WAR BOOK 2

BORIS – THE INDIVIDUAL

Boris Johnson: the life and times

19 June 1964: Born ‘Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’ in New York to Stanley Johnson
and Charlotte Johnson Wahl.

1975-77: Ashdown House Preparatory School

1977-82: Eton College

1978: His parents divorce

1982-83: Gap year teacher of English and Latin at Geelong Grammar in Australia

1983-87: Balliol College, Oxford studying Classics. Member of Bullingdon Club during time
at Oxford.

c.1983-87: ‘Boris was present at the now infamous Bullingdon evening in Oxford when a pot
plant was thrown through a restaurant window and a couple of members ended up in police
cells…Boris claims he was one of those locked up overnight, before being released without
charge. Others, who were incarcerated, insist he is merely trying to play up his prankster past
and that he was never in fact held in custody’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.64).

Autumn 1984: Failed in first bid to become President of Oxford Union. In trying to get
elected ‘he even handed out bottles of red wine to Gridiron [a club] members in a particularly
brazen, even crass, attempt to “buy” their votes’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.73).

Autumn 1985: Becomes Oxford Union President by pretending to be aligned with the SDP.
According to Anthony Frieze, one of Boris’s helpers: ‘It was all driven by a very strong sense
of coalition with the SDP supporting Limehouse Group…we let them think that we were all
for the realignment of politics, that Boris was “one of them” – the whole thing was a game of
flexible geometry (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.81). [Others say the alignment was
genuine]

5 September 1987: Boris marries his first wife Allegra Owen-Mostyn

Autumn 1987: Boris starts his first job at LEK Consulting in London: ‘Boris bolted after only
a week – staying just long enough to collect the joining fee’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011,
p.95).

Late 1987: Begins as a graduate trainee at the Times newspaper. He is initially sent to work
on a 3 month placement at the Express & Star in Wolverhampton. Derek Turner, then news
editor of the Express & Star remembers Boris as “the most disorganised person I’ve ever
encountered; he was clearly not cut out for life in the Black Country” (Sonia Purnell, Just
Boris, 2011, p.99).
Spring 1988: Boris begins as a news reporter at the Times. Senior colleague David Sapsted
recalls his news editor asked him to replace Boris because he couldn’t cope: ‘I got a call from
John Jinks, the Times news editor at home one evening. “Sappers he said, [the editor] wants
you in Dover first thing in the morning to cover the National Union of Seamen’s strike. We
sent Boris but it’s kicking off down there and he can’t cope”’

Summer 1988: Boris is sacked from the Times after making up a quote about a dig of a lost
palace of Edward II. Says one of his biographers: ‘He could not resist inserting a titillating
paragraph about how the King would use the palace to cavort with his catamite Piers
Gavestone. The quote he used was sourced to a certain Dr Colin Lucas of Balliol College,
Oxford…Lucas wrote back saying there was no way Boris could have obtained this quote
from him because it was not right’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.101).

Mid 1988: Boris is hired by the Daily Telegraph as a leader writer

Spring 1989: Boris becomes Brussels Correspondent at the Daily Telegraph where he gains a
reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts. ‘ “When they discovered asbestos in The
Berlaymont [the Commision HQ] Boris wrote a colourful story that teams of sappers were
going to mine the building and blow it up” recalls one long suffering EU official. “The story
really took off. Another paper made their poor correspondent ring up to see whether they
could press the trigger for the dynamite but it just wasn’t true” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris,
2011, p.125).

1990: Boris splits with Allegra and begins seeing lawyer Marina Wheeler. There may be
some overlap as Allegra and Boris finally split for good in 1992 (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris,
2011, p.132).

26 April 1993: Boris and Allegra’s divorce is finalised.

8 May 1993: Boris and Marina Wheeler marry in Horsham, Sussex.

12 June 1993: Marina Wheeler goes into labour with their first child, Lara.

1994: Boris returns to London and works as Telegraph columnist.

