Who is the real Boris Johnson?

Sonya Andrew welcome bow thank you very much indeed for sparing time in water no doubt a flurry a blizzard of media engagements as Boris Johnson biographers suddenly and take us back to the earliest days I mean when does when do we think the ambition that we're looking at the fulfillment of now is first formed in Boris Johnson could you track it ooh well I think at least back to the 1990s when he was in Brussels actually because when he was writing all those creative things from from father for the Telegraph creatives sometimes absolutely downright untrue but anyway I think he then saw an opportunity to go off the relatively small stage of a national newspaper onto the much bigger stage of politics and I think that thought had occurred to him he was already talking to people about becoming an MEP that went quite quickly into talking to people about becoming an MP he then went to the spectator of course but as we know he told The Spectator he would never be an MP while he was editor and then he told his constituency Henley that he wouldn't go on being editor of The Spectator if they raised him in as his MP at least call a pattern of behaviour it is a pattern of faith but I think what's really interesting is that it seemed so obvious that back in 2002 in fact I wrote a piece in the independent on Sunday inviting readers to imagine Boris Johnson on the steps of Downing Street with marina for well-scrubbed kids a little bit of breakfast on his tie and I put the dates I got it completely wrong I said um 2010 folks of course it's now 2019 and we're still not there but I think that that ambition was there for a very very long time where do you trace it back 200 well he he said when he was about four years old that he wants to be world king but I think it's did read it true this is a stage II he has this great-grandfather who'd been a senior figure in a very controversial journalists in Turkey and got lynched for his trouble and so I think it's a hereditary condition this this burning ambition what drives it there because there without delving too much into amateur psychology is there something going on in that extraordinary family of people who don't seem shy most of them of publicity Sonia well I think was a new book competitiveness very much fostered by Stanley so they competed everything even as to how blond they were or how did they were at table tennis or how fast they could run what I probably how good they were at Scrabble probably everything how quickly they could read so this extraordinary competitive atmosphere I mean quite like unlike my own family upbringing and we didn't have that kind of thing and I think that instills a new burning desire to be the best to win all the time but what's unusual is what do you then do one you've won so that the Johnson psychology seems to be win win win win win and then what and if you look at what it was like it as when he was mayor and he won spectacularly twice in in London a great achievement but then as mayor even his own side I remember Stefan Shakespeare in conservative home describes him as the do-nothing mayor that what he did was preside or he got other people to preside over things that Ken Livingstone had brought in the Olympics Boris bikes were actually really Ken likes Crossrail obviously but there are no great Boris legacies apart from a cable car which as I understand I haven't used it myself it is not you know very well used and that very very strange sculpture you see in the Olympic Park so it's all about the winning it was seen which does raise questions obviously but if he does win this competition and obviously it looks like he's going to as to what he would do behind that glossy black door in number 10 feel the same for you Andrew not quite he was in his ambassadorial function extremely good and raise everyone's spirits the showman impresario and stuff during the Olympics he completely out Shaun the Prime Minister I agree with that yeah he was very good at that he's very good at good news he's he's good at sort of dad dancing at the appropriate moments and getting stuck on as it was at the appropriate moments and that kind of thing he's there's no one better he's genius at it but the point that Sonny was making there Andrew that he arrives with the sort of cupboard bear he doesn't come with of government when he arrives at City College is that there is something to that there is that and he didn't have a sort of I mean David Cameron when he became Prime Minister had all these people have been trained in the conservative research department who knew how to run stuff including some people who were not sort of front of hats weave like Ed Llewellyn who could actually knew the difference between good briefing and bad briefing and knowing what you're talking about and not knowing what you're talking about Boris didn't have those people his appointments in the first six months were not very successful then he they weren't sturdy they didn't last all sorts of things went wrong he then got Simon Milton in and that did work quite well that was his equivalent of David Cameron said to Eleanor yes and also I mean Boris doesn't enjoy he does respect brains and he doesn't expect you to agree with him and actually another good thing he did was not sack all the good people can of got running transport so the prophecy the improvement of transport in London his main layer Livingstone achievement and they in any case improving an underground line usually takes a very long time but Boris didn't wreck it