Is Boris Johnson’s memoir the start of a comeback campaign?

As the former prime minister announces a book about possibly his favourite subject – himself – Sean O’Grady ponders what is likely to be in it, and whether Johnson’s political life story may yet warrant another chapter

Johnson promises that his book will ‘explode over the publishing world like a much-shaken bottle of champagne’ (Getty)

Boris Johnson has released the details of his memoir, and it is likely to cause quite a stir. The volume, titled Unleashed, will be out in October, and Johnson promises that it will “explode over the publishing world like a much-shaken bottle of champagne”.

Given that he has never been one for understatement, the book will certainly be anticipated with a mixture of fear and frustration by many of his former colleagues in the Conservative Party, who found their former leader sometimes inspirational, sometimes exasperating, and, in the end, unsupportable.

“Hasta la vista,” he declared on his last day at No 10. Some wonder if this latest move might be the first phase of an attempted comeback...

Why ‘Unleashed’?

Despite the bawdy interpretation it lends itself to, suggesting an exposé of his priapic habits, it’s a reference to one of his political slogans. The Conservative manifesto for the 2019 general election had the title “Get Brexit Done – Unleash Britain’s Potential”. As this was Johnson’s finest hour, it’s unsurprising that he would like to draw attention to it.

Will it include his amorous adventures?

Doubtful. Some may be the subject of legal agreements, and the former prime minister has always maintained that he doesn’t discuss those he loves most in the world (with the obvious exception of the great narcissist himself). He probably won’t be able to avoid mentioning his current wife, Carrie, but that’s about all we’ll get.

What will it include, then?

It’s not clear at this stage whether it will only cover the Downing Street years, or if his previous careers, school days and family background will feature, too. At any rate, we’ll certainly get his version of the Brexit story, the Tory leadership he won and lost, the response to the pandemic, his near-death Covid experience, some reflections on the war in Ukraine. and judgements on his contemporaries.

What will he say, for example, about Rishi Sunak, Dominic Cummings, David Cameron, Theresa May, Michael Gove, Liz Truss, Mike Hancock, the late Queen, Nigel Farage, the Barclay brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre and Donald Trump? His published emails and WhatsApp messages, courtesy of the Covid inquiry, gave us some early clues to some of this stuff.

Will it be ‘an inverted pyramid of piffle’?

Not entirely. Scholars of Johnson note that, with the spectacular exception of some of his statements to the House of Commons, the man has always been cunningly careful about not telling outright provable lies, preferring ambiguity, half-truths, elision, the twisting of facts, omission, distraction, whataboutery and circumlocution as his favoured methods of deception.

Brexit will be defended, as will his net zero policies and the Covid response; the vaccine rollout and the aid provided to Ukraine will be championed. Best, then, to treat it as “his truth”, to use a contemporary expression. As his hero Winston Churchill once remarked (perhaps apocryphally), “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”

What should we look out for?

An awful lot of score-settling. It’s an open secret that Johnson resents the supposed treachery of Gove, who wrecked his chances of becoming prime minister in 2016, and the similar purported betrayal of Sunak in 2022, which effectively brought him down (albeit he was very much the author of his own destruction).

Others likely to invite measured scorn include John Bercow, Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer, and Vladimir Putin. Nigel Farage, the bad boy of Brexit and Johnson’s current rival, will be trickier to deal with. Volodymyr Zelensky, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Simon Case, Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries will get more affectionate treatment.

What will be the impact?

As if he hasn’t done enough damage, it will stir up trouble and strife at the Conservative Party conference, which is already set to be a post-mortem, funeral, and bar-room brawl all rolled into one. The book is due to be published just after that unhappy gathering, but a newspaper serialisation and inspired leaks will disrupt proceedings.

All the attention will naturally be on the lost leader rather than whichever unfortunate individual succeeds Sunak. The regicide of Boris will be one of the most sensitive of many gaping political wounds. On balance, it would have been better of Johnson had held off unleashing himself before the party had had a chance to steady itself, and preferably until after the next election. But that would have meant his book advance being considerably less than the £500,000 he’s reportedly been paid.

Wasn’t he supposed to write a book about William Shakespeare?

Yes, but producing the first folio of The Tragedie of King Boris is more important.