What next for Boris Johnson?

The soon-to-be-former prime minister is not the retiring type, writes Sean O’Grady – we can expect to see plenty more of him

Boris Johnson during a recent visit to EDF’s Sizewell B nuclear power station (Getty)

There’s no job description for former prime ministers, except, perhaps, James Callaghan’s blunt injunction to ex-leaders: “Don’t speak to the captain; don’t spit on the deck.” Boris Johnson, we may be sure, is just too temperamentally undisciplined to follow that advice.

The rumours are that Johnson wishes to “put some hay in the loft” – make some serious money – before he surfaces and contemplates the biggest comeback since Lazarus. Funding is required. That means speaking, writing, and generally entertaining audiences for the next few months at the least.

He’ll stay in the Commons (privileges committee permitting), because the £84,144 salary, plus expenses, is useful pin money and provides him with a platform if need be (and eligibility to stand for leader). A newspaper column would seem a decent bet, although Johnson isn’t going to be rewarded handsomely for writing car reviews, say, as he once did, or Martin Lewis-style money-saving tips (the very thought!) – he will be expected to spill beans, administer jibes, and take side-swipes. Inevitably, Liz Truss will be collateral damage.

Though he has little time for his immediate predecessor, he does seem intent on surpassing her considerable earnings on the speaking circuit. Theresa May is said to command £100,000 on a good day, and has raked in a significant sum in speaking fees since 2019. Johnson, a skilled if sometimes rambling raconteur with some well-worn anecdotes, is likely to earn even better money.

What else? Well, there’s that biography of Shakespeare waiting to be finished, and perhaps other projects along those lines. It seems unlikely, though, that Johnson will produce a set of memoirs, because he obviously believes his political career is not yet over. On the other hand, a serious advance fee, newspaper serialisation and TV documentary might turn his head. Brexit, Covid-19, Vladimir Putin, and his own fall from No 10... there are some tales to be told.

Contrary to some earlier suggestions, Johnson seems likely to resist the temptation to steal the show at the Conservative conference. One way or another, however, he will assiduously defend his record, and cultivate the myth that he was “stabbed in the back” by Rishi Sunak, treacherous cabinet colleagues (Michael Gove would be a fine target) and panicky MPs.

We can also be sure he won’t follow the example of David Cameron and lower himself to lobbying, a dangerous trade at the best of times. Neither will he expend much energy building up charitable work or establishing proselytising trusts of the kind favoured by Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah, along with Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. The money will be firmly earmarked for “Project Johnson” and his strictly personal objectives.

Some prime ministers fade and shrink surprisingly quickly without the trappings of power, such as Harold Wilson and Stanley Baldwin. In quiet retirement, sometimes in failing health, and with battered reputations, they quietly recede into the background. Others kick around making a nuisance of themselves, at least as far as their successors are concerned.

Ted Heath never accepted being forced out of the Conservative leadership by Thatcher in 1975, and then embarked upon a 20-year-long “incredible sulk”, never quite giving up on getting back into power. Thatcher, in turn, was a notoriously unhelpful “back-seat driver” for John Major, and actively tried to defeat his flagship legislation, the EU Maastricht Treaty. Harold Macmillan immodestly suggested himself as head of a government of national unity in 1976, some 13 years after he’d left No 10 and almost two decades after he’d appointed his first cabinet. The superannuated “Supermac” was by then all of 82 years of age.

Boris Johnson is a mere 58, in good health, and still driven, and it seems likely that he will continue to pursue his ambitions for another 20 or 30 years. He is not the retiring type.