I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime
minister
Max Hastings
The Tory party is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the
British people. He cares for nothing but his own fame and gratification
Mon 24 Jun 2019 16.20 BST Last modified on Tue 25 Jun 2019
10.01 BST
Six years ago, the Cambridge historian Christopher Clark
published a study of the outbreak of the first world war, titled The
Sleepwalkers. Though Clark is a fine scholar, I was unconvinced by his title,
which suggested that the great powers stumbled mindlessly to disaster. On the
contrary, the maddest aspect of 1914 was that each belligerent government
convinced itself that it was acting rationally.
It would be fanciful to liken the ascent of Boris Johnson to
the outbreak of global war, but similar forces are in play. There is room for
debate about whether he is a scoundrel or mere rogue, but not much about his
moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth. Nonetheless, even before the
Conservative national membership cheers him in as our prime minister – denied
the option of Nigel Farage, whom some polls suggest they would prefer – Tory
MPs have thronged to do just that.
He would not
recognise the truth, whether about his private or political life, if confronted
by it in an identity parade
I have known Johnson since the 1980s, when I edited the
Daily Telegraph and he was our flamboyant Brussels correspondent. I have argued
for a decade that, while he is a brilliant entertainer who made a popular
maître d’ for London as its mayor, he is unfit for national office, because it
seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification.
Tory MPs have launched this country upon an experiment in
celebrity government, matching that taking place in Ukraine and the US, and it
is unlikely to be derailed by the latest headlines. The Washington Post
columnist George Will observes that Donald Trump does what his political base
wants “by breaking all the china”. We can’t predict what a Johnson government
will do, because its prospective leader has not got around to thinking about
this. But his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules,
precedent, order and stability.
A few admirers assert that, in office, Johnson will reveal
an accession of wisdom and responsibility that have hitherto eluded him, not
least as foreign secretary. This seems unlikely, as the weekend’s stories
emphasised. Dignity still matters in public office, and Johnson will never have
it. Yet his graver vice is cowardice, reflected in a willingness to tell any
audience, whatever he thinks most likely to please, heedless of the
inevitability of its contradiction an hour later.
Like many showy personalities, he is of weak character. I
recently suggested to a radio audience that he supposes himself to be Winston
Churchill, while in reality being closer to Alan Partridge. Churchill, for all
his wit, was a profoundly serious human being. Far from perceiving anything
glorious about standing alone in 1940, he knew that all difficult issues must
be addressed with allies and partners.
Churchill’s self-obsession was tempered by a huge compassion
for humanity, or at least white humanity, which Johnson confines to himself. He
has long been considered a bully, prone to making cheap threats. My old friend
Christopher Bland, when chairman of the BBC, once described to me how he
received an angry phone call from Johnson, denouncing the corporation’s “gross
intrusion upon my personal life” for its coverage of one of his love affairs.
“We know plenty about your personal life that you would not
like to read in the Spectator,” the then editor of the magazine told the BBC’s
chairman, while demanding he order the broadcaster to lay off his own
dalliances.
Bland told me he replied: “Boris, think about what you have
just said. There is a word for it, and it is not a pretty one.”
He said Johnson blustered into retreat, but in my own files
I have handwritten notes from our possible next prime minister, threatening
dire consequences in print if I continued to criticise him.
Johnson would not recognise truth, whether about his private
or political life, if confronted by it in an identity parade. In a commonplace
book the other day, I came across an observation made in 1750 by a contemporary
savant, Bishop Berkeley: “It is impossible that a man who is false to his
friends and neighbours should be true to the public.” Almost the only people
who think Johnson a nice guy are those who do not know him.
There is, of course, a symmetry between himself and Jeremy
Corbyn. Corbyn is far more honest, but harbours his own extravagant delusions.
He may yet prove to be the only possible Labour leader whom Johnson can defeat
in a general election. If the opposition was led by anybody else, the Tories
would be deservedly doomed, because we would all vote for it. As it is, the
Johnson premiership could survive for three or four years, shambling from one
embarrassment and debacle to another, of which Brexit may prove the least.
For many of us, his elevation will signal Britain’s
abandonment of any claim to be a serious country. It can be claimed that few
people realised what a poor prime minister Theresa May would prove until they
saw her in Downing Street. With Boris, however, what you see now is almost
assuredly what we shall get from him as ruler of Britain.
