Tom Bower is a blunt instrument to divine someone as complex as Boris Johnson. Bower is a moralist — certainty is his favourite emotion — and he is principally a biographer of monsters: Robert Maxwell; Mohammed Al Fayed; even Klaus Barbie.
Where does Alexander Johnson (Al to his intimates, Boris is only his public name) fit in with them? The answer is awkwardly. In Bower’s biography of Johnson, subtitled The Gambler, Bower prefers narrative to insight, but he has one great scoop: the violence of Johnson’s father Stanley. I have always suspected that Stanley — a pseudo-intellectual, a wanderer and a bore — is the key to his son, and Bower confirms it: Stanley repeatedly beat his wife Charlotte, an artist, and she spent time in a mental hospital, blaming herself. The children were cast to the four winds: to the English public school system, where hurts are buried and myths self-made.
The story appears early in The Gambler and it throws Bower off his stride: too much and too soon. He cannot help but see his subject in the light of it, and it serves to infantalise Johnson, who is 56 now, and quite capable of amending himself. Bower spends the rest of The Gambler acting as a sort of excitable therapist, and cheerleader, to Johnson, with lengthy, un-sifted narratives and occasionally purple prose, as if a sexually shy man is trying to understand his opposite, who he both disapproves of and admires. He calls him “a glamour boy” and “a loner and a lover”. Lover is a strange word for what Johnson is to women: he has a trail of disappointed wives, abandoned mistresses and sullen, speechless children. Is it love, really — or is it hunger?
You will know everything beyond Stanley’s violence already: when he became prime minister, Johnson was already a myth — and who would be a myth? He was at Eton College, where Al the child retreated and Boris the invention rose; he was president of the Union at Oxford University. He was a journalist at the Times, fired for a pitifully obvious lie, an invented quote from his godfather. I would call this behaviour self-hating, though to Bower it is only “insubordinate” and “insolent”, which is a schoolmaster’s analysis. Then came success at the Telegraph for mocking Brussels; the editorship of the Spectator; adultery; Parliament; the Mayoralty; Brexit; a landslide; the sickness of Covid-19; and now uncertainty.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="By the same author" author="Tanya Gold"]https://staging.unherd.com/2020/10/poor-little-rich-girls/[/su_unherd_related]
You know this thanks to the British media, who have followed Johnson since the Spectator years, seeking drama while praying he will fail. It is a very malicious tribute from journalism, and self-important: it is essentially jealousy and the queasy knowledge that, at last, we went too far. I have participated in many Johnson media scrums or “rolling goat fucks”. They are more exciting than policy round tables, and I write that with shame. Bower doesn’t emphasise this crucial element to Johnson’s rise: Boris Johnson, like Donald Trump, is a media invention, willed ironically into life and funny, until it wasn’t.
He has to be, because he barely has politics. Policy does not interest him, as Bower says; and the politics he does have — he is a liberal Remainer — are not the engine of his life. He is not a politician but a personality; he wanted to be World King long before he heard of the Treasury. The engine is, rather, a thrilling personal narrative, which is anti-intellectual, despite Johnson’s book-learning. Bower makes much of Johnson’s love of the ancient poets, and it is true that the pre-Christian world is distant enough for Johnson to attempt to hide there. It is also irresistible to an unserious age. I would go further and call the engine sickness: the sickness is the engine of his life.
That Johnson has Don Juan syndrome is almost too obvious to write but, still, Bower does not emphasise it, presenting us merely with a list of women and their disappointments, or personal failings. These tales, I am again ashamed to admit, are by far the most interesting passages in the book probably because in these matters Johnson has a cracked kind of agency: he does things to women, but politics feels like something that is done to him; his behaviour is reactive, enough to keep going onwards to the undiscovered country of self-acceptance, but not important in itself.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="By the same author" author="Tanya Gold"]https://staging.unherd.com/2020/07/how-the-trumps-silence-their-women/[/su_unherd_related]
Don Juan syndrome is, simply put, a desire to seek, and to punish, the mother; the mother the child believes abandoned him. It explains the compulsion to seduce and betray which is the story of Johnson’s intimate life. Those who call Johnson a lover misunderstand him. He is a seeker: for him the wanting is better than the having. Don Juanism is a personal tragedy, it is true, but it is not tragic enough to destabilise an entire country. The Left is not wrong in its anger towards Johnson and his acolytes who, despite his desire to promote only inadequates, sense a vessel to exploit.