which is i agree not you know it's not heroic achievement but it's a it was proved wasn't sort of de-baathification process to get rid of every every single person who'd been appointed by care in the magazine that Boris Johnson used to edit the spectator this week there's a double page spread on what it'll be like at Number ten when he gets there and it's rather striking when you read it that I don't not sure we know we don't have a central governing intelligences of a chief of staff figure who seems to be shaping stuff now his people would say well that would be presumptuous if we had that what other people have done that it's possible to do that stuff behind the scenes and have that work going on it doesn't appear to be going on does that sound right to you does it okay yes very much in fact I mean I've written something similar is this I mean going back to this point it's all about the winning is not so much about the doing afterwards I mean if you go back to City Hall which is kind of all we've got to go on here the the chief of staff if you like or City Hall that the resident civil servant who was about to retire and therefore felt that he could do this he wouldn't get sacked as a result basically invited almost ordered Boris Johnson to go to dinner with him at Joe Allen's where was a particularly dark corner on a table there where they could have a full and frank discussion and Anton mirrors his name said to him look you know Boris Johnson stop messing around grow up and start behaving like a mayor you know we cannot afford to have someone who's prepared to be so flippant so unprepared to go into Downing Street at a point when he himself admits were in a grave national crisis and so the very fact that there isn't someone there that there isn't a plan as far as we can see the very little push that he's had on what he's actually going to do that's different from Theresa May and brexit has not actually produced very much at all it's a flimsy kind of thing that we've had in response and so that is one of my biggest concerns is what will it be like will it be chaos and what we've got to go on is to suggest it will be Andrew well I think Sonia has expressed one half of a really unbridgeable temperamental divide there are people on the right and the left who find Boris's approach to politics utterly intolerable they think he's not serious that he doesn't have a plan they always they're the kind of people who have have a sort of faith that if you have a plan that a problem is soluble what I think he does have in a negotiation is remarkable fleetness of foot he had this as a journalist as well if the story changed if the story was suddenly in Belgrade and not in Brussels he would get on the next plane to Belgrade because that was where he needed to be if the European the Europeans are changes he will adapt his negotiation position that means that actually he can't say this is my plan because then no I mean you can't have a fixed position he's got it's got to be a war of movement and there'll be some letting down of the European reform group the Tory Euroskeptics there'll be some letting down of everyone probably in order to get a deal but he will be I mean I don't know that he will get a deal they may all be a catastrophe I'm certainly not saying he'll be a success but I think his way of going about it will be completely different to the Theresa May thing let's get the best plan and then let's stick to it through thick thin that was not a successful approach and his whole style of negotiating will be completely different and dangerously unpredictable I mean in fact in tolerably unpredictable as far as sort of a certain kind of person is concerned but you wouldn't rule out that he's going to compromise more than say the mark France was of this world would like whether it's compromising agreement or going one thing see mediately of Disraeli and Disraeli had defeated Gladstone's reform bill and then brought in one which gave the vote for about twice as many people he's in that sort of aegis by Lord Salisbury who described Disraeli as an adventurer without scruples or morals I in fact ended up working for him about seven years later very successfully before the Congress of Berlin so on that scale and Disraeli of course ended up from the Debray dis reptile youth much more disreputable than Boris's ended up as the great love of Victoria's life after her husband had died and the great sort of taught the any Tory in fact the only British politician has ever inspired a posthumous cult but I mean listen there is a cult about Boris Johnson he does have great appeal he is capable of persuading people to support him who you might not expect to be supported I would agree with all of that but what worries me is his lack of attention to detail I do think that you know when you're negotiating with the European Union that's what you need the fact that he has alienated so many people on the other side of the channel that he's gone round gratuitously offending foreigners for what reason I simply can't imagine together laughs isn't it quite often but laughs aren't going to solve this problem but isn't that just in terms of someone who's written about him I just wonder what that is right absolutely and I hear what you say about Disraeli but there's also a competence issue as well with Boris Johnson now if you look at the NASA needs a Gary Ratcliffe issue for a start was that doing it for a laugh I assume not in which case was it in confidence that he went into the Commons and said that she was there to