I was a lot more disposable than I thought: an interview with Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson has fun returning to The spectator. My old workplace, the former editor-in-chief explodes as he sits down, stands up and begins rearranging articles in the wood-paneled office. I love this den lined with books that you gave me, very, very grandiose.

He's spent the last month whipping up his memoirs, Unchained. It hopes to reach 100,000 sales in the UK well before Christmas. Such is his enthusiasm for his cause that he was kicked off Channel 4's US election show for talking about his book. I was in the Gulf, where I did not sell many copies, but in Paris I sold a lot, he explains. Australia comes next.

A memorable stop was Argentina, where he met Javier Milei. The local press enthusiastically reported that he had agreed to organize a meeting between the Argentine president and Mick Jagger. How is he? I haven't thrown it out yet, he admits. I think it has to happen, he's an absolutely fantastic guy and he loves the Rolling Stones, he loves Britain in fact. Jagger has yet to comment on this idea.

Johnson is enthusiastic about the Mileis program to reduce government waste. In Europe, we all need to learn from what he has to say about the size of state and government services, and Argentina is a special case, he says. But no one in the UK or most Western European economies can call themselves immune to this problem. The state is too big and we need to do something about it.

Of course, when Johnson was at 10th, the opposite happened: the state bloated, largely due to the pandemic and the tax increases needed to pay the Covid bill. Does he think much about what would have happened during his time as Prime Minister if he hadn't been struck by Covid a few months later? Yes, I do, he said. I think it's very sad.

But he goes on to say that he suspects that even without lockdown and partygate, he could well have been kicked out of No 10 prematurely. Look, I think they would have tried, he said. I was, as I have been before in my life, the utensil for my beloved party to win, but then, once I won, I was much more disposable than I realized. and that's a tricky position to be in.

This is the memoir of Johnson, a valiant but naive leader whose term was cut short by pesky MPs who couldn't stay off Twitter. He wrote the book after leaving office, when one can remember in peace and can more or less reconstruct what happened. There are some moments of introspection. Johnson writes that he is no longer sure the draconian lockdowns he imposed were the right decision.

The pandemic has been a nightmare for me, he says. I think we were pretty good at communicating incredibly complicated policies, but I think honestly I found the pandemic a nightmare because I was really uncertain about the effectiveness of some of the things we were doing. But he doesn't regret all this and says rules were necessary. Fraser [Nelson] the late editor-in-chief, he takes a break. Well, we are looking forward to the arrival of his successor, my long-time pal Michael [Gove] but Fraser took a very anti-lockdown stance and he kept mentioning Sweden and so on. Actually, I don't think the comparison is very fair. The Swedes implemented the same type of measures, they just did it without as much legal coercion and they also have a very different type of society in Sweden. On the other hand, Johnson said, the British needed certain rules, even if those rules did not prove effective in themselves.

It is often pointed out that Johnson, the freedom-loving columnist, would have denounced many of the things he ended up doing in office: tax increases, lockdowns and the anti-obesity campaign. How does he think his columnist brain would have marked his achievements? Well, very obviously, because I had the opportunity. There is a miraculous doctrinal consistency, he says. So, look, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, has delivered something that Boris Johnson, the columnist, has been campaigning on for 20 or 30 years, which is the absence of democracy in our relationship with the European Union, or with the Community, as it was when I started writing. about it, and it was a pretty important thing to do.

A lot of people still complain about that and say that everything was wrong. I expect a lot of Spectator readers read some of your more timid columnists and think it was the wrong thing to do.

He abruptly shifts back into editor mode with a series of articles attempting to understand and explain why European economies remain so stagnant and so incapable of innovation compared to the United States. Concerning the United States, a decision looms for Keir Starmer with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Will the UK move closer to the EU or resume negotiations for a free trade deal with the world's largest economy? For Johnson, who says Trump is a kind and thoughtful man, the answer is simple: Sorry, but who has the fastest growth rates?

However, under successive Conservative prime ministers, the UK-US deal has made no progress, partly due to regulatory hurdles relating to chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef. Johnson insists he could have overcome the obstacles. The problem I had was I came in 2019 and Trump, if you remember, lost at the end of 2020, so we only have a year to move him forward. We would have been able to get the free trade deal done, but then Joe [Biden] entered.

As Trump 2.0 approaches, Johnson suggests Starmer host a state dinner to bond with Donald. And he has an unorthodox proposal for breaking the meat impasse. Here's what The spectator should do. Since we are against anti-scientific gibberish, right, The spectator believes in logic, freedom and evidence, right? RIGHT? Have Bruce Anderson make a huge beef steak dinner. Half the guests eat hormone-treated American or Canadian beef because that's one of the biggest sticking points in the transaction. And get some British beef. Now British beef will be absolutely delicious and top notch, but American beef. I'm sorry to say that Canadians eat about 60 percent more beef than we do, but they also live a lot longer and they have hormones in their beef. so I'm just saying.

Like Johnson, the current Prime Minister has been accused of spending too much of his time in office abroad: Never-Here Keir, etc. Does he sympathize with Starmer's current plight?

Look, he probably needs to focus on what's going on here. Honestly, I think it was extremely bad, he said. I sort of feel like they didn't believe, organically and institutionally, that they were going to win the next election, right, so I feel like Starmer was placed as space reserved for Wes Streeting or whoever Wild Wes is. And now they are stumbling.

And what about the Starmers' opponent, Kemi Badenoch? Johnson has not endorsed a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, but she says effusively that she is currently doing a very good job: I regard her warmly because she seems to me to have a kind of impatience and zapping at its subject which is refreshing. Starmer really is a stodgerama crasheroony snoozefest in comparison. I think she can score a lot of points, she really does.

If Labor continues its momentum, Johnson predicts a one-term government. But will the Conservatives benefit from Labor's misfortunes? Couldn't Nigel Farage be the real winner? No, I think [his chances are] Zero, zero, zero, he said, before launching into a monologue about his own success in stopping Farage. (The problem in 2024: they [the Tories] got rid of their visionary leader and that is obviously my opinion and I am entitled to it.)

If Johnson were in the Commons now, he would face a vote on assisted dying. How does he see this issue which divides the Starmers government? I was in church the other day and a woman turned to me after the service ended. She said please, please, please, whatever you do, vote for this measure. She really upset me because she said she was suffering from a terminal illness and wanted the comfort of knowing that her end, when it came, would be dignified and painless.

But Johnson says current legislation is not the solution. I would not vote for this bill, I think they need to go back to the drawing board. They need something humane and compassionate, but that would not lead to the industrialization of state-sponsored suicide. I fear we are moving in that direction, although this bill would not do it overnight. I'm afraid there are other countries where we can see where this is going.

Johnson looks like a man with unfinished political tasks. He likes to keep everyone guessing. His favorite response to executive speculation these days is to say his chances are about as good as if I were blinded by a champagne cork. What if we just came back as MP under Badenoch? He pulls away, distracts me and asks: what was the question again? Oh yes, me! Look, I think so, I think as far as politics goes, I did 15 years of big jobs starting at city hall and I loved it, but all the times I had to do a big step, like becoming mayor or being prime minister, this was really only because the Conservative Party had run out of other ideas for its candidate. The idea is that he will only come back if the party needs him. Yet it is clear that he could be released again.