The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Full Story

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Certainly the downfall was exceptional, a head-scratching collapse. Johnson had won the biggest Tory majority in the House of Commons since Margaret Thatcher in 1987. Then, in less than three years, he had gone from top dog to mincemeat. So, just how much blame can be laid at Sunak’s door for Johnson’s descent? And was more happening behind the scenes than the public knew? Well-written, with a discerning eye for detail, Andrew Gimson’s biography sets out to understand the electoral appeal of a man so frequently dismissed as a charlatan and a clown.'.

With unparalleled access to those who were in the room when key decisions were made, Payne tells of the miscalculations and mistakes that led to Boris Johnson’s downfall. This is a gripping and timely look at how power is gained, wielded and lost in Britain today. In February 2022, Johnson got a call from Smith. Six Johnson inner-circle figures have described it to me, most saying it happened on the day Smith’s wife, Munira Mirza, quit as head of Boris’s policy unit. Smith warned Johnson he was at risk of being forced from office, the sources said. The phrase attributed to Smith is variously quoted as ‘they’re going to get you’ or ‘we’re going to get you’.Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops Boris Johnson got me into paying more attention to politics when he became Prime Minister in 2019. He uncovered my hidden Conservative views and made me want to learn more about the Party, and it's history. I've always thought he had a charisma about him from when I saw him on Have I Got News For You. It’s not a targeted job, but it does dispel Boris’s followers’ claims that it was all a “witch hunt” (now where have I heard that phrase before?) A reasonable account of Johnson's fall, as told by a journalist/think tanker/hopeful MP. As a 'first draft of history', it works well as a blow-by-blow account of the events leading up to Johnson's resignation (the postscript, on the leadership election that followed, is weaker). Sunak and his allies played a part in Johnson’s downfall, but that should not be mistaken for swallowing the narrative – pushed by Team Boris – that his premiership only ended because of Sunak

For much of his premiership Johnson saw his relationship with Sunak as one of ‘mentor’ and ‘mentee’, according to one Boris aide After reading the first volume of Margaret Thatchers biography, I thought I'd read a more modern book concerning a Prime Minister. I must admit I got this book purely on the basis that it was about Boris Johnson. Yes, it's not a book that is from his better days but it is a necessary read. The Fall of Boris Johnson is the explosive inside account of how a prime minister lost his hold on power. From Sebastian Payne, Director of Onward and former Whitehall Editor for the Financial Times. An entertaining and illuminating fly on the wall romp through Boris Johnson's final nine months, where the fly, Seb Payne, must frequently have thought he was on hallucinogens. It's more fun than a Downing Street party and contains a suitcase full of news.

Red-meat politics

Stephen Coleman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners This might have been award winning but it is certainly not, as the blurb claims, "explosive" nor is it, by any means "the full story." Before starting this book I thought that it might have been published too soon. Unfortunately, I was proven partially correct.

During the countless internal debates about pandemic policy that followed, the pair were often of similar mind. But as the crisis eased with the mass rollout of vaccines in early to mid-2021, the focus turned to how to manage the post-pandemic economy. Johnson, with his populist instinct, was a big spender, having vowed to end austerity and seeing pound signs as the easy way out of many political binds. Sunak had a firmer ideological commitment to traditional low-spend, low-debt and ideally low-tax Tory economics, seeing fiscal prudence as the way forward. We did change the course of international opinion," believed one insider. A former cabinet minister argued that only Boris could've pulled it off: "He took on the blob" of policy orthodoxy "and won, it was a shame he could not do it on other matters, too." It may just be that the biggest strategic error the Conservative Party made was to choose Boris Johnson as its leader. Out of the Blue and The Fall of Boris Johnson are the chronicles of all that goes wrong. A spokesperson for News UK, Murdoch’s British publishing company, declined to comment, while a Johnson spokesperson said he did not recognise the account. His long-term adviser and later lead Brexit negotiator, David Frost, has his own take: ‘I think his big problem as PM was that he wasn’t clear enough on what he thought himself about problems. Sometimes no decision was really final.Boris Johnson was touted as the saviour of the country and the Conservative Party, obtaining a huge commons majority and finally 'getting Brexit done'. But, within three short years, he was deposed in disgrace and left the country in crisis.

Those reasons could be accurate or could be nonsense, but combined they make up almost as much analysis as Payne offers in an entire book. Lots of his analysis also relies on the usual tropes about Johnson and his character, rather than events as they happened. The Johnson government was far from unique in having promoted a number of simplistic policies. It was, however, perhaps unprecedented in its willingness to flirt with the policy rhetoric of populism. Engaging, perceptive and often funny. Gimson, a former parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph, has an eye for detail and a sense of the absurd...littered with entertaining and revealing vignettes' The real problem – and root of Johnson’s demise – was nothing to do with Sunak. ‘He kept making the same mistake, which was getting himself into a terrible position by not telling the truth, getting other people to go out and say the same thing, then the house of cards collapsing,’ the former leader said.

Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson said he would step down less than three years after his landslide election victory, following a series of scandals that have ensnared his government. The downside of concentrating on the last few months of Johnson in office is that it minimises those qualities that propelled him into national politics and pulled off Brexit when the elite declared it impossible, making those who remained loyal to him to the bitter end look like fools. Yet Payne recently published another, very well received book on the Red Wall that adds vital context. Johnson was more than a man; he embodied a movement. Euroscepticism confounded its opponents because it managed to ally southern Thatcherites and northern socialists, and even if this confederacy seems bizarre on paper, it cohered through the personality of a witty patriot whose abiding concern was to make Britain feel better about itself. When I voted Conservative in 2019, it was more for Boris than for the Conservatives – and with his brand of populism out of the picture, I’m not sure I’ll do the same again.