teach journalists and in Tehran one thing or the other but as a result of that incompetence no laughing matter in my view she is stuck there in an Iranian jail her poor husband who looks more tortured by the day is unhung grrrrrr strike outside the Iranian embassy there has to be a basic level of competence otherwise you're not going to be it Israeli or a church or anyone else that you might want to have his duel heroes Andrews you got a basic level all people operating at that level make bad mistakes and he certainly makes bad mistakes sometimes we came to have a human being as Prime Minister again I have someone who will sometimes make bad mistakes the advantage of making Boris having had this extremely to put it politely a chequered life is that he is more prepared for bad weather than the conventional careerist who rises by being always reading the papers always be on top of the detail never saying anything at all interesting and doing exactly what the party hierarchy demands and that gets you to a certain level but then suddenly you're in the middle of a storm often of a very unpredictable kind because you how could you you become Prime Minister nor to deal with one thing we think he's get there to deal with breaks it who knows something which none of us has dreamt of may suddenly become maybe some terrible event in Manchester or something sudden he's got to deal with that and it's nothing to do with brexit but it's very very serious and then at least he will have more experience than some of his competitors of things getting wrong I mean I think I think well I mean that's a really interesting point now he makes and I think again you look back at his experience and and he's brilliant at the good news he's not so good at the bad news and I'm looking for instance at the the worst thing really I mean he was a very lucky may he's got a great talent for luck by the way the worst thing that really happened on his watch were the the riots in 2011 which were bad and people died and he wouldn't come back from his holiday here several days but he's people so he should come back from it although he was the Mayor of London it didn't look good he finally came back and went down to Clapton where some of the worst riots in South London had taken place he was utterly out of his depth had no comfort and no ideas as to what to do was this however this is where his populist genius came in because not long afterwards he grabbed a broom held it aloft like some sort of you know a sword in a cavalry charge and we've got a great number of chairs but of course when the the cameras went he put the broom down again and that was the end of it it has to be more than just populist genius we actually have to see things getting done we've come to the p-word populist and I want to ask the the Boris Johnson who was the Cameroonian moderniser metropolitan in his outlook on the rest of it who ran for mayor is that the Boris Johnson we will get what's going on when he chats to Steve Bannon and flirts with Donald Trump well what do you think is going on in in in that particular drama and just first of all never never cameroon and actually when he you're right he absolutely got the turn wrong when he went to clap him he then went and had dinner at number 10 with Cameron and with Cameron's chief of staff ed Louie at the three of them he then went on the Today program the following morning and he said to John Harvard's you might want to ask me whether I think this is the time to be cutting spending on the police and he said I do not think it's time to cut been the other piece which was then the he hadn't told Cameron he hadn't told Llewellyn he hadn't told Theresa May he hadn't told anyone but he was saying Blundell's very frightened at that point he was saying what London's wanted to hear and he recovered by changing his position and by in a sense being from the point of your Downing Street very unreliable but standing up for London so that is that's an example of his quickness of apprehension when something you're quite right had gone badly wrong by Cameroon I think I probably used the term too loosely I meant moderniser in modern social out the gate probe Larry's issues like that instinctively liberal and of course has never never adopted a sort of moral majority sort of rhetoric about politics but flirts with Steve Bannon and and what's going on there and how far might that journey take us well I think he's he is he's certainly interested in in getting on friendly turns with the President of the United States absolutely and indeed with people who influence that's always I don't think he's not well he's much better educated than Donald Trump although he does have very vulgar tastes as well as sort of elevated love of classical literature so he's a funny mixture but he's not he's not the same as Trump but he is a realist I mean it would be ridiculous whoever was British Prime Minister ought to make some effort to get on with the President of the United States where do you think Sonia he is in our age of populist leaders will he carry on being a bully revert to being the Boris Johnson we knew as London Mayor or will he played that card a bit this is a really really interesting question I think his instincts are liberal but he will always he can't help himself it seems appealing to his base you know all this stuff about bum boys and pickaninnies and watermelon smiles and all those other awful words that women wearing they come looking like letterboxes why does he do that well doesn't would you ma'am please help