Book Review: Unleashed, by Boris Johnson

I read Unleashed by Boris Johnson, her would be undersold but extremely lucrative manifesto-memory, so you don't have to. In doing so, I was reminded that his tenure as Mayor of London, although imperfect, had many positives. The book reads like a tragic story about how Johnson's relatively successful mayoralty served to propel him to a supposedly bigger and better position, only for him to discover that it was a position he didn't pursue. It was simply not suitable. Perhaps coincidentally, it is also an excellent advertisement for the town hall itself.

Unleashed contains much that will further infuriate those who view Johnson as a terrible prime minister and the horrible liar behind Brexit. It contains relatively few details, several uses of phrases such as “well” and three appearances of the “C-word” – perhaps an undignified first for a former leader of our great nation.

But it is objectively readable. Johnson is a better writer than a speaker, although he had his momentsespecially when he was mayor. And the book suggests that he enjoyed being mayor much more than any of the other political positions he held. Ten of the book's 60 chapters enthusiastically describe his time running London. Considering this is the memoir of a former politician who recently led the country through Brexit, Covid-19 and the invasion of Ukraine, that's a considerable sum.

Johnson's mayoralty was not inevitable. He admits he didn't know Hillingdon from Havering when he first considered running. He says he spent a vacation (one of several) reading files full of press releases from his predecessor Ken Livingstone and marveling at the scale of his work.

He praises Livingstone, “the five-hundred-pound gorilla of London politics”, for his “sheer political energy and intelligence”. He even expresses admiration for Livingstone's leadership of the Greater London Council, where he championed then-controversial and now mainstream social causes. Despite initial concern over his journalistic background, Johnson, at City Hall, embraced London's diversity. Professor Tony Travers described the atmosphere of his town hall as “gentle and affable ».

Johnson claimed that he initially “liked the sound of the work” mainly because:

“It was fundamentally monarchical. You didn't have to worry about Cabinet mutinies or backbench unrest. There was no need to understand the difference between the second and third reading of a bill. You had your powers and your budgets, and you just did good things.

It is true that London mayors do not have to spend much time managing their relationships with their parliamentary equivalents. British prime ministers can be kicked out of 10 Downing Street almost instantly if MPs lose confidence in their abilities. The London Assembly, on the other hand, has limited powers to control mayors, which perhaps explains why they, including Johnsoncan fall into the trap of being rude to them.

But that doesn't mean that town hall isn't also a complex, demanding and consequential activity. Johnson's first term began in chaos. Unlike Livingstone and Sadiq Khan, he did not arrive at City Hall with a loyal, long-serving team. A series of disasters followed. But he learned, made better appointments, built relationships and then won re-election in 2012. It took some serious work, and Johnson is able to point to several accomplishments at City Hall.

He devotes entire chapters to knife crime and the built environment. There is legitimate criticism of the methods used, but knife crime ultimately went downjust like the “homicide rate”. Johnson City Hall has also undoubtedly seen a significant number of new housing units delivered, although their affordability and quality can be debated. In the shadow of the global financial crisis, Johnson also helped keep the city's economy alive and attract global investment. The Mayor of London can make a huge difference to people's lives.

And that’s to say nothing of lasting change. Continued public investment in transport infrastructure has been ensured by a central government firmly committed to national austerity. The 2012 Olympic Games were successfully held and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has so far avoided 'white elephant' status. Johnson's personal love affair with cycling, the subject of another dedicated chapter, has seen a transformation in the capital's cycling infrastructure.

Johnson's eye for big projects can be easily derided. He admits his new Routemaster buses could have been described as “vanity projects”, but says the same could be said for the Eiffel Tower (maybe) and Joseph Bazalgettes' London sewers (hmm). But it's hard to argue that Johnson's mayorship didn't leave a tangible physical legacy on the city, even if some large-scale projects weren't realized.

The book is a warning about the dangers of using London's highly visible City Hall as a springboard to supposedly higher office. You can accomplish a lot as mayor. Likewise, the absence of the mayor, as at the start of the 2011 riots, can be detrimental. This is not a job to be scorned. Maybe Johnson should have left it there. And he seems to have learned the wrong lessons from it. “I should have realized how different being prime minister is from being mayor,” he laments, “in the sense that you serve not only for the pleasure of the people but also for that of your colleagues.” There are of course many other reasons why his premiership ended the way it did.

He also acknowledges, in the thank you notes at the end of the books, that he should have made his former deputy mayor Eddie Lister sole chief of staff at Downing Street immediately after the 2019 general election. be an attack on former ally Dominic Cummings, who Johnson blames for much of what went wrong towards the end of his premiership. But it is surely also a recognition, conscious or not, that his time at City Hall with the competent and affable Lister at his side was truly the pinnacle of his political career.

Jack Brown is a lecturer in London studies at Kings College and author of The London Problem. Follow him on X/Twitter. Image of Boris Johnson Feed X/Twitter.

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