Boris Johnson publishes his memoirs and flirts with a big comeback

Boris Johnson has remained discreet in recent months. After his forced departure from his post as Prime Minister following the party affair in the summer of 2022, he resigned as a member of the House of Commons a year later. In doing so, he prevented an expulsion process after the House of Commons Ethics Committee accused him of misleading Parliament. Johnson moved from London with his wife Carrie and their three children to rural Oxfordshire, where he put his finances in order through fees from newspaper columns and public appearances. He also led a withdrawn life and hardly gave any media interviews.

From Netanyahu to the Queen

But in recent days, Johnson has been present again on all channels. The 60-year-old published an autobiography on Thursday titled Unleashed, in which he looks back on his political career and, notably, his time as Prime Minister from 2019 to 2022. To market his work, Johnson is currently moving from a show from television to the next radio studio.

He has not lost his qualities as an artist. With his charisma, he eclipses all his successors, from the wooden Liz Truss to the technocrat Rishi Sunak to the serious Keir Starmer, who has been British prime minister since the Labor Party's election victory in July. In his book, the former journalist demonstrates his humorous writing style, even if the biography, more than 700 pages long, is more disjointed than concise.

Johnson makes up all kinds of anecdotes about people from world events. He claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hid a listening device in the toilet during a visit to the British Foreign Office. Donald Trump sent him drugs that were not authorized in Britain as Johnson fought for his life in a London hospital in 2020 after a serious Covid illness.

Johnson describes weekly audiences with Queen Elizabeth II as psychotherapy. And it reveals a hitherto well-kept secret, according to which the queen, who died immediately after leaving her post as Prime Minister, suffered from bone cancer.

Vladimir Putin reportedly threatened Johnson with a nuclear strike against Britain. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister claims to have considered a military invasion of NATO partner country the Netherlands during the dispute with the EU over Covid vaccines, in order to confiscate 5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Due to Johnson's typical humorous and ironic tone, it remains unclear how serious he actually was about these alleged plans.

No insight into the party affair

With his quick wit, Johnson has repeatedly managed to steer the conversation toward his accomplishments during media interviews in recent days. He sees his historical legacy in the victory over Marxist and Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 general election, in the implementation of Brexit and in supporting Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

Johnson cites the early, unbureaucratic approval of Covid vaccinations as proof of the benefits of Brexit, which more and more Britons doubt, according to polls. Even if Britain could have legally taken this step as an EU member, it would have been politically improbable. What is certain is that the vaccination program in Britain started a few weeks earlier than in the EU. With his clear commitment to vigorous military support for Ukraine, Johnson also pioneered a foreign policy from which none of his successors have deviated.

Unlike Liz Truss, who had to resign because of her adventurous financial policies, Johnson did not fail because of his political content. His erratic leadership style and handling of scandals brought him down, including the one surrounding the parties his employees threw at his official residence at Number 10 Downing Street during the pandemic. This angered many voters because Johnson and his ministers had simultaneously imposed a strict lockdown on the population.

Johnson, who initially denied the parties several times, has little insight in retrospect and believes the enthusiasm was overblown. He also dismisses scandals surrounding party colleagues, such as parliamentary group leader Chris Pincher, who harassed young men, as trivial matters. And he complains about his ministerial colleagues who forced him to resign with a wave of government resignations.

See you soon, baby!

At his book launch in London, Johnson said the Conservative Party could have avoided July's dramatic election defeat if it had kept it in power two years earlier. At that time, Nigel Farage's right-wing Reform Party had a zero vote share in the polls, he explained. We would have won the 2024 election, this event would now take place in the middle of the early stages of Johnson's second parliament.

Even compared to Johnson's legendary optimism, this claim seems bold. Because it was the party affair that triggered the Tories' decline in popularity in the polls. Truss's budget plans ultimately discredited the Conservatives among the public, something not even Rishi Sunak could change. In addition, Johnson is responsible for the introduction of the Brexit visa rules, which did not lead to a reduction in migration after leaving the EU, as promised, but to a massive increase. Record immigration provided Farage with the political template for his vote gains during the election campaign.

It is not without irony: new Labor Prime Minister Starmer, who harshly criticized Johnson's moral failings as leader of the opposition, now faces a case of costly gifts and perks. This fuels Tory hopes that Labor could have discredited itself after just one term. Boris Johnson wouldn't be Boris Johnson if he didn't flirt with the idea of ​​returning as Prime Minister. His great role model is wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who moved into Number 10 Downing Street for a second time in 1951 after a six-year break.

Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, the two remaining candidates for the Conservative leadership, belong to the right wing of the Conservatives and want to bring back reformist voters. Until now, however, the party lacked a personality capable of emulating Johnson's political balance. He managed the feat of trapping a post-industrial working class in the north of England thanks to Brexit and his social promises, but also of seducing progressive urban voters with an ambitious climate policy and traditional conservative voters in the rich south with classical liberalism.

When asked by journalists about his ambitions, Johnson replied, in his usual manner, that the chances of being re-elected as head of government are as good as being hit in the eye with a champagne cork or decapitated by a Frisbee. . An indication of his interest is a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger from the film Terminator 2, which Johnson used as a motto at the beginning of his biography: Hasta la vista, baby!