When the real history of Johnson’s rule is written there will be three villains at least beyond Stanley Johnson: the English public school system which supplies the Tory Party with inept leaders; the media, who collude in this and the raising of Johnson, for sport and profit; and the voters, who, with indifference or salaciousness, tolerate it.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Ian Birrell"]https://staging.unherd.com/2020/05/boris-johnson-and-the-ravages-of-office/[/su_unherd_related]
Towards the end of Bower’s story, Johnson’s sickness and what counts for his politics thrillingly collide. For Johnson, the premiership is a woman, or at least it resembles a woman. It was something he only thought he wanted, though he would do anything to secure it. That is how a liberal Remainer on the left of the Tory party became the agent of Brexit: he is simply not strong enough to advance his imagined One Nation creed in the face of Brexit, Covid-19 and the objections of his own supporters.
Too much time has been spent willing Johnson to victory — to happiness — as if he, like the Fisher King, represents us: the politics of an earlier age, an awful thing to contemplate in what is supposed to be a liberal democracy. So perhaps it is not Johnson who gambles, but us. Reading this over-sympathetic, slightly credulous book I yearn only for a future Johnson — penitent, aged and wise — to write his own story, but that is another feminine Johnson-themed fantasy of redemption, and there have too many of them already.
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Subscribe‘I would go further and call the engine sickness: the sickness is the engine of his life.’
What’s that supposed to mean?
more silly sententious over-precious prose, judgmental over-reaching, & half baked attempts at aphorisms from tanya gold
I agree. There are several sections in the article where i just can’t fathom what Tayna Gold is going on about.
Neither can she, presumably.
I re read that a few times thinking I must have missed something, but no, turns out it was just drivel.
Being Prime Minister is like making love to a beautiful woman.
Swiss Tony
Johnson — Eton
May — grammar
Cameron — Eton
Howard — grammar
Duncan Smith — secondary modern
Hague — comprehensive
Major — grammar
Thatcher — grammar
Heath — grammar
Douglas-Home — Eton
Macmillan — Eton
Eden — Eton
A litany of woe if ever there was one. I suppose the grammars come out slightly better due to the towering figure of Thatcher.
Correction, Duncan Smith, H.M.S. Conway & Scots Guards, (sons to Eton).
Interesting that there are several who went to state schools and several Etonians… but no alumni of any private schools except for Eton.
WSC, Harrow, S.Baldwin, Harrow,
C. Attlee, Haileybury,
Quite (and wasn’t Chamberlain at Rugby too?) – but none for more than half a century, just as Baldwin was the last Cambridge graduate.
But astonishingly, we have all forgotten the Blair creature, a product of Fettes, (Scotland).
I think you’ll find Attlee and Blair were not leaders of the Tory party.
Yes – I was about to reply in the same vein myself – the original list was leaders of the Conservative Party specifically, not PMs (otherwise it wouldn’t include Howard, Hague or Duncan Smith).
Yes off course you are perfectly correct, and it was disingenuous of me to include both Attlee and the Blair creature, but I just couldn’t resist it.
If only we could forget the Blair creature
You have to go to the Labour Party for those.
Blair – Fettes.
Foot – Leighton Park, Reading
Gaitskell – Winchester
Attlee – Haileybury
You don’t offer any evidence for your assertion that Johnson is a ‘liberal Remainer’. There is plenty of evidence of his insane liberalism, and it ties in with the psychopathic personality disorder he inherited from his destructive father. But there is no evidence he is a Remainer.
It may be that he is only a Brexit supporter because he believes Brexit will be highly destructive, just as a ‘liberal’ he supports mass migration and an amnesty for illegal migrants because he is turned on by the idea of bringing about the end of civilisation. But that is not the same as saying he supports membership of the EU. Psychopaths don’t have another personality or secret set of non psychopathic values hidden in their inner soul that guides them, despite their power crazed, destructive urges.
Before anyone gets mad, I don’t think Brexit will be destructive. It doesn’t need to be, now, because Covid came to Boris’s rescue and provided a different excuse for the exciting, cruel wrecking of this nation and all it stood for, anyway.
Interesting. I had never thought of Boris as a psychopath; not in the way Bliar so obviously was. Hmmm.
