Cameron: Boris ruined my career
Ex-PM ‘vented fury to minister’ as Johnson was on brink of No 10
A FURIOUS David Cameron accused Boris Johnson of ‘ ruining my bloody career’, according to the explosive diaries of a former minister.
The ex-prime minister’s frustration burst out on the eve of Mr Johnson’s successful campaign to replace Theresa May in Downing Street.
Mr Cameron gave vent to his pent-up feelings at his fellow Old Etonian’s rise to power over breakfast with Sir Alan Duncan. The incident on May 1 2019 is revealed in the former Foreign Office minister’s memoirs In The Thick Of It.
The entry reads: ‘Breakfast with David Cameron. he is so glad not to be in the middle of everything that is going on at the moment.
‘he has a very straightforward opinion about Boris – “he ruined my bloody career”.’
The breakfast took place three weeks before Mrs May was forced to resign after Mr Johnson plotted to bring her down. Within two months, he succeeded her in No 10.
Three years earlier, Mr Cameron suffered a similar humiliation at the hands of Mr Johnson when he stepped down as prime minister after losing the 2016 EU referendum.
Mr Johnson’s Brexit victory came after a series of wounding attacks on Mr Cameron.
The latest extract of Sir Alan’s explosive memoirs contains more jibes at senior Tories:
Jeremy hunt: whose etiquette gaffe on an Arab trip was equivalent to ‘nose picking’.
Commons Leader Jacob Rees
Mogg: ‘A cheap nationalist with an ego the size of a planet.’
health Secretary Matt hancock: who used to be ‘a pushy little s***’.
Liz Truss: whose visit to the US was ‘odd and purposeless’.
Ex-Tory Cabinet minister Rory Stewart: quotes gossip that he ‘looks like a horse’.
Sir Alan complains that Mr hunt, who as foreign secretary in 2018- 2019 was his boss, ‘doesn’t exude enough purpose or authority. Lots of rational thinking, but not enough grit’.
Sir Alan, an Arab expert, chides Mr hunt for ignoring his etiquette tips on a trip to Oman. he wrote: ‘Pictures emerge of him crossing his legs which I specifically briefed him not to do, as it is very bad manners. It is like picking your nose.’
Sir Alan also derides Mr ReesMogg as ‘ridiculous and pompous’, writing: ‘he thinks he’s clever: he is not. he is a cheap nationalist with faux manners and an ego the size of a planet.’
The diaries disclose how Sir Alan urged Mr hancock over dinner to challenge Mr Johnson for the Tory crown.
Sir Alan told him he had gone from being ‘a pushy little s*** to a contender’ and would win support from Tories who ‘would do anything to stop Boris’.
Sir Alan cheekily sent a mock draft diplomatic telegram poking fun at Miss Truss for the Cabinet minister’s ‘odd, unproductive and purposeless’ official trip to the US.
It said: ‘FO met her request to see a game of American football and go shopping. Local hosts bemused at purpose of visit – and the minister herself.’
The diaries also tell how veteran entrepreneur Algy Cluff apparently said to Sir Alan that Mr Stewart ‘used to look quite pretty but as he grows older he looks more like a horse’.
Mrs May’s sad decline as premier is a recurring theme. Sir Alan describes a Commons performance as going ‘down like a bag of cold sick. She’s like a single flaking old pit prop: everyone knows it will collapse, but dares not touch it to wedge in a replacement in case the roof falls in first. F***-adoodle-doo!’
Despite criticising her, Sir Alan defends Mrs May from attacks by other Conservatives. he ‘chastised’ former Cabinet minister Baroness [Nicky] Morgan via a text message after she called on Mrs May to resign.
Of Baroness Morgan, he says she was ‘not up to much, bitter, poor judgment, self-indulgent’.
Michael Gove is charged with disloyalty to Mrs May when Sir Alan sees him on TV ‘looking ghastly in jogging kit in a tacky publicity stunt. Milking it with briefings behind the scenes, while feigning loyalty. Crap.’
Sir Alan, who opposed Brexit, says he stood down as an MP because he no longer ‘felt happy’ in the Conservative Party.