I know the power of Boris’s lies: his stooges said we’d had an affair in a bid to discredit me

As Johnson finally faced justice, he and his mob used the same intimidation tactics that made my family and health suffer, writes biographer Sonia Purnell. He’s finally been exposed for the bully he is

Boris Johnson (Victoria Jones/PA) (PA Wire)

Thursday should go down in history as the day when British democracy was saved.

The report on Boris Johnson’s lies by the privileges committee of the House of Commons was careful but it pulled no punches. If it had gone the other way – if it had excused his dishonesty in the face of crushing evidence, if it had deployed ambiguous language, if it had recommended merely mild censure for his lies – it might well have sounded the death knell for the supremacy of parliament.

In a country where so many inquiries into wrongdoing (including Johnson’s) have turned out to be weak-willed disappointments, such cold damnation was, frankly, a huge relief.

The committee – composed of a Tory Brexiteer majority – found that his dishonesty, breach of confidentiality and complicity in attempts to bully them had amounted to an unprecedented contempt of parliament and had also “undermined the democratic process”.

They were right. For unless we have an agreed set of facts, unless we can trust the prime minister to speak the truth at the despatch box and to abide by the rules, we no longer have a true democracy. Without that foundation of trust, we vote on a lie.

Confidence in democracy had already eroded even before this week and these are dangerous times, particularly as those who fought in the Second World War and grew up in its aftermath gradually leave us.

They had witnessed the grotesque human consequences of smashing up institutions that guarded democracy and our rights as citizens. They learned through bloodshed never to take them for granted. Nor should we. Even if on this occasion, at least, the British constitution held.

Because of his celebrity status, Johnson has got away with lying over more than the past 30 years – and momentous changes to Britain have been made on that premise up to and including Brexit. It would be deluded to believe that Johnson lied only about lockdown parties in Downing Street – the habit is instinctive and ingrained.

His exceptional ability to, as he himself puts it, “coddle the self-deception of the stooge”, has allowed him to degrade Britain’s public life, trash its economy, and ruin its reputation overseas. And yet until Thursday he seemed invincible, unchecked, and untouched by the consequences the rest of us might face if we constantly transgressed and in so doing caused others untold harm.

Despite the intimidation from the Johnson mob, the committee finally called him out on the back of evidence laid out in chilling detail. His only weapon – making him sound like a cheap Trump tribute act – is now to try to trash its members. And so we have seen him accusing them of lies (oh, the irony), of being absurd and deranged.

No one should be surprised, least of all me, by this petulant outburst – it fits a pattern weaving through his entire adult life – with its loaded and colourful language. Twelve years ago I wrote Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, a critical biography of Johnson for which I interviewed more than 200 people and conducted nearly three years of research.

I had been alarmed at his character and dishonesty when I worked as his deputy in the Brussels office of The Daily Telegraph in the 1990s – he was a bully and a liar back then too.

Boosterish Boris Johnson in December 2020 (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

I was careful in the extreme about the accuracy of my facts and the fairness of my conclusions in the book. As one of his closest aides put it to me at the time, Johnson was “concerned” about how to deal with my compelling case against him.

Shortly afterwards his stooges resorted to a tired old misogynistic trope. We’d had an affair, people were told, and he had refused to marry me. Just Boris, the Johnson guard whispered, was the vengeful and desperate work of a woman scorned.

And yes, that narrative stuck with many a male (and occasional female) journalist who found it necessary to inform me I had made a fool of myself in sounding the alarm on someone (to me at least) evidently unfit for public office.

The fact that the Court of Appeal agreed in 2013, in its judgment on a privacy case over his love child with an art consultant, did not abate the insults thrown my way. Including a particularly lewd comment whispered sweatily into my ear by a Johnson fan – later a cabinet minister – when sitting next to me in a TV studio just before we went on air.

The notion of my having a sexual relationship with Johnson could not have been further from the truth – dear God, have you ever been near him! – and I am and was then happily married. But a prominent presenter put the smear to me as fact on national radio, leaving me to stutter out denials in shock. And my neighbour spotted suspicious men looking around outside my house and perhaps in my bins.

Soon I was banned from writing for certain newspapers and appearing at a number of literary festivals “because Boris wouldn’t like it”. It took a heavy toll on my family, my livelihood and sometimes my health. That’s what happens if you dare to call out the Blond Bombshell – it explodes in your face.

In any sane country, the privileges committee report would be the end of Boris Johnson as a politician – if not what his sister Rachel calls his Sicilian propensity for grudges.

Boris Johnson with Nadine Dorries (PA)

He has already resigned as an MP and word is that the vote on the floor of the House of Commons on Monday will endorse its conclusions. If he really thought he had been traduced by the committee, he would have stuck around to make his case, but he senses he would probably have failed and he dreads the prospect of being painted a loser. Not least because of the possible effect on his earning power. So off he went.

Yet he has no intention of observing a dignified silence – and nor do his cheerleaders (albeit there are a diminishing number of them and you can’t give gongs to everybody).

Rather than just focusing on the momentous fact that for the first time in history a British prime minister has been caught lying to the House of Commons on multiple occasions, some remain consumed by the game of guessing What Boris Will do Next? – be that columns in national newspapers or even another run (as an independent this time) for London mayor.

There are still too many who thrill to the constant circus and do not care that competitor countries – who are starting to write Britain off as hopelessly chaotic – are busy modernising and improving their citizens’ lives while we endure the biggest squeeze since the Napoleonic wars.

What we can rely on is that Johnson will go on throwing grenades from the sidelines to make his successor’s job as difficult as possible with consequently less time for the urgent challenge of restoring the economy and public services. They must not be allowed to succeed where he so spectacularly failed. So, yes, we all stand to suffer from the raging of the fragile Johnsonian ego.

Of course, it would be a start if Rishi Sunak showed some mettle and made it impossible for Johnson to return as a Conservative MP – and cut off his support by binning his honours list. Otherwise, the ball is firmly in our court as voters to be more careful who we elect. Politics can be entertaining – but it should be not mere entertainment.

Many voted for Johnson on the spurious grounds that he made them laugh, but that does not put food on the table, invest in hospitals or clean up beaches. It is not funny to live in a once great country where nothing works any more.

We must endeavour to stop treating politics like a game show and choose politicians for their integrity, dignity and competence, rather than their jokes.

In other words, to take an interest, ask critical questions and maybe even take part. For if, after all we now know about his venal disregard for truth, we allow Johnson back into the political mainstream let alone real power, we will be heading for a very dark place indeed. And there will be nothing the privileges committee would be able to do about it. It might well not exist.