Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson releases memoir

Twenty-five months after being banned from Downing Street by his party, the controversial and charismatic former Prime Minister is back on the forefront of British politics, if he was ever absent. Next Thursday, a volume of nearly 800 pages written without the need for ghost writer in which he looks back on his journey from his victory in the London municipal elections (2008) until the beginning of 2023. Fifteen years that changed the United Kingdom, partly thanks to BoJo, as he is popularly called; and not precisely for the benefit of the British.

In January last year, Johnson signed a six-figure contract to provide his version of the events experienced throughout this period, as well as the excerpts made public a week before the events. Daily Mail I al Mail Sundayand which the rest of the press also distributes second hand, are sufficiently striking to arouse great expectation. Brexit, the Downing Street parties during the pandemic, the relationship with the Queen, the 2012 Olympic Games, the invasion of Ukraine or its disgrace are some of the episodes he talks about, inevitably. The title of the volume could not be more significant: Unchained (unleashed).

What he was like when he lived in Downing Street, long before as mayor and also as Foreign Secretary, is well known, since he even went so far as to escape the escort to go and spend a weekend at a party in an Italian castle, invited by a former KGB agent, when he was in charge of British diplomacy. On his way back to London, he was spotted at an Italian airport looking forlorn.

Problematic versions

What will now have to be verified is whether his version corresponds to that of other protagonists of the time who have recently published memoirs. Among other reasons, because Johnson's relationship with the truth has always been very problematic, as Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraphnewspaper whose former prime minister was fired in the early 1990s for having exaggerated the facts in his articles in the Brussels correspondent.

The style of the text is undeniably his own. And he is as colorful as when he spoke ill of the same European Union of which his father, Stanley Johnson, had been a senior official. Thus, when evoking a bitter debate in Parliament with the then head of Loposici, Keir Starmer, he does not bite his tongue and describes his irritable face as that of a calf which has had a thermometer unexpectedly inserted into its rectum.

The first of the serialized episodes is one of the most surprising Difs docs to date. It addresses the difficult times of the pandemic and the lack of vaccines that existed (the sea of ​​2021). Johnson discussed with senior military officials the possibility of raiding Pasos-Basas to get his hands on a shipment of AstraZeneca doses in dispute with the EU and stored near Amsterdam. There seems to be hardly more than one joke intended to bolster his ego and fuel the legend of the indomitable spirit he loves to cultivate.

Lieutenant General Doug Chalmers, then deputy chief of the defense staff, had to remind everyone first the following: If we are detected, we will have to explain why we are invading a NATO ally for so long. Johnson then admits: Secretly, I agreed with what they were all thinking, because I didn't want to say it out loud: that this was all crazy.

It makes sense that David Cameron would complain if he supported Brexit. In 2016, when the then mayor publicly displayed the daisy, it was clear that its mere presence on either side of the debate could decide the outcome for or against the EU.

Lexpremier tries to present himself as a coherent person. If everything he had written so far from Brussels was against the EU, he could not support its continuation. However, we know that he wrote two letters intended to explain his decision: one in favor of the EU and the other against. In his memoirs, David Cameron laments that he only supported Brexit because it improved his chances of becoming Prime Minister. Cameron's comments, published in 2019, were known truth at Westminster in 2016, at the time of the referendum.

As with any memoir, many assertions, in this case those of LexPremier, are based on private conversations that are impossible to verify. The political facts to which he refers and for which there is other evidence or testimony can be contrasted.

guaranteed success

Among the first, in discussing the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Johnson writes that she had known for a year or more that she was suffering from a type of breast cancer and that her doctors feared that at any time she might develop a sudden decline.

In between, he comments on the Brexit negotiations and how he overcame the political impasse the stage had fallen into by making some changes to the existing agreement. He says he signed it deliberately, leaving Northern Ireland subject to EU trade rules. I did this because I didn't think the Commission was stupid enough to block trade within the UK. But he couldn't bend it and in the end it was Rishi Sunak who ended a mess that, if he doesn't, continues.

Sales success is more than guaranteed. Because it will be read both by those who admire it and by those who can't stand it. Far surpassing the exemplary figurines sold by Theresa May, David Cameron, Liz Truss and John Major. And surely also what Tony Blair sold (A trip; 92,000 copies the first four days) and also Margaret Thatcher (The Downing Street years), with 120,000 copies sold in one week. And in all probability he will be translated, at least at the castle, like Blair and Thatcher. It is no wonder that someone as influential on the Spanish right as Cayetana Lvarez de Toledo is a boundless admirer of Boris Johnson and his unprovable truths.