Nor I, in fact Boris as an arch bluffer, seems far more likely.
Yes, I think ‘arch bluffer’ is a good description for BJ.
Surely it is additive, not alternative. The disruption caused by Brexit, if it goes ahead on a no-deal basis, will merely exacerbate the already disruptive impact of COVID. I say additive, in the hope it is not multiplicative. As you say, it doesn’t need to be, but elements in the ruling party seem to welcome that possibility.
AS it well know, Johnson weighed up the alternatives between leave and remain, not in terms of good for the nation but on which course of action would get him closer to being Prime Minister. He did not expect the referendum to vote to leave and seemed genuinely shocked when it did. It is why I have no doubt we will leave with a deal with the EU involving some concession on fisheries and a nod in the direction of trade guidelines issued by the EU. And the hard core Brexit fire-eaters will have to accept it, they have no-where else to go.
Surely Cummings won’t wear anything less than a no-deal? He and some of the politicians hate the EU, especially for failing to fall apart when England and Wales voted Leave, and want to damage it even at the expense of much greater damage to their own country. And Farage is still a potential threat
when he has served his purpose Johnson will get rid of him. I have no idea what the deal was with Farage to get him to call his Brexit Party troops away from conservative seats but Johnson will have no intention of keeping it. So far as I understand there is no obligation to bring the final EU trade deal back to Parliament and if there were the choice is now this deal or no deal
BJ weighed up the alternatives between two opposing policies. It is usually a good thing to look at proposal from both sides before deciding. You seem to know that he did this not for intellectual reasons but selfish ones. What evidence is there? There is plenty of evidence of his scepticism about the EU, he wrote loads about it well before a referendum was ever in view.
You might be right but merely saying so is unhelpful. I am pretty certain you cannot back this up.
Nope. Don’t think Johnson as does this article. Think incentives, and Johnson’s unerring interest in victory. A Clean Break UK will: make his name as a very hardnosed negotiator; it opens the way to a thirty/forty year UK boom; it kills Celtic ethnic nationalisms; it returns British waters to 186 maritime constituencies; it opens the way to root-and-branch reform/revision of the UK constitution, beginning with the HoL; it is bye-bye to May’s treacherous deal.
” it opens the way to a thirty/forty year UK boom; “
Driven by what? BoJo’s BSing? Brexiter’s faith in UK? (Ironically to be delivered by the segment of population that voted overwhelmingly Remain!)
The sign of a trained mind. Something which is an advantage to a PM. Starmer doesn’t seem to have it.
Even with bad Brexit (let’s say 10% hit by 2030) UK will be one of the richest countries in the world. The question (you can see UK’s own studies) is who takes the hit.
If Nissan leaves Sunderland, Sunderland is screwed and not in a good way. No amount of “Freedom” will save Sunderland…or Blackpool.
‘When the real history of Johnson’s rule is written there will be three villains at least beyond Stanley Johnson: the English public school system which supplies the Tory Party with inept leaders; the media, who collude in this and the raising of Johnson, for sport and profit; and the voters, who, with indifference or salaciousness, tolerate it.’
I think that’s a pretty good analysis. (We’re screwed, aren’t we?) But I don’t really agree with this:
‘Tom Bower is a blunt instrument to divine someone as complex as Boris Johnson.’
I don’t really think that BJ is ‘complex’ except perhaps in the Napoleonic sense of the word. He is contradictory and shape-shifting, but those are very different things.
Well as someone who went to public school, is a member of the colluding media and is (presumably) a voter, I guess Tanya would know!
Lady Swire painted a more convincing portrait of the PM in her trashy book. Worth looking up.
I know you dislike the PM, but this is just malicious on your part.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has the name for it, and is, in reality, a Showman. He’s good at bringing in crowds and introducing the acts in an entertaining manner. Saddly his party, the electorate and MSM have mistaken the difference between a Showman and a Leader.
It’s, at a superficial level, an easy mistake to make. However, the difference is in a show the true talent lies in all the other acts but in a leader the talent to lead needs to reside in the leader. The non role of Mayor of London is relatively immune from this distinction. The leader of a country managing a material situtation is not, as we are all currently finding out.
Regards
NHP
MSM and sizeable segment of British population knew that BoJo is a clown, a liar, incompetent and so on. The problem is that the Tory MPs , Tory activists and Tory voters (a big tribe) didn’t care – and they still don’t.
