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Sir Anthony and Raymond Newell lay out their evidence in more than 600 pages in this, the latest in Sir Anthony’s mission to document the times in office of Prime Ministers. He began with John Major. One wonders if there will be enough material to produce a Truss At 10.
Perhaps that will be a pamphlet. I digress.
Boris Johnson became Prime Minister on July 23, 2019, when Theresa May failed to get her Brexit deal through.
He faced off a vote of Tory members against Jeremy Hunt and won 66.4 percent of the votes.
Thus began what was a dysfunctional premiership that met with triumph and disaster and certainly didn’t treat those two impostors equally.
In his battle to get Brexit over the line, Johnson prorogued parliament (illegally according to the Supreme Court), refused to sign a letter asking for an extension insisting Britain would leave the clutches of the EU on October 31, 2019 – come what may.
In the end, yet another extension was asked for and granted and Hallowe’en came and went.
Meantime, the previous month he had removed the whip from 21 of his colleagues.
The Fixed Terms Parliament Act forbade Johnson from calling a General Election except if two-thirds of the House of Commons voted in favour 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 got his General Election and in December 2019 the Conservatives were returned with a whopping 80-seat majority.
We left the EU on January 31, 2020, and so began the magnificence of the Johnson administration pursuing Conservative policies now the UK was freed from the yoke of the European Union.
That is what, of course, should have happened but Johnson ran into difficulties almost immediately on the home front.
His enemies disliked the supposed influence of his girlfriend, and later third wife, Carrie Symonds.
Seldon and Newell say that once the election was won, tensions simmered between Carrie and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s mercurial adviser.
He disliked Carrie’s influence and she loathed what she saw as his contempt for her boyfriend.
There could only be one winner.
The authors reveal that Johnson wanted a big project to attach his name to, like the 2012 Olympics when he was Mayor of London.
He latched on to Net Zero (even though he didn’t know what it was), Cop 26 (“green Olympics”), the purported bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland and HS2 much to the annoyance of Cummins and something that helped to further fracture their relationship.
The book is replete with stories of bombast, ego and foolishness.
The authors say Boris Johnson had the wherewithal to be a great Prime Minister and the fact that he won’t be regarded as such is down to no other but Boris Johnson.
