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Bye bye, Boris: 11 mistakes and mishaps that
befell the outgoing British PM
Johnson always wanted to be prime minister, and then
he got the gig and a lot went wrong.
BY PAUL
DALLISON
SEPTEMBER
6, 2022 4:02 AM
It’s been
eventful.
Tuesday is
Boris Johnson’s final day as prime minister of the U.K. — for now anyway — as
Liz Truss takes over the top job in British politics. And for a man who was
seemingly always destined (even if only in his own head) to become prime
minister, not everything went according to plan during the just over three
years Johnson was PM.
Here are
some of the key missteps from the Johnson years (whittled down from a long list
of several dozen).
In August
2019, Johnson tried to do something to parliament: prorogue (a word we’d all
definitely heard of before) it.
By Jack
Blanchard
In layman’s
terms, that’s discontinuing a session of parliament without dissolving it,
which Johnson attempted to do for five weeks at the height of the Brexit
crisis. He even asked the queen, and she said yes. Johnson said the reason for
the suspension was that he wanted to present a new legislative agenda to the
country and reassured MPs that parliament would still have “ample time” to
debate Brexit.
It’s safe
to say that Johnson’s opponents disagreed and were none-too-pleased at what
they saw as him running away from parliamentary confrontations over leaving the
EU.
In late
September, the U.K.’s highest court ruled that Johnson’s decision was
“unlawful.” Brenda Hale, the court’s most senior judge, said the court
concluded the decision to advise the queen to prorogue parliament “was unlawful
because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of
parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable
justification.”
Key quote:
“If the prime minister persists with this and doesn’t back off, then I think
the chances are that his administration will collapse,” then-Tory MP Dominic
Grieve.
The
pole-dancing ‘friend’
Johnson’s
relationship with American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri — who said she had an
affair with Johnson (before he was with his now-wife Carrie) as London mayor —
came under great scrutiny in the fall of 2019 and was even referred to a police
watchdog. It was alleged that Arcuri benefitted from her close friendship with
Johnson as she was invited on trade missions and her business received public
money.
At first,
Arcuri refused to confirm or deny whether the two had an intimate relationship,
although she did admit that she had saved Johnson’s number on her phone as
“Alex the Great” (his real first name is Alexander). Arcuri joked she had asked
Johnson to have a go on a pole-dancing pole in her home office, which she said
Johnson had visited “a handful” of times, but wouldn’t reveal whether he took
her up on the offer. However, she later revealed that they had a four-year
affair and went into detail about their sex life, including saying that he
requested racy images of her and said one such picture was “enough to make a
bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” Johnson repeatedly declined to
comment on the claims.
Key quote:
“How can I be the thrust — the throttle — your mere footstep as you make your
career?” Johnson’s words to Arcuri, according to her diary.
Pass the
milk
A day
before the general election in 2019 and the Tory lead in opinion polls over
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was shrinking. What was going to happen? (Spoiler
alert: Johnson oversaw the biggest Conservative election win since the days of
Margaret Thatcher.) On a pre-dawn visit to a dairy, Johnson was ambushed by a
producer from TV show Good Morning Britain and asked if he would agree to an
interview with strop-throwing, Meghan Markle-bothering egomaniac Piers Morgan.
“Morning prime minister, would you come on Good Morning Britain?” said the
producer, to which Johnson’s aide could be heard saying “oh for fuck’s sake.”
Johnson,
who was clearly spooked, replied “I’ll be with you in a second” and then walked
away, with a member of the show’s crew exclaiming “he’s gone into the fridge.”
Conservative aides were at pains to point out Johnson was “categorically not
hiding” in a fridge. He later emerged from the fridge in which he categorically
was hiding carrying bottles of milk.
Key quote:
“Cowardice is never a good look,” Morgan’s reaction on Twitter.
Very ill
On a more
serious note, Johnson became the first world leader to be infected with the
coronavirus and he ended up in intensive care.
