Ex-PM Johnson can bank on money from book, speeches
NEW YORK — Boris Johnson the politician went bust in July when his Conservative Party colleagues forced him to resign as prime minister. Boris Johnson the business, on the other hand, is about to make a small fortune.
Political observers in England expect that Boris Inc. will follow the path of previous British leaders and become a one-man private corporation offering two products — a memoir and speeches.
A born performer who offers a singular mix of gravitas and japery, he will market qualities that once charmed millions of voters, including a shambolic head of blond hair.
What he won’t do, a biographer predicts, is immediately angle for a return to power — or criticize his successor, Liz Truss, who has managed to crater her poll numbers and the British pound in just a few weeks in office.
“It is too soon for him to make any attempt at a comeback,” said Andrew Gimson, author of “Boris Johnson: The Rise and Fall of a Troublemaker at No. 10.” “His downfall is still too recent, his own failings as prime minister are too fresh in people’s memories, and Truss’s failure is by no means confirmed.”
If he chooses to, he will join the lecture circuit.
The most lucrative live events, like corporate conferences and annual meetings, have come roaring back in recent months after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic.
In late September, the Clinton Global Initiative held its first in-person conference since 2019, as did Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, which had some 5,700 registrants — 700 more than three years ago.
Johnson is expected to fetch as much as $250,000 per speech, and even more for his first outing or two, say executives at speakers’ bureaus. Because he remains a member of Parliament, he will need to report that income publicly.
In 2019, after he quit the foreign secretary post, Johnson reported earning about $132,000 from Living Media India for a threehour speaking engagement — a payday he is likely to routinely exceed now.
He earned about $178,000 as prime minister.
For the biggest paydays for speeches, he will need to leave the United Kingdom.
“He won’t be popular here,” said Gina Nelthorpe Cowne, co-founder and managing director of Kruger Cowne, a British talent management agency. “He’s humorous, but the British public have looked at the facts, looked at the damage he’s done.”
Audiences in the United States know about Johnson’s calamitous end and will have some familiarity with the assortment of scandals that led to his ouster. Unlike British voters, though, Americans are not simmering about the many debacles of his administration, including the No. 10 Downing Street parties he attended at a time when such gatherings had been banned by lockdown laws passed by his government. After an investigation into the parties, the police fined Johnson and dozens of others.
None of the tarnish is likely to follow him across the Atlantic.
Plenty of Americans could be eager to hear insider tales about world leaders and reverent stories about the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II. And some will be spellbound by his bumbling mode of speaking and his aristocratic-adjacent accent.
“He’s always played this slightly farcical version of an upper class fool who is forever trying to remember what happened and keeps searching for the right words,” said Simon Kuper, author of “Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the U.K.” “And now that he’s been prime minister, he can do the Churchill thing and talk about what happened in the great rooms of power.”
Johnson is expected by industry veterans to sign either with the Harry Walker Agency in New York City or the Washington Speakers Bureau, which represents Theresa May, John Major and other former prime ministers.
Emails and calls to the companies were not returned. Discretion is prized when it comes to money and former political leaders who earn speaking fees, and that is especially true in Britain.
“The U.K. public is very sniffy about stories of former prime ministers making money,” said Giles Edwards, author of “The Ex Men: How Our Former Presidents and Prime Ministers Are Still Changing the World.” “Unreasonably so, in my opinion.”
Among book publishers and literary agents in Britain, a Johnson memoir is expected to fetch $1.1 million to $2.2 million.