We can scarcely strip the emperor’s clothes from a man who
has built a career, or at least a lurid love life, out of strutting without
them. The weekend stories of his domestic affairs are only an aperitif for his
future as Britain’s leader. I have a hunch that Johnson will come to regret
securing the prize for which he has struggled so long, because the experience
of the premiership will lay bare his absolute unfitness for it.
If the Johnson family had stuck to showbusiness like the
Osmonds, Marx Brothers or von Trapp family, the world would be a better place.
Yet the Tories, in their terror, have elevated a cavorting charlatan to the
steps of Downing Street, and they should expect to pay a full forfeit when
voters get the message. If the price of Johnson proves to be Corbyn, blame will
rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon
the British people – who will not find it funny for long.
• Max Hastings is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph and
the London Evening Standard
 |
Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds in the photo, which
appeared in selected newspapers on Tuesday
Speaking to LBC, Johnson refused at least half a dozen times
to comment on the photo of himself and Carrie Symonds seemingly sitting in the
garden of a pub. He would not answer when the host, Nick Ferrari, pressed:
“This is quite an old picture isn’t it?”
|
How Boris Johnson can defuse media frenzy around late-night
argument
Former foreign secretary’s strategy of refusing to answer
questions about why police were called has failed to dampen press interest.
By LUCY THOMAS 6/24/19, 9:02 PM CET Updated 6/25/19, 11:16
AM CET
As the old PR adage goes, if you are on the end of a
front-page hammering for more than a week, you’ve got a major problem. For
Boris Johnson, it is now three days and counting.
The U.K. papers have been dominated by the argument with his
girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, in the early hours of Friday morning that was
recorded by neighbors. They say they were fearful for her welfare after
allegedly hearing her scream “get off me” and “get out of my flat.”
And some of the alleged details of the incident are particularly
toxic for Johnson. Symonds' accusation, according to the Guardian's reporting
of the recording, that he has “no care for money or anything” speaks to
Johnson's image among voters as privileged and out of touch.
Johnson now faces a critical choice. Conventional PR rules
say that the best course of action is to defuse the situation with a short
statement framing the issue on his terms and spinning the situation to his
advantage.
But he has opted to stay silent.
Johnson's outsized personality, including his colorful
private life, is part of his appeal for some voters.
Cue an unstoppable stream of coverage, allowing critics to
double down on his colorful past, his ill-suitedness for office and his
inability to face scrutiny or account for himself — on matters of policy or
personal probity.
So what are his choices now? (The following advice assumes
that the incident was what police officers concluded it was — a row that did
not merit police action, rather than a case of domestic violence, as neighbors
had feared.)
Stick to his guns: Johnson is not like other politicians.
His out-sized personality, including his colorful private life, is part of his
appeal for some voters. He also avoids commenting on his private life, so there
is a consistency in keeping schtum. Precedent also matters. If you address this
one, it’s harder to avoid all future such questions.
The downside to this approach is that he has not drawn a
line under the story and the coverage keeps coming. Would Iain Dale, the
interviewer at a hustings event in Birmingham on Saturday, have kept on
demanding an answer to why the police were called to the incident for as long
as he did had Johnson just given an answer?
And toughing it out can work. François Hollande's ratings as
French president soared on the news of his late-night motorbike rides to
rendezvous with his mistress. "Good on him" was the response of an
impressed French electorate.
It was a British journalist who tried to burst the bubble
when the French president visited the U.K.
While the more deferential Parisian press corps sat aghast,
Chris Hope of the Telegraph asked whether Hollande thought his “private life
has made France an international joke." His waffly response ended with,
“I'm afraid I decline to answer."
The reticence of the French press to follow up is not
something that Johnson can rely on.
Short and sweet: Make a statement saying "it's none of
your business, we all deserve a private life." The advantage is that it
acknowledges the interest while providing some defense. It also allows you to
move on by saying "I’ve already answered that," when others come back
to the issue. Unfortunately for Johnson, the moment for this was over the
weekend — before the snowball began rolling.
Attack the messenger: An expert in the genre, former Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has faced not only media opprobrium but legal
action for some of his alleged bedroom activities. His approach was to tackle
issues head-on and protest his innocence, while attacking the political motives
of those making the allegations.