The prime
minister was first admitted to hospital on April 5, 2020 for tests, in what
Downing Street insisted was a precautionary move. He had displayed coronavirus
symptoms, including a temperature and a cough, for 10 days, and was in
self-isolation in Downing Street, chairing meetings via videoconference and
receiving government papers and meals at his door. Johnson tweeted from his
hospital bed a day later: “I’m in good spirits and keeping in touch with my
team, as we work together to fight this virus and keep everyone safe. I’d like
to say thank you to all the brilliant NHS staff taking care of me and others in
this difficult time. You are the best of Britain.”
A month
earlier, Johnson admitted he “was at a hospital the other night where I think
there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody,”
comments that did not go down well during a pandemic that would end up
resulting in an estimated 205,000 deaths in the U.K.
Key quote:
“We’re not getting the respect and now pay that we deserve. I’m just sick of
it. So I’ve handed in my resignation,” Jenny McGee, a nurse who was by the
prime minister’s bedside for two days when he was in intensive care, after she
quit the NHS.
Pick up the
dog turd
Cleo
Watson, Johnson’s former deputy chief of staff, used high-society magazine
Tatler to deliver a withering takedown of the Johnson regime during lockdown.
She described her role close to government as more akin to being Johnson’s
“nanny” as the pandemic raged, with tasks such as checking that the PM had
washed his hands often enough (“What do you mean by ‘recently’?”) and putting
up with his jokes — “Kung-Flu” and “Aye! Corona!”
But Watson
had to draw the line somewhere, and that line was dog poo. She recalled a
meeting at Chequers, the PM’s country residence, involving Johnson’s dog,
Dilyn: “We made our way upstairs to be greeted by an appalling smell and what I
took to be a small fig under the table. ‘Oh dear,’ the PM said, looking at me
expectantly, ‘Dilyn’s done a turd.’ I adopted the exasperated-teapot pose.
‘Well, you’d better pick it up then,’ I said. And he did.”
Key quote:
“Karma returned with interest,” Watson after Johnson’s demise at the hands of
fellow Tories.
Anyone
fancy a drive to Barnard Castle?
Loyalty is
a problem for most leaders and Johnson was no exception (we’ll get to those
lockdown-busting parties soon enough). Remember Matt Hancock, who quit as
health secretary when footage emerged of him making out with an aide? But no
one is getting close to the drama caused by Johnson’s former chief adviser
Dominic Cummings. He and Johnson were thick as thieves until Cummings travelled
across the country with suspected COVID-19 when the government was pushing a
“stay at home” message. Cummings went straight on the offensive, and the prime
minister stood by his man.
Perhaps the
defining image of Cummings was him sitting behind a trestle table in the Downing
Street rose garden explaining why he broke the coronavirus lockdown rules — an
unprecedented move for a government special adviser.
Boris
Johnson and his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings | Tolga Akmen/AFP via
Getty Images
Cummings
told the press his wife became ill and the pair took the view it would be
better to be near family members who could help look after their four-year-old
son. He said he drove from London to Durham in the northeast of England without
stopping on the way and spent two weeks there while he and his wife recovered.
Still feeling weak, Cummings drove the family 30 miles to the town of Barnard
Castle to check whether a “weird” feeling in his eyes might prevent him from
making the much longer journey back to London — because the obvious thing to do
if your eyes are feeling “weird” is to go for a drive with your loved ones.
Cummings
was soon fired, never to be heard from again. No, wait, to spend the next two
years launching brutal revenge attacks including referring to Johnson by using
an emoji of a shopping trolley.
Key quote:
“I think most people in Barnard Castle are sick of the negative attention,”
Trevor Brookes, editor of the Teesdale Mercury.
Wallpapergate
The “cash
for cushions” scandal over who paid for the refurbishment of Johnson’s flat
above No. 11 Downing Street was one that would not go away, and even saw the Electoral
Commission formally investigating the Conservative Party’s conduct. Johnson
(secretly, at first) borrowed £112,000 from a Tory donor for the controversial
refurb, including golden wallpaper that cost £840-a-roll. It got worse when the
Independent obtained a leaked copy of the estimate for the renovation that
included a £3,675 drinks trolley said to be like one owned in Paris by ballet
dancer Rudolph Nureyev.
