MAX HASTINGS
BBC chairman with exposure of his own personal life in the Spectator, which Johnson then edited, unless the BBC laid off its reporting of his affair with Wyatt.
I have a memorably nasty letter in my own file from Boris, threatening me with revenge because I had said that a speech he made as a shadow education spokesman was insulting rubbish.
In all this, there is more than a touch of Silvio Berlusconi, except that the lothario former Italian prime minister created a media empire, where Boris’s substantive achievements can be summarised on a postage stamp.
You ask: ‘But wasn’t he a brilliant mayor of London?’ Rather, he was a brilliant maitre d’, showing visitors to their tables in the greatest city on Earth.
The record of his real doings, and carelessness about public money, have incurred harsh scrutiny. The bill for the fabled ‘Boris bikes’, which were supposed to be costneutral, runs into hundreds of millions. He never gripped the chronic, brutal problem of the unions’ stranglehold on the Underground system, beyond bribing drivers who are already grossly overpaid to work nights.
His indifference to truth seems comic to some people, but became repugnant in an aspiring prime minister. During the referendum campaign, he repeatedly promised cuts in immigration, but then wrote in Monday’s Daily Telegraph: ‘It is said that those who voted Leave were driven mainly by anxieties about immigration. I do not believe that is so.’
A few hours later he turned another somersault, recanting that remark, under pressure from his backers in the Leave campaign. Yet last Friday’s announcement of Leave’s triumph seemed to terrorise him. In almost every published picture since, we could glimpse his fear.
Johnson is not a man of courage. It suddenly dawned on him that, after a lifetime of evasions, halftruths and double-crosses, he was in line for the highest office in the land. He faced the prospect of assuming real responsibility for real decisions; for making choices that could not afterwards be denied.
And, of course, his personal history would receive relentless review. All those women, conquered or merely propositioned, who did not seem to matter much while he was a mere journalist, suddenly became a matter of large and legitimate public interest when the man who had dallied with them aspired to rule Britain.
I suppose that I have some personal interest in Johnson’s withdrawal from the leadership contest, because it will spare me from having to fulfil my 2012 pledge in these pages that I would catch a plane to Buenos Aires if this essentially brutal buffoon became prime minister.
Now, however, my gratitude is for this country. Thank God Boris Johnson has been found out before it is too late. He, who has shafted so many others, has been himself royally and deservedly shafted by Michael Gove.
Whichever of the declared candidates becomes prime minister, none is likely to make Britain ridiculous, as Johnson would have done. It is said that, if he is not to be premier, he fancies himself spending a couple of years as defence secretary.
Heaven forbid! It would be the height of recklessness to place this unguided missile within reach of the nuclear deterrent.
If he is well-advised, he will retire to his rightful trade as a journalist and entertainer.
Values, decency and honesty play a diminished part in modern politics — but the British people may be grateful that it is still a sufficient one to have halted the march on Downing Street of this dangerous charlatan.
In all this, there is more than a touch of Berlusconi