The wider issue for socially conservative members of the
Tory Party is that Johnson's living arrangements don't look sufficiently
"grown up" for a would-be prime minister.
Some Boris backers also sought to do this over the weekend
by criticizing the intrusion of privacy by the Remain-voting neighbors who
recorded the argument and passed the tape to a newspaper.
Own it: We’re all human and all couples have rows. A
statement like that from Johnson could help to humanize him and evoke sympathy
from voters who might just wonder how they'd feel if an argument with a loved
one was splashed on the front pages.
Whether it works depends on the story and the person at the
eye of the storm. In 2006, Lib Dem leadership candidate Mark Oaten resigned
from the front bench after the News of the World revealed his sexual encounters
with a male prostitute, including graphic details.
As a young press officer for the Lib Dems, I remember our
advice was to keep quiet and not add fuel to the media fire. He instead opted
for a major exclusive interview with Hello magazine with his loyal wife Belinda
by his side. And in an interview for the Sunday Times, he blamed a
"mid-life crisis." The scandal did for his chances of becoming Lib
Dem leader and he stood down from parliament at the next election.
It looks suspiciously like the Johnson camp had decided to
test out this route on Monday, with a lovey-dovey photo of the adoring couple
making its way into the Mail. It is accompanied by quotes from
"friends" and "confidants" about how the pair are
"loved up" and have been "brought closer together" by the
incident.
Go too hard on the schmaltz though and this approach could
end up further fanning the flames: especially for someone who hasn’t sought to
parade his loved ones before.
Hoping it will go away is not going to work.
Put a ring on it: The wider issue for socially conservative
members of the Tory Party is that Johnson's living arrangements don't look
sufficiently "grown up" for a would-be prime minister. One bold way
to address this and the late-night argument together would be to get engaged
and put the relationship on a more "official" footing. That's more
than just a PR strategy though.
The frenzy of press interest over the weekend suggests that
avoiding the choice could seriously derail Johnson's campaign. The incident has
coincided with his decision to avoid scrutiny more broadly in the leadership
campaign. He has refused all major media interviews and so far participated in
only one TV debate. His opponent, Jeremy Hunt, is already trying to make the
epithet "bottler Boris" stick.
Hoping it will go away is not going to work. My advice would
be to go big and get wed — or go home.
Lucy Thomas is a senior director at Edelman, the global
communications firm advising businesses on politics and communications. She was
the deputy director of the Remain campaign and is a former a BBC broadcast
journalist.
Plan would cost £9bn and endanger promise to end austerity,
according to IFS
Richard Partington and Phillip Inman
Tue 25 Jun 2019 00.01 BST
Britain’s foremost tax and spending thinktank has said that
Boris Johnson’s promise to cut taxes for millions of higher earners would cost
£9bn and benefit the richest 10% of households in Britain most.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the proposal by
the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race was expensive and
potentially incompatible with the Tories’ promise to end austerity and safely
manage the public finances.
Johnson has said he would increase the higher-rate income
tax threshold, at which earnings are taxed at 40%, from its current level of
£50,000 to £80,000 should Tory members vote him in as leader.
Tom Waters, a research economist at the IFS, said: “It is
not clear that spending such sums on tax cuts is compatible with both ending
austerity in public spending and prudent management of the public finances.”
Drawing intense criticism from across the political
spectrum, the proposal has been roundly attacked as a giveaway for the rich
that would drive up inequality and harm the public finances. No-deal Brexit
could damage Treasury revenues, while tax cuts would subtract from funding
needed to boost public services.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has warned Tory leadership
hopefuls against any reckless tax cuts and spending increases.
According to the IFS, about 4 million income tax payers with
the highest incomes would benefit from Johnson’s tax promise, standing to gain
almost £2,500 each on average. There are 32.75 million British workers, while
the average salary is about £26,400 a year.
About three-quarters of the reduction in tax liabilities
would go to those in the top 10% of the income distribution, while 97% of the
gains would go to the top 30% highest earners.
Johnson has argued that more people are paying tax at the
higher rate, while the study showed their numbers have increased by 170% since
1990. Johnson’s policy would slash the number of higher-rate taxpayers by a
third to the lowest level since 1990.
Undermining a defence that the cut would encourage
aspirational workers, serving as a reward for rising up the earnings pyramid,
the IFS said that only a quarter of workers in Britain would benefit from the
change at any point in their life or live in a household where someone had. It
said just 8% of workers would gain from the change in the short term.