C.1994: Boris begins a column on the Spectator

1995: Son Milo Arthur is born

October 1995: Goes missing at Conservative Party conference: ‘He could not be found
anywhere, but was needed to write an emergency leader on the death of a prominent
politician. He did not answer his mobile phone…and had not booked into his hotel. In the end
he was found at the eleventh hour, but again it went right up to the wire. I transpired that he
had spent the weekend with the Eurosceptic politician Bill Cash at his home in Shrophsire’
(Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.183).

1997: Daughter Cassia Peaches is born

May 1997: Fights the safe Labour parliamentary seat of Clwyd South. According to the then
chairman of Clwyd South Conservative Association Ian Reynolds: ‘Boris appeared to take
absolutely no real interest in the detail and his [application] letter was a shocker…his thoughts
don’t seem to be concentrated on the things that count’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011,
p.185).

April 1998: Appears on Have I Got News For You where he is teased over Guppygate,
proclaiming ‘I am not ashamed of it’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.176). Appears
HIGNFY at least another six times.

1999: Son Theodore Apollo is born

July 1999: Appointed Editor of the Spectator

13 July 2000: Selected as Conservative candidate for Henley. Appals some in audience when
replying flippantly to a question to NHS reforms by demanding ‘replacement toast’ for all
users of the service (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.213).

June 2001: Elected Conservative MP for Henley.

Summer 2001: Backed Ken Clarke in the 2001 Conservative leadership election.

Late 2001: Assigned to standing committee of the Proceeds of Crime Bill. He was not a
diligent member, according to his biographer: ‘Boris was also unused to the committee’s early
starts (nine sharp!) and did not always make them or indeed all of the sessions’ (Sonia
Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.225).

2001-05: Ranked 525 th out of 659 MPs on attendance in votes.

2001-05: Wrote an irregular column for the local Henley Standard.

c.2001-05: Alleged by Andrew Gimson: ‘It was said that Boris took the Spectator’s bridge
columnist out to lunch in order to sack her, but slept with her instead’ (Andrew Gimson,
Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.174).

July 2003-04: Appointed Conservative Party Vice Chairman. See below Michael Howard’s
comment on his tenure.

10 July 2004: Wife of Rod Liddle Rachel Royce writes a Daily Mail expose on the licentious
atmosphere at Spectator parties.

April 2004 – November 2004: Shadow BIS Minister with responsibility for arts.

29 August 2004: Mail on Sunday diary publishes piece about Boris and Ruzwana Bashir, the
then 20 year old President of the Oxford Union: ‘I am informed that a special friendship is
blossoming between the magazine s editor, Boris Johnson, and Ruzwana Bashir, the stunning
president of the Oxford Union’ (Mail on Sunday, 29 August 2004).

October 2004: Gets in trouble after Spectator publishes leader criticising Liverpool for its
grief over beheaded hostage Ken Bigley. Leader wrote ‘The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley’s
murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian’. The piece also blamed Hillsborough
fans for being drunk and understating the number of deaths at 50. Piece was actually written
[on Johnson’s instructions] by Simon Heffer.
7 November 2004: Sunday Mirror breaks story about socialite Petronella Wyatt aborting
Boris’s child; story contained claims that Boris had said he would not support child and also
refusing to pay medical bills from abortion [which he denies]. In a series of news articles
following story, Boris is accused of lying over the affair to journalists and has to resign post
(Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.266).

Summer 2005: backs David Cameron for leadership

December 2005 – July 2007: Shadow BIS Minister with responsibility for higher education.

December 2005: Leaves the Spectator

2 April 2006: News of World run story of Boris having affair with journalist/policy specialist
Anna Fazackerley, on one occasion visiting both her and Petronella Wyatt on the same night.

October 2006: Criticised after attacking Jamie Oliver and healthy eating at a Conservative
Party conference fringe meeting (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.305).

April 2007: Criticised after attacking Portsmouth for being a city ‘full of drugs, obesity,
underachievement and Labour MPs’ (GQ Magazine, April 2007: reproduced in Sonia Purnell,
Just Boris, 2011, p.296).

16 July 2007: Boris announces he is standing for Mayor of London.

9 April 2008: Boris performs badly in a BBC Newsnight Mayor of London debate- grilled by
Jeremy Paxman about how much his Routemaster policy would cost (Sonia Purnell, Just
Boris, 2011, p.339).

