Johnson at 10: The Inside Story: The Bestselling Political Biography of the Year

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Boris Johnson has never made any secret of his admiration for Winston Churchill or discouraged comparisons between himself and his predecessor as prime minister.

Johnson at 10: The Inside Story: The Instant Sunday Times Johnson at 10: The Inside Story: The Instant Sunday Times

Johnson at times sounded frustrated about being bypassed but was incapable of acting and tried to please everyone all the time. Boris’s utter surprise and horror that the nation had voted for the Brexit he had campaigned for is beautifully, shockingly told: he is overheard asking “what have we done? Anita Bean, a sports dietician and the author of The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition, says that eating.Their central complaint in this utterly scathing account of his time at No 10 is the more fundamental one that, as they put it, he “never understood how to be prime minister, nor how to govern”; that he didn’t know what he was doing, barely bothered learning, and was so lacking in moral seriousness that even when he tried he couldn’t transcend the limitations of his “base self”. Talking about him, Seldon acknowledges the former prime minister’s charisma “lights up the room”, but you sense too his almost personal feeling of betrayal at the squandering of those gifts, that headmasterly reaction that Johnson had let down his school, his family, his nation, but most of all, himself. The most ridiculous part of the whole book is how everyone in government has to work around Johnson, a bit like a difficult Special Needs pupil who is disruptive in class. The eyewitness reports of events in Seldon’s book expose once and for all the great con of the referendum campaign that has so savaged the country and its economy. The personality clash between Carrie and Cummings, though, prompts some of the most explosive passages in the book, including an extraordinary outburst in which Johnson declares: “I am meant to be in control.

Johnson at 10: The Inside Story: The Instant Sunday Times

To those many people who say, ‘Of course he believed in Brexit’, the evidence is absolutely clear,” Seldon says. With a shortfall of bed spaces for students unlikely to be solved any time soon, analysts felt that Britain’s biggest. Lacking an agenda himself, Johnson was easily swayed by those who had one, notably Dominic Cummings (accused here of repeatedly overstepping the mark in pushing his own ideas as an unelected adviser) and later his chancellor Rishi Sunak.Johnson in his own way never knew what he stood for, but he shared that contempt for the Tory party, contempt for the cabinet, contempt for the civil service, contempt for the EU, contempt for the army, contempt for business, contempt for intellectuals, contempt for universities. Disruptive change can work in the commercial sector because you are replacing one product or technology with another in a limited market. About a decade ago, Seldon, who is a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, began an informal programme with David Cameron’s government that sought to provide for the present incumbents of the highest office some history of No 10 itself and their predecessors there. For all the political instability and economic damage done, it is galling to realise how frivolous the thinking was among its principal protagonists. It's exhausting reading it all, and it sounds more like Game of Thrones than running the country, everyone has their own agendas - including his wife.

Johnson at 10 rings with disapproval at Boris’s endless Johnson at 10 rings with disapproval at Boris’s endless

In one day he would have three meetings in which he would say three completely different things depending on who was present, and then deny that he had changed his position. In recent years, Seldon has experienced some of the effects of instability and grief on a personal level. The book describes how after the 2019 election Cummings assumed universal power across government as Brexit and then the pandemic unfolded. His last book before the volume on Johnson was a thoughtful, heartfelt journey on foot along the western front of the great war.He wasn't interested in his MPS, in his ministers, or in a host of others from public servants to business people. He and the other architects of that misadventure were like bank robbers after they had pulled off a heist. But as with the many acts he has already performed, it is unlikely Johnson himself will learn the lessons it offers. John Simpson has described extracts from a new book on Boris Johnson’s administration as “deeply shocking”. Transgender women will be included in legislation aimed at improving gender balance on public boards, after opponents failed to.