us with okay well I think it is because he is being championed there in appealing to his base and to the worst instincts of the worst parts of his base but sometimes in say the letterbox remarks in the middle of an article that saying we probably shouldn't ban the veil well he often does that a lot of his articles are completely mixed and quite often the conclusion of an article is not backed up at all about what was in you know what what he said previously so he'll it seems this is the really strange thing that there are several Boris Johnson's and it's quite difficult to pin down which is the real one personally I think his instincts are liberal but as I say he's prepared to say anything in order to get himself elected and I'm sure he's looked at the polls of the you know Tory electorate 160,000 of them and what they seemed to want they seemed to want brexit more than they want the Union the United Kingdom or the economy or even their own party to survive so he I'm sure he's making calculations as to what other views they might possibly have and all of this sort of inflammatory language he puts out there is to woo him is the word I'm over to his his cause is that how you see it Andrews it calculated to that degree or just trying it's a bit of his political incorrectness and he's just trying to get a laugh or what I think he's so liberal he says things which liberals disapprove oh and he knows that actually people pretty fed up with this prissy language where you never you get down to the pub and you can't actually tell it is you really think it is so but I think he is basically liberal on but on all sorts of things like immigration and very liberal on sex as well so he's not taking is really interesting but a lot there are a lot of conservatives who strongly believe in marriage and certainly that's another way respecting which is not a Cameroon and supporters are often very conservative things like marriage and yet they figure him or his indiscretions is interesting I mean there are so Morris isn't really a sort of pre pre-christian figure like the ancient world gods and even goddesses sort of fighting it out there was a fascinating moment in this contest which is seared on the memory of some of Boris Johnson's supporters they bring it out and it's Michael goes launch and in the launch she turns around and says addresses Boris Johnson through the cameras don't pull out even if we're down the whole final things if don't pull out irony wasn't meant to be a do blong tandra but it was probably seen as that in the room and then he goes on and says I know you may doubt your ability to do the top job but stick with it and give the activists the contest they want it was there it sounded like he was trying to get really under the skin of someone he thinks he understands and who is riddled with self-doubt do you know I think there was an elements of that okay again there are several Boris Johnson's the one who whose self belief is seemingly infinite and then the one who is actually tortured by self-doubt you know you do sometimes see him in an off moment when he thinks the cameras aren't watching with his head in his hands looking quite tortured and I think sometimes it's because he is going against his own instincts perhaps not only the liberal ones but even also perhaps from Europe because when I work with him all those years ago and he was writing that very very inflammatory copy about the European Union we shared an office you know it was just two of us you get to know someone pretty well we had sometimes bumped into each other in the kitchen making coffee and and he would talk almost lyrically about the great European project and and actually I still feel that really deep down there is a remainder in there trying to get out I still don't totally buy this this you know leave champion I think it was circumstances that made him go for that and that's now where he finds himself I don't find it I didn't think it's altogether comfortable for him self-doubt is he little but I think most of us are a bit of a mixture you know we have the things we're confident about the things we have extremely frightened of and I think down the only European thing I think you're right that he's not he's not a sort of super anis he's not an Enoch Powell absolutist about parliamentary sovereignty he was capable of writing articles both ways and therefore he was capable something send of understanding the predicament of people like because level people like me who weren't actually quite sure which way to vote the whole argument was devoted with the partisans on both sides spoke as if their opponents had no valid case at all and that was such true it was bloody insult to our intelligence frankly and Forrest is intelligent enough to rise that there are arguments both for leave and remain and that's not unprincipled it's it's realistic which brings me back to a 19th century point about just how big a disappointment he could be to the people who were following him now I mean when you study ponder Boris Johnson just how big a cape a big u-turn is he capable of on Europe could he be the man who gives us the second referendum I don't know but I do think the function of the Prime Minister whoever it is is to take the blame and he probably will end up taking the blame quite what for we don't yet know but you don't rule it out the man might know because he is he does believe in fighting a war of movement he doesn't think that politics consists of publishing a manifesto like well having a sort of set of crunches which