1 May 2008: Boris elected Mayor of London

December 2008: Boris criticised for allegedly tipping off Damian Green that he was about to
be arrested by the Met Police (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.383). [Johnson strongly
denies this]

July 2010: Story comes out in Daily Mirror alleging that Boris Johnson is father of love child
with ‘wealthy socialite’ and art consultant Helen Macintyre.

May 2012: Boris re-elected Mayor of London

September 2014: Boris selected as Conservative candidate for Uxbridge

May 2015: Boris elected as MP for Uxbridge

QUOTES BY BORIS

“Boris infamously told a girlfriend that such was the number of his sexual partners that he
hadn’t had ‘to have a wank for twenty years’” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.37).

On cocaine:
1. ‘I tried it at university and I remember it vividly. And it achieved no pharmacological,
psychotropic or any other effect on me whatsoever’ (GQ Magazine, June 2007: reproduced on
Sky News link).
2. ‘I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so did it not go up my nose. In fact, I
may have been doing icing sugar’ (BBC, Have I Got News For you, 2005: reproduced in
Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.59).

On electoral reform when Oxford Union President in a debate on 28 November 1985: ‘There
is an overwhelming case for some type of electoral reform, some form of proportional
representation. What sort of democracy is it where one party can get only two per cent less of
the vote than another party and end up with a hundred fewer seats in the House of Commons’
(Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.83).

On comprehensive schooling:
‘Because we live in Islington, I extracted them [his children]. I have no embarrassment about
it whatever’ (Times, 15 March 2008).

On China:
‘China is becoming in our imaginations the fashionable new dread, the incubator of strange
diseases, a vast polluted landscape of Victorian factories where coolies sit in expectorating
rows, nourished on nothing but rice and the spleens of pangolins’ (Daily Telegraph, 1
September 2005).

On former colonial countries:

‘The Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular
cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies’ (Daily Telegraph, 10 January 2002).

On former colonial countries:

‘News reaches us, perhaps brought into a cleft stick by some piccaninny from the steaming
Mato Grosso’ (Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1997).

On Africa:
‘The continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is not that
we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more’ (Spectator, 2 February 2002).

On disparity of wealth:
‘If British history had not allowed outrageous financial rewards for a few people, there would
be no Chatsworth, no Longleat [posh houses]’ (Daily Telegraph, 27 February 1995:
reproduced in Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.169).

On the grief following Princess Diana’s death:

‘The Princess is a symbol for every woman who has ever felt wronged by a man’ (Daily
Telegraph, 3 September 1997).

On the repeal of Section 28:

‘This British legislator [Lord Grenfell] is voting in favour of Labour’s appalling agenda,
encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it’ (Spectator, 15
April 2000).

On Portsmouth:
‘Full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs’ (GQ Magazine, April 2007:
reproduced in Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.296).

On Papua New Guinea:

‘For 10 years, we in the Tory party have became used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of
cannibalism and chief-killing; and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the
madness engulfs the Labour Party’ (Daily Telegraph, 7 September 2006).

On healthy eating:
‘I say let people eat what they like! Why shouldn’t they push pies through the railings? If I
was in charge, I would get rid of Jamie Oliver’ (Reported remarks at Conservative Party
Conference fringe event, October 2006; Daily Mail, 4 October 2006).

On equality/One Nation:
‘We must pursue actively the one-nation policies that are among David Cameron’s fine
legacy, such as his campaigns on the Living Wage and Life Chances’ (Daily Telegraph, 27
June 2016, link).

On inequality:
‘Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about
equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per
cent have an IQ above 130.

The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top…I
stress: I don’t believe that economic equality is possible; indeed, some measure of inequality
is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable
spur to economic activity’ (Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture, Centre for Policy Studies, 27
November 2013, link).

On inequality:
‘Like it or not, the free market economy is the only show in town. Britain is competing in an
increasingly impatient and globalised economy, in which the competition is getting ever
stiffer. No one can ignore the harshness of that competition, or the inequality that it inevitably
accentuates; and I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings
who are already very far from equal in raw ability’ (Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture,
Centre for Policy Studies, 27 November 2013, link).

