The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson
I“This is a fascinating portrait that combines political analysis with psychological insight”
t’s been barely 18 months since Boris Johnson stepped out of Downing Street for the last time and just over nine months since he resigned as an MP. But with the polls suggesting that the Conservatives are in a far worse place than they were after his departure, there have already been calls in some quarters to bring him back to frontline politics. Like David Cameron’s, Johnson’s story may yet need another chapter. Channel 4 has nevertheless decided to go ahead with The Rise and Fall
of Boris Johnson, a four-part documentary tracing one of the most colourful and controversial careers in modern British politics.
The opening episode focuses on Johnson’s childhood, journalistic career and time as mayor of London. The second moves on to his first attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party – which ended in disaster when Michael Gove suddenly abandoned him in favour of his own leadership bid – and his subsequent spell as foreign secretary. The third part looks at Johnson’s first few months as prime minister as he attempted to get a Brexit deal through Parliament, culminating in a landslide election victory. The series concludes by recounting his final two and a half years in office, which ended in a wave of ministerial resignations.
The series is slickly produced and features a seamless mix of archive footage and interviews. Contributors include friends of the Johnson family, political allies such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries, and Johnson’s former staff from his time as mayor of London. We also hear the thoughts of political adversaries such as Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn.
But the presentation is not without its flaws. Alleged former mistress Jennifer Arcuri, perhaps the one person who seems more shameless and self-obsessed than Johnson himself, makes repeated appearances, while many of the major figures who sat beside Johnson during his time at the Foreign Office and Downing Street clearly chose not to take part. Johnson’s handling of the Covid crisis, during which he imposed unprecedented peacetime controls on people’s lives, with effects that may only now be beginning to reveal themselves fully, is reduced to a handful of vignettes within a single episode.
Despite these weaknesses, the series is a fascinating portrait of the former prime minister that ably combines political analysis with insight into the psychological flaws that created a combination of burning ambition alongside laziness and poor judgement. In the words of one contributor, Johnson always managed to get away with things, until suddenly he didn’t. The tension inherent in that makes for entertaining viewing.