then stick to through thick and thin it doesn't mean anything at all like sailing a boat and sometimes the weather is calm sometimes it's very stormy you know you have to trim the sails try and avoid being driven onto the rocks look out for what other people are doing it's a continual continual process of adjustment rather than this sort of heroic pursuit of some fixed truth what do you think yeah it's not so religion to him soul and I think yeah the rocks actually for Boris Johnson probably would be a no deal and I don't believe that he's relaxed about that at all and I think that the populist genius the campaigning genius that he has could potentially see him go for a second referendum I think he is the person most likely to be able to to sell it or the leases get it passed of course he then would have the the fury of people like mark Francois to deal with but I I think I think it is possible it's a threat he's a threat he could use that just as the threat of an election as an oil threat you could use one you need every news every threat you can get that date you originally had in mind in your imagined piece Boris Johnson on the steps of number 10 it might have been better earlier might well he wants to be Prime Minister now but but even without that the but the stick the Boris Johnson routine it's faded a bit hasn't it yes I think so I mean I think he's gone from the Heineken politician the one who could reach beyond the Tory Party to other people in you know metropolitan London or wherever to the Marmite politician you know you either love him or you loathe him I think he's lost and particularly amongst the young was another poll recently it suggested even young Tories were we're not very sort of pleased with him anymore and I think also that you know very unfortunately for him whenever he says anything now and nor thought of people just assume it's a lie whether or not it it is because he's lied so often I mean caught lying so often and cheating mean disloyal and dishonest and all the rest of it all of that is out there in he's still popular with some people but there was a growing sort of group of people many groups of people who think well Boris Johnson's says it so it probably isn't true that's not good for him I'm afraid I'm afraid the dear the great late great Frank Johnson he had he sometimes rated about what the dinner party are saying and this is the dinner party line you can't see but you can't trust the word Boris says but I went down to Peter Brown I wasn't asking people about Boris I was asking about the brexit party in seven a number of voters in peterborough who were very long way from the dinner party spontaneously said that they thought Boris could sort of thing out they may be wrong but they weren't sort of smart plugged in metropolitan people they were they were people in peterborough which is more or less a coastal town sort of spontaneous thinking I don't know it is a bit mysterious but he somehow has a connection with those people in the way that almost no one else at Westminster does he's making coffee establishment which is quite funny for a public school boy educated to someone who went to an Fe College in Suffolk University his dad was a street kid and both my parents left at school at 15 to describe me as a member of the establishment I really think that is ridiculous and I don't spend my time at dinner parties I would I would like to but I don't can I bring it back to this contest and the height the issue of hiding from the script from scrutiny in the cameras and the rest of it and proper interrogation and the Linden Crosby playbook which was deployed in the past and if you've got a candidate who's the favorite you don't want to risk them getting damaged but it's particularly deployed with Boris Johnson do you think he sits there feeling frustrated that he's not out there taking questions or actually completely relieved because he hasn't got the answers I mean I think that's what he likes and actually at some City Hall Ken Davidson had had quite regular press conferences whether or not they were useful I don't know I didn't attend them I wasn't doing that kind of thing then but Boris Johnson did get rid of those it was a much harder thing to put him under scrutiny I don't think he likes scrutiny one of great tricks has been to tell people in the past oh please be gentle with me I've got a terrible hangover where's you know he doesn't actually drink that much I think the most important scrutiny is in Parliament and that is why labour I think Corp it would be disaster for Corbin if if because you just not up to you were one that took holding Theresa may to account it certainly won't be up to so they need a much better because you're a still has six questions which is quite quite a few actually and they can be the same question if Boris doesn't answer the first question you say look no my question is and you can say that six times to him and Coleman doesn't do that he always goes off on some new question which is just hopeless it really allows the prime minister to escape scrutiny and that I mean that is really really important I think Sonia you've written about that Boris Johnson's he like he likes to impart to transmit he doesn't like he's nervous going into a room and having a one-on-one chat or let alone a sort of one-on-one interview he wants to get on the stage and do a production do a performance and then move on I think you wrote about that yes well I remember at every sort of smart lady wants telling me that she's had a dinner party funny