Key quote:
“The worry is that there could be a paper trail,” a government source told the
Times. Quite.
Peppa Pig
World
Johnson’s
“aw, shucks it was, er, you know, me? Er, Pericles” shtick endears and
infuriates in equal measure. In November 2021, during a speech to business
chiefs at the Confederation of British Industry, he went with this: “Yesterday
I went, as we all must, to Peppa Pig World. I love it. Peppa Pig World is very
much my kind of place: it has very safe streets, discipline in schools. Who
would have believed that a pig that looks like a hairdryer or possibly a
Picasso-like hairdryer, a pig that was rejected by the BBC, would now be
exported to 180 countries with theme parks both in America and China?”
Safe to say
that not many people saw that coming. Oh, and he also compared himself to
Moses, saying: “I said to my officials the new 10 commandments were that ‘Thou
shalt develop industries like offshore wind, hydrogen, nuclear power and carbon
capture.’”
Key quote:
“Arum arum aaaaaaaaag,” official Downing Street transcription of Johnson
imitating the sound of an accelerating car at the CBI event.
Partygate
And so to
the beginning of the end. On April 12 this year, Johnson became the first
sitting British prime minister to be fined for breaking the law as he was given
a £50 fixed penalty notice by police for attending his own lockdown-busting
birthday party on June 19, 2020. Johnson swiftly accepted the fine and
apologized, but the damage was done and the public anger was very real.
There were
a lot of parties (or “work events” if you will) during lockdown. Cheese and
wine, birthday bashes, a “bring your own booze” event, leaving parties, plus
aides caught on camera joking about how to cover up a drunken Christmas party.
The
pressure began to mount and scandalous details emerged as part of senior civil
servant Sue Gray’s long-awaited report into the boozy events across Downing
Street and Whitehall. By this point Johnson was so toxic he was booed during
the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and on June 15 his ethics adviser (now there’s a
tough job) quit after suggesting the PM might have breached the ministerial
code.
Key quote:
“I think the best thing I can do now is, having settled the fine, focus on the
job in hand,” Johnson after being fined.
Now you see
it, now you don’t
By June
this year, the writing was on the wall but Johnson could still wield power. The
Times ran a story suggesting that Johnson attempted to give Carrie Johnson
(then Symonds) a £100,000-a-year job as his chief of staff at the Foreign
Office in 2018 (when he was foreign secretary), but the report was pulled from
later editions of the paper, sparking questions over whether No. 10 applied
political pressure on its editors. At the time, Johnson was still married to
his second wife, Marina Wheeler.
British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and wife Carrie Johnson | Stefan
Rousseau/Pool/Getty Images
Downing
Street later confirmed that members of Johnson’s team intervened but denied
that the prime minister himself contacted the paper to complain.
Cronyism allegations
resurfaced last week when Johnson picked the author of a book on his “wit and
wisdom” (now there’s a tough job) to help oversee the appointment of new peers
to the House of Lords.
Key quote:
“We were approached before publication and spoke to them then. I think we spoke
to them after publication as well,” PM’s spokesperson.
His downfall
Congratulations
if you had “Chris Pincher” on the scorecard in the game of “What will be the
final straw that will lead to Johnson’s downfall?”
A scandal
involving sexual misconduct allegations finally ended Johnson’s premiership,
but it wasn’t his. Instead it was Pincher, who stepped down from government
after being accused of drunkenly groping two men. Pincher had resigned from the
whips’ office once over allegations of inappropriate behavior when Johnson
opted to make him a minister in 2019. But did the PM know about new allegations
when he promoted him? Downing Street said he did not, then Johnson admitted
that he did.
Then
everyone quit, starting with top ministers Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak (whoever
that is!) and ending with the most obscure Tories you’ve never heard of. And
then (after dragging it out longer than most would have deemed acceptable),
Johnson himself quit. And here we are.
Key quote:
“Pincher by name, pincher by nature,” nickname for disgraced ex-minister that
Johnson refused to deny that he used.
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