A neighbor of mine (an old man) has complained about lying/immoral politicians as long as I can remember. As a member of the Tory party he voted for BoJo to become the party leader. When I pushed about the contradiction in his position he simply shrugged his shoulders.
A clown is one of the Showman’s acts. He isn’t a clown and he wouldn’t have been voted in otherwise. The current membership of the Conservative party is only 100,000. That doesn’t win you a general election in a population of 67m. As I said, a Showman brings in crowds and that is what he did in December 2019.
Regards
NHP
To paraphrase H.L. Mencken:
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright clown.
You are so right. I, unfortunately, fell for the showmanship, being tired of colourless politicians. I didn’t do my research. After 3 years of Brexit dithering and blocking by the MPs, I was just glad of someone at least saying they would carry out the referendum result.
Bower is a poor writer.
Boris Johnson led the campaign to leave the EU. Therefore he must be bad, mad and sick in a really special sinister way. Not just your usual upper-class plonker. Hence all the rather wild and recherche ideas in this review.
Well, that’s five minutes of my life I won’t get back. I don’t think I have ever read a more spiteful, petty and inaccurate pile of drivel in all my life. Just go away Gold, you old misery, jealous much!
A very disappointing article. Any time spent reading it would have been better soent doing anything else. None the wiser
Boris Johnson thought he had his destiny, Alexander Johnson woke up one day in 2020 and found he had one whether he liked it or not. I suspect Alexander will say ‘stuff this for a lark, I’m off camping with my vegan greta squeeze (btw, where did she appear from?) write something in Greek, put some ex PM money in the bank and get over my long Covid in peace.’ Boris otoh will look over his shoulder for someone to whom he can hand the mess over and find…who? The HoC is like looking through Orwell’s farmhouse window.
Churchill put up a good fight in his last big war and got no thanks for it in 1945, as will Boris. His Dad? His school? Irrelevant nonsense. Who has never blushed over past errors and misdeeds?
Bo Jo is the classic “Marmite” character, as is Trump. Given the dismal run of characterless leaders we have had, we needed someone with charisma and finally we got one. Sadly BoJo has lost his mojo when he came down with Covid. If he does not regain it then I think that will be the epitaph of his time as our Prime Minister.
We really don’t need leaders with charisma. We need leaders who can do the job.
The country is run (badly) by the civil service – hopefully Dom can shake that up a bit.
Leadership is about getting people to follow you and for that you need Charisma. We used to have leaders with it – eg Churchill and Thatcher. Blair also had it, but underneath was a complete phoney who took us into an illegal war whilst covering up for the likes of Jimmy Savile. So what we need is a leader with charisma and at least a modicum of integrity.
If the country was really run by civil servants then I don’t think we’d have gone into that illegal war, which was very much Blair’s personal project.
Charismatic leaders should stay where they belong, in fascist countries. Leadership in a democracy should not be about “getting people to follow you”, but about humbly discharging your duty to the people you were chosen to govern.
We do indeed need politicians of integrity, but in an ideal world we would have no idea what our leaders look like or sound like. Charisma needs to be taken out of politics so we can concentrate on policies.
” The country is run (badly) by the civil service”…”
Yes, Mark Francois will do an amazing job running the country!
And BoJo’s just oozes competence!
A much simpler explanation of It All.
The British people are politically lazy. They leave it to others to provide their politics.
In practice this means that some of the most 4th-rate members of our society fill the benches of the House of Commons.
This process has gone on for so long that its inevitable upshot has been reached: the premiership of a self-promoting fantast with no lateral vision, no vision for the country, no managerial competence, just bluster, while living in the pocket of the Crony Corporatists.
Boris Johnson is David Cameron on steroids.
I write as a socially conservative individual.
What sort of a journalist puts Maxwell and al Fayed into the same class as a murderous torturer such as Klaus Barbie?
Who is also attention seeking here? Pity, because Ms Gold used to be a serious and thoughtful writer
What is your problem with her article?
Have I missed something, or does this review fail to give the details of the book it’s reviewing?
So what is this woman’s problem?
Hmm…I became a fan earlier today through your excellent writing about Bob Maxwell, now you have me scratching my head. Strange read this, can’t quite make anything much out of it at all TBH. As my old head master once wrote: Could do better