enough in her house and invited Boris Johnson and that he was in agony is anytime said anyone else sitting at the table wanted to speak to him and sort of one-to-one way so in the end he said to her I'm gonna and stand up and make a speech you know it was just for dinner in the house yeah in someone's house so I think he finds it right if you male aide he used to drive him around doing various campaign said that she dreaded those car journeys because he would get in the car and there be total silence there would be no small talk there would be nothing and she always found this very awkward so it's interesting he's has a brilliant empathy for crowds really extremely probably like no other that we've ever seen and yes it's much much harder for him honest on that one-to-one basis where he might be asked difficult questions and not quite know how to answer them echoes of that in your research Andrea particularly he was good at the spectator I think on a one to I mean they're about 50 people working there all together I think he was good on a one-to-one basis there's something to this isn't there wanting to do a production and be a shiner some people have called it other other people have other analyses for these things he's capable when it suits him of being extremely evasive he won't answer every question that's put to him but I think that is more or less essential ability in a politician because I mean III Rory Stuart's campaign recently brilliant campaign but this idea that you can be totally honest about everything no I'm not saying should you should be dishonest but you do have to sometimes people deliberately ask you questions which basically you can't answer for all sorts of good reasons you can't answer the that particular question so I'm afraid that's a necessary part of holding a high office in one reason why many people who hold our office are incredibly dull this probably won't be a dull Premiership if it happens Sonia what what do you think in ten years time we'll look back at the Boris Johnson Premiership as long short chaotic more successful than we expected well I hope I really genuinely hope it's more successful then we then I expect or dare hopefully see because I think he does have real talents I I think he could lead if he wanted to but we didn't really have with Teresa may was leadership where this is what I believe is right for the country this is the way we should go and these are the reasons why we should do it I think he could if he wanted to he has that great gift for populism too for writing for presenting things it's really up to him to put them now you know he was 55 yesterday to good effect to do something for his country for a change rather than for Boris Johnson this is his chance he should either put up or shut up my fee Andrew how will history look back do you think I haven't the faintest idea give it a go I mean part of the interests of Boris is that you don't know what's going to happen it could be incredibly short as a premise it could be sort of two seconds or it could be 20 glorious years pulpo did 21 years that it could be I mean the average actually for British - is five and a half years I think you'd have done quite well if you managed is that in such in such a very difficult situation but he is I mean he will one of the things you'll do is try and solve the Tory Party out so he actually ready to fight an election but obviously that cannot happen until there's been no leap for non brexit and whether he can manage the leap forward on brexit is it's highly questionable we thought to resume wasn't a gambler and then she yeah then she gambled yeah and then she gave what she thought he wasn't a gamble it was a safe bet yeah actually it wasn't a gamble she told she didn't realize it was a gamble did you in fact she took her own party by surprise party machinery wasn't ready to fight an election and she gave them the wrong manifest you got everything wrong but she thought she was following the past the path of safety imprudent how much as far as Johnson deep down a gambler no I think he's very cautious actually many I think he has a well-hidden streak of prudence Sonia well remember his former boss Conrad Black who owned Spectator when he was that as a describe broseph as having a death wish yeah bit like one of those people at the top of the black run he just kind of launch themselves off and just you know I have an expectation that they'll somehow get to the bottom I think actually there's quite a big kind of streak of that daredevil gambling thing going on with Boris Johnson because do you know what he has always got to the bottom of the black run so far now this black one is unlike any other so let's just see if he can make it I don't know is he honest answer thank you very much both thank you so much for your time today more in the psychiatrist chair but in the psychiatrist empty chair give me this Boris Johnson thank you both you

Channel: Channel 4 News

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Keywords: Channel 4 News, boris johnson, boris johnson leadership, Brexit, brexit news, brexit explained, brexit 2019, uk brexit, uk, boris johnson brexit, eu brexit, no deal, no deal brexit, sonia purnell, andrew gimson, boris johnson private life, boris johnson interview, channel 4 podcast, boris biography, boris johnson latest news, boris johnson news, tory leadership latest, prime minister, boris johnson prime minister, tory leader

Id: t-AjeeFcs0c

Length: 33min 11sec (1991 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2019