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The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Award-Winning, Explosive Account of the PM's Final Days

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There are, however, three stories grounded in fact that are worth retelling when it comes to the question of Sunak, his allies and their role in Johnson’s fall. One involved a man known to almost nobody outside Westminster: Dougie Smith. The Scot had been a constant feature behind the scenes in the long Tory run in government since 2010, variously described in press cuttings as a political fixer and a modern-day Machiavelli. Boris grew to rely on Smith to sort out political problems, according to Number 10 insiders. But Smith was also close to Sunak. He had helped Sunak get selected as the Tory candidate for Richmond (Yorks) for the 2015 election. A Sunak ally said Smith had been ‘continually supportive’ and was ‘definitely a friend’. Which makes what followed so intriguing. 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’s downfall. This is a gripping and timely look at how power is gained, wielded and lost in Britain today. But to put his downfall down solely to an ‘ouster’, or rebels who played a part during the slide, would be remiss. For that narrative ignores the critical wider reality. The reason Johnson lost his premiership was not Sunak; it was not Sunak who had allowed a culture of Covid law-breaking to develop in Downing Street, with some 126 fines being issued to 83 people over at least eight events. It was not Sunak who rolled out blanket public denials that would be proved palpably false. Yet it was Sunak, with Javid, who triggered the end.

The story is still passed on by Johnson’s allies. However, a Sunak source said Rishi did not get a direct call or text from Murdoch.Photographs and video of Johnson jogging round the grounds of his new Oxfordshire mansion in garish floral shorts, and heading through airports after lucrative overseas speaking engagements, had already underlined his dramatic exit from Westminster politics, even before the privileges committee report was published. We have concluded … that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed serious contempt,” the committee said. Jeremy Corbyn with former Blyth Valley MP Ronnie Campbell at a 2017 election campaign event. Campbell lost his seat in 2019, having been Blyth’s MP for 32 years. Photograph: Scott Heppell/AFP/Getty Images The Fall of Boris Johnson is the explosive inside account of how a prime minister lost his hold on power. From Sebastian Payne, former Whitehall Editor for the Financial Times and author of Broken Heartlands. Johnson had quit as an MP nine days ago when he was given advance sight of the committee’s conclusions and realised the writing was on the wall. But his reaction then and since – accusing its seven members (four of them Conservatives) of a “political hit job” and of acting like a “kangaroo court” – has united former allies and his long-term opponents in condemnation.

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, leaving the country in crisis. An interesting explanation for Johnson’s popularity with the Conservative party’s grassroots – those 170,000 mostly elderly people who nowadays elect our leaders – is that Johnson brought them “freedom from the reign of virtue”. They were “grateful” for the “frivolous” and the “fantastical” or, as Gimson once ventured to me on the radio, they “ wanted to be lied to”. In this strange world, virtue and the virtuous lurk as constant enemies, and any notion of public life as a bastion of morality is dismissed as dull and “goody-goody”, or even sadistic. Where once swivel-eyed schoolmasters beat their pupils to feel virtuous, Gimson recalls, perhaps from his own experience, now “such punitive urges” can be indulged by denouncing Johnson. 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. A firm friend of Johnson, who in public would be considered one of his most prominent allies, reached a bleaker conclusion: ‘He’s a columnist, right? Columnists are used to writing their column, forgetting it and moving on to the next one. And you can’t as a national leader operate in that way. You have to follow through… He never made a transition from being someone who could entertain and attract attention and emotionally connect to the hard work of being Prime Minister. He was ill-disciplined.’ His latest (but not necessarily final) tome is almost as elegantly written as its predecessors, even if his hero’s forced resignation must have messed with the publishing schedule. If Johnson had been a historical figure, a cavalier whose antics did no harm to the people around him, I would have enjoyed reading this homage almost as much as Gimson seems to have enjoyed writing it.

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The Fall of Boris Johnson is the explosive inside account of how a prime minister lost his hold on power. From Sebastian Payne, former Financial Times Whitehall editor and author of Broken Heartlands. Of course with the best will in the political world this book on the fall of Boris Johnson comes too soon to justify its claim to be “the full story”. But it is a good interim account. Sebastian Payne is the Whitehall editor and columnist for the Financial Times and the author of Broken Heartlands, an excellent analysis of the loss of Labour seats in the North and Midlands. He was persuaded to write this book by his publishers and his sources are really based on 40 hours of interviews with cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, MPs and close confidants of the former prime minister. Sources are also taken from the internet and government publications. The pace at which the air has leaked out of the Johnson balloon will be evident for all to see on Monday when the Commons will be asked to vote on the privileges committee’s damning verdict and approve the sanctions it recommended.

Brendan Clarke-Smith, a Johnson loyalist elected in his 2019 landslide as MP for Bassetlaw, tweeted that he was “appalled at what I have read and the spiteful, vindictive and overreaching conclusions of the report”. It was often said Johnson is not a ‘details’ person. That is too simplistic, according to those interviewed. When he needed to, on an issue of pressing importance or personal political risk, he dove into details. On the intricacies of the Brexit deal during talks, or Russian incursions in Ukraine, he would consume information. He could surprise ministers by drilling into unexpected details. ‘Nobody can go into a room and assume you can bluff with Boris,’ said Michael Gove.As Johnson liked to remind aides when things got turbulent, almost every Tory MP has half an eye on becoming prime minister. He spoke from personal experience. 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. Are the Tories better off since Johnson resigned? No. The economy is terrible; their polling is far worse; Labour’s victory seems all but guaranteed. Brexit is questioned again. We have gone from tax cuts, under Truss, to tax rises, under Rishi - and all without the consolations of good humour. 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. I loathe everything that Boris Johnson is and stands for. Bombastic, narcissistic, arrogant, convinced the rules only apply to others, self serving and utterly convinced he is right as well as being an opportunistic serial liar. It speaks a lot to the current state of political reality that someone like him, and Trump, were able to rise to the top of the power tree in their respective countries. Given that, it is unsurprising that I read this with a great deal of schadenfreude as well as interest in how events unfolded.

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