Speaking to his biographer Andrew Gimson:

‘If it’s a pisstake that’s ok…anything that purported to tell the truth would really be
intolerable’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, kindle location
121).

On watching TV:
‘They [the public] could be learning the piano. They could be knocking out a play. Instead,
they sit like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, watching the flickering images before them and
mistaking them for reality. That is the shocker: not that people are so foolish as to appear on
TV, but that people are so idle as to watch it’ (Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2001).

On grammar schools:
‘The answer, as everybody knows but dare not admit, is to allow state schools the freedom
once again to select on the basis of academic merit’ (Spectator, 25 April 2009).

**Most of ‘Life in the Fast Lane: the Johnson Guide to Cars’ (2007) is pretty sexist in
language used

On EU membership:
‘As for our own interests they are still on balance served by maintaining our membership.
This has brought palpable benefits to Britain in free trade and in bestowing on British citizens
the rights of free movement and free establishment in the EU; and withdrawal would
potentially mean a worrying loss of influence’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen,
2001, pp.11-12).

On EU membership:
‘Many of us moderate Euro-sceptics have spent our nights tossing and turning, and whether
we can credibly argue for staying in the EU…but what always just about clinches it for me is
that we would lose influence in the designing of the continent. And it has been the object of
500 years of British diplomacy to ensure that continental Europe is not united against our
interests. It is also possible that the move would encourage a certain meanness in the national
outlook (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.39).

On Conservative members’ views on Europe:

‘Before the [Henley hustings] debate, we are all given a sheet listing the questions people are
likely to ask. You may or may not be surprised to hear that 10 out of 18 concern Europe.
When, oh when, will the Tories stop picking this scab?’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters,
Countrymen, 2001, p.31).

On his opponents at the selection for Henley in 2000:

‘It was obvious that David [Platt] and Gill [Andrews] were good at policy. They had thought
about local issues; they had clearly done our hosts the courtesy of mugging up, and I started to
feel outclassed’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.9).

On private health insurance:

‘No wonder so many UK patients want to take advantage of one of their few positive benefits
as EU ‘citizens’ and travel overseas for operations. But it is also true if you look at these other
European countries, that they have a far larger private healthcare sector; and you have to ask
yourself, as we prepare to spend more of our national wealth on health, how it should be
done’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.134).

On immigration:

‘My optimistic view of immigration is that it will eventually produce a new syncretic British
culture, absorbing the best from each immigrant population’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters,
Countrymen, 2001, p.191).

On the minimum wage:

Talking about the prospect of a Conservative victory at the 1997 election: ‘You begin to try to
count your blessings. Golly, it occurs to you: no more minimum wage. The polls had been so
confidently predicting a Labour victory that you had already made provision to pay your
workers at least £4.10 an hour, putting up your costs and greatly reducing your ability to re-
invest’ (Daily Telegraph, 31 January 1996).

On holidays for workers:

Talking about the prospect of a Conservative victory at the 1997 election: ‘You close your
eyes, and then you remember that the Social Chapter won’t be coming into force after all.
Hmm. None of that mandatory four week holiday for the staff, none of that ridiculous
compulsorily paid paternity leave, none of those extra non-wage costs. That could be vital for
a small business like yours’ (Daily Telegraph, 31 January 1996).

QUOTES ABOUT BORIS

‘Cries a childhood acquaintance. “I was brought up with generations of arrogant Etonian boys
but Boris’s arrogance transcends any I’ve ever met. He is the ultimate Etonian product, an
opportunist to the core’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.44).

On his second Oxford Union president run in autumn 1985. One contemporary recalls: ‘You
could read anything you liked into this new Boris. So if you were from a northern
comprehensive like me, you liked the ‘I’m funny and you like funny, so vote for me pitch’
(Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.82).

Nick Robinson, former BBC Political Editor, says of their time together at Oxford University:
‘I had not the faintest clue that Boris was a Conservative. Indeed, I would have told you, if
you had asked me at the time, that he was a supporter of the SDP/Liberal Alliance. I think he
must have taken the decision not to be seen as a Tory because he knew to do so would be to
lose’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.82).

