on patronage, not individual wit or honesty. And there is no deeper cesspit of dishonesty than the political commentariat.
(For what it’s worth, I’ve read some extracts of Johnson’s book. It’s as boring and self-defensive as Tony Blair’s – which got rave reviews funnily enough – but with more jokes and classics references. Like all such memoirs, you’re left wondering if the publisher is not just a middleman forwarding a bung for past services…)
I bought Tony Blair’s book as soon as it came out. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet.
Nasty snide article
I can’t even bring myself to read the review so I think I’ll give the book a miss. Boris’ blathering never impressed me and now I’d just like to put it in – CAUTION: extreme 90s reference oncoming – Room 101.
I’m increasingly annoyed by the snide anti-Boris articles that ‘Unherd’ is publishing.
For all his faults, he made sure that the EU Referendum result was honoured, and he was right that we need to ‘level up’.
He also steered the country through Covid and I don’t believe any PM could have defied the consensus of the media and scientists about restrictions that we can now see had major negative consequences.
And he was brought down by the same hostile media, a Civil Service led by the manipulative and self-serving Sue Gray and the disloyalty of the parliamentary Conservative Party.
History certainly will rehabilitate his reputation.
Are you serious? BJ’s utter incompetence, arrogance, laziness and hubris has landed us with Starmer and virtually zero opposition.
Really?
What about traitor Sunak with green card while in Treasury and his wife saying:
I am non dom because I am Indian.
Do we need people like them in this country, never mind in government, never mind as PM?
I find autobiographies (let’s not call them memoirs) by politicians to be the most boring to read of all genres. It’s difficult to separate who’s the worst, pop stars or politicians. Maybe because they haven’t actually done anything of any value they need to inflate the most mundane parts of their lives. Putting part of your hard earned money into their pockets would have to be the worst insult and maybe suggests you’re a masochist.
That is likely to be true for most politicians, but surely not Boris!
I’ll never know.
Snide!
I have no intention of reading a book written by an egotistic liar whom I despise. All through his life, he has demonstrated that he acknowledges no moral code whatever in either public or private life. Who brought us the dubious benefits of Brexit, and cavorting over the ensuing negotiations effectively told Northern Ireland that it does not belong to UK.
But I have enjoyed this well-written Falstaffian review.
Bad case of Boris Derangememt Syndrome here. Treat with caution.
No need to buy Martin’s book now, after reading this drivel.
I have no intention of reading Johnson’s book, but I will say that the parts of this critique that attack Johnson’s position on Partygate and the correct Covid strategy are both wrong and unfair.
On Partygate, it is often forgotten that scores of Civil Servants ended up getting fines from the Metropolitan police. This is unprecedented: the Civil Service does NOT allow that sort of thing to happen to its own people and the fact that it did on this occasion can have only one possible explanation: a desire to politically assassinate Boris Johnson, that being a greater good, from the perspective of the political establishment, than the harm to itself.
As for the correct Covid strategy, Boris is guilty of not having the courage of his own convictions, but it is increasingly clear that his instincts would have been the correct ones in the long run. Lockdown is the worst policy mistake in peacetime history. It is still killing people now, and will continue to destroy both lives and life chances for decades to come.
A few lame jokes and Classical references do not a reliable political memoir make. Or even a readable one. For that you need someone that did not reach, or was prevented from reaching, the top. I recommend Chris Mullin.
this genre of article about BJ, as well as being a few years out of date, was always extremely tedious, because Johnson & Cummings were essentially just socially approved hate figures for a certain class to vent their own anxieties and project their own insecurites onto. Actual balanced analysis is usually almost completely lacking.
The interchangeable assortment of over-used and predictable snidey insults and personal attacks could only ever really appeal to people experiencing this deep-seated class anxiety, who believe that the workings of the EU are somehow inscribed into the fabric of the Universe, and Britain’s departure has wickedly disrupted this divine harmony.
‘… or he was off his tits on psilocybin …”
What rubbish writing. This author is a low quality creep!