The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Full Story

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They are the occasion of his fall but they do not have the causal power that Payne repeatedly attributes to them. Between the autumn of 2020 and the spring of 2021, Payne bought a red Mini Cooper and embarked on a road trip to reach his own conclusions, following up on his own reporting over the past few years for the Financial Times. A former cabinet minister argued that only Boris could've pulled it off: "He took on the blob" of policy orthodoxy "and won, it was a shame he could not do it on other matters, too.

Political reporting has become a discourse in which civil servants are always “shadowy” and reporters are always “tenacious”. It was around the time of the registration that the PM let slip his worries about Sunak as a potential leadership rival. Circumstance played a part, a once-in-a-century pandemic rocking the government and putting huge strains on the public purse. Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson said he would step down less than three years after his landslide election victory, following a series of scandals that have ensnared his government. Sebastian Payne, Whitehall Editor for the Financial Times, tells the essential behind-the-scenes story, charting the series of scandals that felled Johnson: from the blocked suspension of Owen Paterson to partygate, and, then the final death blow: the Chris Pincher allegations.

To critics, the clearest thread running through Johnson’s stances was saying what was needed to advance.

Amid a feverish atmosphere in Westminster, Cabinet ministers went public with messages of support for the PM. Critics still question whether, beyond delivering Brexit, a reforming mission to match his majority ever existed.Securing face time was seen as a third route to influence, leading to tussles about who would be last with Boris before a decision was taken. Sunak had a firmer ideological commitment to traditional low-spend, low-debt and ideally low-tax Tory economics, seeing fiscal prudence as the way forward. Even by page seven it was a challenge, with its reference to Johnson as “a statesman of astonishing political gifts … impelled by a deep love of his country and a determination to serve it to the uttermost of his powers”. In the early evening of Tuesday, July 5 this year I was walking to a beachside restaurant in Porto Soller, Mallorca when my daughter texted me — “Javid and Sunak have resigned!

In February 2022, after the publication of Sue Gray’s initial findings about Partygate, Sunak talked to ministers and parliamentary private secretaries in the Treasury, asking outright for their backing. You have to follow through… He never made a transition from being someone who could entertain and attract attention and emotionally connect to the hard work of being Prime Minister.Westminster is a place of outsized egos, something Johnson could be forgiving about, according to allies. During his ascent, Johnson benefited from being regarded as a clown, for this meant his opponents failed to take him seriously, while his supporters delighted in his ability to shock and enrage the Establishment. Parliaments, which are supposed to hold governments to account on behalf of the public, need to assert their power. But Payne suggests that this collectivist culture has been replaced in many areas by relatively prosperous commuter belts and more individualistic lifestyles and forms of work. When he needed to, on an issue of pressing importance or personal political risk, he dove into details.

With unparalleled access to those who were in the room when key decisions were made, Payne tells of the miscalculations and mistakes that led to Boris Johnson’s downfall. During Johnson’s tenure, too much time has been spent discussing what the British public is willing to put up with. Most recently, the political gossip was that Johnson might be given a last chance to redeem himself, at a set of local elections in May. Payne’s passion and personal engagement with his subject seems to charm many of his interviewees into opening up in fascinating ways.Very little new here if you were following the story closely at the time (most of Payne's sources are twitter and contemporary articles) and essentially no analysis at all.