Wealthy pensioners would stand to benefit in particular.
Johnson has said the cuts would be funded partly by raising the national
insurance contributions of workers who benefit from the income tax cut.
However, retirees do not pay national insurance.
The IFS said those over 65 would receive a tax cut about 60%
larger than those under 65, entrenching generational inequality.
According to a separate report by the IFS, 60- to
74-year-olds on middle incomes already benefit from substantially higher
pension payouts and wages.
Carl Emmerson, the thinktank’s deputy director, said the
report, The Future of Income in Retirement, showed that a combination of
generous occupational pension schemes and more people working into old age
meant those in the 60-74 age bracket on middle incomes were 60% better off than
those in a similar position in the mid-1990s.
The current crop of retirees was likely to be a bubble, with
the prospect of less generous pension schemes for younger workers acting to
depress retirement incomes in decades to come.
“Future generations may actually end up with lower private
pensions,” he said. “But there is much capacity for employment rates of older
individuals to rise further: for example employment rates of men aged 60 to 64,
which have been increasing since the mid-1990s, are still well below the rates
seen in the 1970s when life expectancy was much lower and health less good.”
Mark Carney ‘wrong’ on no-deal Brexit trade terms, says
Boris Johnson
The Tory leadership frontrunner said ‘it is certainly an
option’ to use so-called GATT24 trade rule if there is no deal.
By EMILIO
CASALICCHIO 6/25/19, 12:37 PM CET
Updated 6/25/19, 12:41 PM CET
Boris Johnson said Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was
wrong to suggest the U.K. would be unable to trade on existing terms with the
EU if it leaves the bloc with no deal.
The frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race insisted
that using World Trade Organisation rules to keep the same tariffs after a
no-deal Brexit was “certainly an option” and he bolstered his commitment to
leave the EU on October 31 "do or die."
Last week, the Bank of England boss said it would be
impossible to employ the so-called GATT 24 clause if the UK quits the EU
without an agreement in place.
"GATT 24 applies if you have an agreement, not if
you've decided to not have an agreement or have been unable to come to an
agreement," he told the BBC.
Johnson accepted in a radio phone-in Tuesday that Carney was
right to say “there has to be agreement on both sides” but added he was “wrong
to say it’s not an option."
He insisted on LBC radio: “It is certainly an option. I
don’t know whether he has said it’s not an option but people are wrong if they
say it’s not an option. I don’t think Mark Carney has said that. ”
In his comments, Carney argued it could only be used between
parties who already had a trade deal in place or were close to striking one.
"We should be clear that if we move to no deal, no deal
means no deal, it means there is a substantial change in the trading
relationship with the European Union," Carney said. "Not having an
agreement with the EU means there are tariffs ... because the Europeans have to
apply the same rules to us as they apply to everyone else."
Johnson argued that the GATT rules were “perfectly clear
that two countries that are in the process of beginning a free trade agreement
and may protract their existing arrangements until such time as they have
completed the new free trade agreement.”
He said the clause was a “very hopeful prospect” for Britain
and “the way forward.”
In an interview with the BBC yesterday, Johnson insisted his
government would "never" impose checks on the border in Northern
Ireland and would not "want" to impose tariffs on goods entering the
U.K.
Elsewhere on LBC this morning, Johnson said he would
introduce legislation to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK on “day
one” of his premiership.
He also suggested he would back a report by a
non-governmental commission yesterday that suggested creating a trading area
for food, livestock and plants between Ireland and the U.K. as a way of
avoiding the controversial Northern Ireland backstop plan.
And he said claims he had been in regular contact with
former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon were “codswallop” and a “crazy alt-right
conspiracy.”
On Sunday, the Observer revealed a video of Bannon in which
he claimed he had been in contact with Johnson to help write the former foreign
secretary's first speech after resigning from the government a year ago. When
asked at the time about his contact with Bannon, Johnson called it "a
lefty delusion whose spores continue to breed in the Twittersphere."
In a later interview this morning with TalkRadio, Johnson
insisted he would take the U.K. out of the EU on the current deadline of
October 31 "do or die; come what may."
He had previously indicated that he would not be willing to
ask for another Brexit extension from the bloc, but had been willing to give a
cast-iron guarantee.
Authors:
Emilio Casalicchio
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