Elements of the Tory-leaning British press have hyped up former prime minister Boris Johnson’s new book Unleashed as the “political memoir of the century”. Even if it is unable to meet such lofty billing, the 750-page tome is still a trove of lurid anecdotes that underline Johnson’s claim to be, if not the most successful, then at least the most colourful of modern British prime ministers. Here are four of Johnson’s stories as regaled in Unleashed:
On Binyamin Netanyahu
Johnson recalls a 2017 meeting when he was foreign secretary with Binyamin Netanyahu. He implies that Israel’s prime minister may have planted a listening device in his toilet.
Johnson says he brought Netanyahu to the sumptuous foreign office building in Whitehall, up the grand red staircase and into the foreign secretary’s office. Exactly a century before in 1917, one of Johnson’s predecessors, Arthur Balfour, had written the Balfour Declaration affirming British support for the Zionist project to establish a Jewish homeland.
Johnson showed Netanyahu the old desk used by Balfour and told him the declaration had been written there, even though he didn’t know if this was true. He writes of his admiration for the state of Israel, but also his sympathy for Palestinians who move through “p**s-smelling Israeli turnstiles” to access their own, occupied land.
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According to Johnson, Netanyahu excused himself to use the lavatory in a “secret annex” off the foreign secretary’s office.
“Thither Bibi repaired for a while, and it may or may not be a coincidence but I am told that later, when they were doing a regular sweep for bugs, they found a listening device in the thunderbox.”
Mulling an ‘invasion’ of the Netherlands
In March 2021, as Covid vaccination campaigns were kicking off across Europe, Britain had stolen a march on most of its continental neighbours. Johnson attributes it to Britain’s post-Brexit freedom to do its own vaccine deals.
About five million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that were intended for Britain were held “hostage” in a warehouse in the city of Leiden, the Netherlands, he says, because European authorities refused to issue an export licence.
Johnson writes he was “enraged” by this. It appears the former prime minister, a year on from his own near-death experience with Covid, asked his military commanders if it was possible to send in operatives to take the vaccines by force.
They told him they could send a team over on a commercial flight, while another could take ribs across the English Channel under cover of darkness and “navigate up the canals”.
“They would then [rendezvous] at the target; enter; secure the hostage goods; and then exfiltrate using an articulated lorry, and they would make their way to the Channel ports,” writes Johnson.
His commanders also warned that they would probably be detected and he would have to explain why he had “invaded” a Nato ally. “I secretly agreed with what they all thought but did not want to say aloud: the whole thing was nuts.”
Scottish midges nearly made him drown
Johnson recalls how in August 2020 he went with his wife Carrie and their new baby, Wilfred, for a short holiday to a remote cottage in Skye, northwest Scotland, where it appears he almost drowned.
The former prime minister says he was driven demented by biting midges that notoriously are a blight across rural Scotland in the summer months. To escape them, he took an inflatable Argos kayak out on to the water for a solo trip.
However, he suggests his weight caused the front of the boat to lift up out of the water “like a sail”. It caught the wind and, along with tidal movements, dragged him away from the safety of the shore.
Johnson suggests that for about 30 minutes, he tried furiously and in vain to paddle back to safety.
“I had to choose between two bad options. I could either get swept out to sea and drown, or at least trigger a ludicrous coastguard rescue; or I could ship the oar, abandon the kayak and swim for it.”
He donned a life jacket and jumped into the water about 600 yards from shore. One of his protection team, a “rugged” detective named Mick, swam out to help him. The kayak, meanwhile, “drifted on like the Mary Celeste”.
His falling out with Dominic Cummings
Johnson expresses ire for Dominic Cummings, his once-trusted adviser who in November 2020 he sacked along with Lee Cain, the former Number 10 director of communications.
He accuses the two men, Cummings in particular, of “trying to undermine both me and the government” over the course of almost a year. It started, he says, with “half-wrong gossip” in the newspapers about internal Downing Street matters, as well as “snide stuff” about his wife Carrie.
In March 2020, he recalls a negative story in the Times about the antics of his dog Dilyn. He suspected Cummings of being behind it, although his adviser denied it. Johnson says he later found out he was lying “to my face”.
Despite his suspicions, he recalls trying to shield Cummings “like Kevin Costner protecting Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard” when his adviser got into media hot water for a lockdown trip to Barnard Castle. He pushed Cummings to hold a press conference to explain it, for which he says his adviser later resented him for exposing him to ridicule.
After further anonymous press briefings, including criticism of Britain’s vaccination programme, Johnson sacked Cummings and Cain.
“They had to go… from that moment on… I felt as if a great weight had been lifted.”
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