Derek Turner, news editor of the Express & Star in the West Midlands says of Boris: ‘The
most disorganised person I’ve ever encountered; he was clearly not cut out for life in the
Black Country’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.99).

Journalist and former Brussels colleague Michael Binyon says: ‘He was very inventive and
creative. What he would say would never be simply untrue but would be on the edge of what
might happen’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.116).

John Palmer, former Guardian Brussels Bureau Chief says: ‘As a journalist he is thoroughly
irresponsible, inventing stories’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.127).

Former Daily Telegraph Editor Frank Taylor says: ‘Boris was indeed a major claimer of
expenses. It may have been a bit extravagant, but that was Boris (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris,
2011, p.141).

A ‘former colleague, a very senior man’ in journalism: ‘If you just see him cracking jokes on
Have I Got News For You, you think he’s a great bloke. If you’ve worked with him or relied
on him it’s a different matter’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.183).

Stuart Reid, a colleague on the Spectator: ‘He was an absentee editor because he had other
interests: he certainly wasn’t nine to five. I used to get frustrated from time to time.
Sometimes when I wanted to talk to Boris I just wasn’t able to. He just wouldn’t answer his
phone’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.192).

Stuart Reid commenting on Boris reacting to 9/11 as Spectator Editor: ‘He didn’t turn up till
pretty late on 9/11. We’d all been sitting there in his office watching television and he came in
and said. “Crikey, why’s everyone sitting in my bloody office?” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris,
2011, p.194).

Former Conservative leader Michael Howard on Boris’ time as Conservative Vice Chairman
2003-04: ‘The fact is that he didn’t put much time in. With Boris, there is this issue with
effort…Here was a Conservative who was much more popular than anyone else in the party
and much better known. If he had contributed those attributes to campaigning for the
Conservative Party, you might assume that it would be successful. But he didn’t. so it didn’t
really work (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.243).
Chris Cook, a former aide to David Willetts and now a journalist: ‘Boris and I got on because
we have similar dislike of most members of the Conservative Party. He’s clearly not on the
right wing but actually quite Europhile in Tory terms. He liked to come into our office to
gossip and bitch about the right wingers, particularly Liam Fox’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris,
2011, p.296).

His former Headmaster at Eton, Eric Anderson: ‘They [the students] were doing some scenes
from Richard III with Boris as the King. He hadn’t had time to learn the lines, so had pasted
them up behind various pillars. The whole performance consisted of him running from one
side of the stage to the other and failing to read it properly (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise
of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.51).

A close friend: ‘At the age of eighteen he set himself the target that he was going to be in the
Cabinet by the age of thirty-five’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012
ed, p.56).

Michael Gove on Boris’s run(s) for Oxford Union President: ‘Michael Gove who became a
successful journalist at the Times and in 2005 followed Boris into the Commons as a Tory
MP, cheerfully admitted: “I was Boris’s stooge. I became a votary of the Boris cult”’
(Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.69).

Frank Luntz on Boris’s run(s) for Oxford Union President: ‘He renounced his Conservative
affiliation and fully embraced the SDP and the principles and the people who supported the
SDP to help him get elected’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed,
p.70).

Sarah Helm, a journalist colleague of Boris in Brussels: ‘I remember developing an instinctive

feel that Boris was a complete charlatan’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson,
2012 ed, p.98).

His biographer Andrew Gimson refers to BJ being unable to manage his finances properly:
‘Yet Sindall [his secretary at the Spectator] did help Boris in many other ways. When she
started with him, his financial affairs were in total confusion. Unpaid parking tickets would
increase in cost to £800 and bailiffs were about to break in’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise
of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.138).

An anonymous Conservative backbench MP: ‘I was staggered at his economic ignorance.

When he got in [to the House of Commons in 2001] he was put by the Whips, to test his
ability to do big, gritty subjects, on a committee giving detailed scrutiny to a Bill. He didn’t
make the reputation there he could have done for being able to do the nitty-gritty. There’s a
laziness there’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.148).

Michael Gove on Boris: ‘If we Britons love our shambolic bumblers, then we must expect
them, sometimes, to bumble into something of a shambles’ (Times, 19 October 2004).