As an exceptionally polite and well-educated fund manager, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s tactlessness surprised some of his colleagues. His invitation on 15 January 2019 to a champagne celebration at his home in Queen Anne’s Gate struck some Brexiteers as ‘injudicious’. That evening, May’s Withdrawal Agreement had been defeated by a majority of 230 MPs including 118 Tories. The majority against the government was the biggest in history. Nearly all the Tory Brexiteer MPs, including Boris, crowded into Rees-Mogg’s large house to pledge mutual support. Some felt uncomfortable about celebrating their own party’s thrashing. Gulping champagne while Theresa May sat tearfully vanquished close by in Downing Street revealed the Brexiteers’ resolute obsession. ‘It sends the wrong message,’ muttered the sticklers. Boris was not among those complaining. Rather, he happily accepted compliments for his loss of weight. His suit was flapping and there was a gap around his shirt collar. Despite the countdown to Brexit on 29 March, one topic barely discussed that evening was the party’s leadership. Another was the ridicule heaped on Boris for speaking about the ‘transition’ arrangements after a no-deal exit. Without a deal, there would be no transition! His ignorance about realities outraged the Europeans, especially the Germans. In Berlin, no one could understand how the famed British Civil Service and the mother of parliaments could be led by such clumsy, self-deluding politicians. News of Rees-Mogg’s champagne party added to the Germans’ bewilderment. Berlin’s incomprehension spiked three days later. Standing on a JCB bulldozer, Boris’s speech was pitched to the media as an unofficial leadership bid on a One Nation Tory agenda. Few in Berlin could believe that the British could choose Boris as prime minister.
Part financed by Anthony Bamford, JCB’s chairman, Boris established a campaign office. With the help of Iain Duncan Smith, it was better organised than in 2016. Grant Shapps, an outspoken critic of May, had joined to manage the spreadsheet, meticulously recording each MP’s preference to succeed May. Names were entered after consulting Gavin Williamson, a former chief whip and now the Defence Secretary. Notoriously, Williamson as chief whip was suspected of having recorded every Tory MP’s vulnerability. Using his ‘black book’, he could squeeze any doubters and win their loyalty. Ben Mallet, an American pollster, joined Boris with James Wharton, a well-connected no-nonsense former MP who understood the bigger picture, as his campaign manager. Their office was funded not only by regular £10,000 payments from Bamford but also substantial donations including £50,000 from Jon Wood, a hedge-fund manager, and £23,000 from Lynton Crosby for his services as a loan.
Over the following week, the Brexiteers understood the folly of Rees-Mogg’s champagne celebration. With Britain due to leave the EU on 29 March and a majority in the Commons against a no-deal Brexit, they were in danger of losing their prize. ‘It’s time to compromise,’ said Rees-Mogg.1 As ever, one obstacle was Dublin’s refusal to change the backstop. May sought a deal with the Brexiteers.
‘What do you want, Prime Minister?’ asked Boris.
‘You won’t find out unless you support us, Boris,’ she replied, unable to answer the simple question.
‘Will I vote for this backstop?’ asked Boris rhetorically. ‘No way.’2
He was dismissive of those MPs like Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, who predicted the end of the party under Boris’s no-deal Brexit. ‘I genuinely think,’ said Hancock, ‘the deal the prime minister has done is the best on offer.’3 The majority of Tory Party members disagreed. Sixty-six per cent of members supported a no-deal Brexit.4
One week later, on 19 February, three Tory Remainer MPs resigned from the Tory Party. The departure of Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston hit May hard. Many women MPs, she knew, hated Boris but she assumed she could count on their loyalty. Her demise inched closer. For Boris, three fewer trenchant critics in the parliamentary party was good news. With former UKIP voters joining Tory associations and Nigel Farage creating a new Brexit Party to contest the local elections, Boris was positioning himself as the man to deliver the deal. That intensified the scrutiny of his probity.
Over the previous year, his private income had increased, especially from speeches. Among the most lucrative clients was Golden Tree Asset Management, a US finance firm, who paid £94,508 and a fee of £122,899 from an Indian corporation. He also received £23,000 every month for his Telegraph column plus royalties for his books. To his discredit, he was reprimanded by the Commons authorities for failing to declare nine payments totalling £52,722.80. His accountant could easily have avoided that embarrassment. As ordered, Boris apologised but was not grateful to the friendly MP who warned, ‘You must take care and not be slapdash.’ That critic would not be allowed back in the room. Only those in his close circle were allowed to find fault in him.5 But he could not control the TV journalist who asked why he had raised the bogus issue of immigration from Turkey during the referendum. ‘I didn’t say anything about Turkey in the referendum,’ Boris replied.6 Untruthfully or forgetfully remained unresolved. Under relentless pressure, Boris was repeatedly asked during those hectic weeks whose interests he was pursuing: the country’s, the party’s, or his own?
Oliver Letwin was among those asking that question. In his efforts to find an acceptable solution for the country and party, Letwin had conversations with Boris in the Commons lobby and tea rooms. To his disappointment, Letwin discovered that Boris, mentioning the ‘democratic mandate’, had hardened against any compromise. Letwin’s riposte that only 25 per cent of the electorate voted Brexit and 50 per cent of Britons were non-Brexiteers provoked Boris’s silence. Letwin decided that Boris was pursuing his own interests. Boris would reply that he was caring for Britain’s interest.
Slowly but remorselessly, the Commons was inching towards the final showdown. A second vote on the Withdrawal Bill was due on 12 March. Despite the turmoil just seventeen days before Brexit, Boris took Carrie for a long weekend to Positano to celebrate her thirty-first birthday. Some feared that political priorities were being forsaken to satisfy Carrie’s wishes.
In California, Jennifer Arcuri watched the affair critically. ‘She’s got far more skeletons than me,’ she told a friend. ‘Boris got caught at the end of the night by a flirtatious minx. She’s controlling him. It drives me insane that there’s such a huge difference between me and Carrie. She’s just a Type A worker bee, riding a bicycle around the Westminster village.’
In the second Withdrawal vote, David Davis was one of the nine Tories who switched to vote for May. ‘The alternative is a cascade of catastrophe,’ he explained about a no-deal exit. But seventy-five Tories including Boris voted against the government. Certain to lose, May blamed Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General. He had delivered a devastating legal opinion that Britain had ‘no unilateral means of exiting’ the backstop. May’s agreement would cast Britain as an EU colony forever, said Boris. She had demonstrated a failure of statecraft. The government lost the second vote by 149 votes. In just seventeen days, May feared, Britain would leave the EU without a deal. Uttering threats in a croaking voice, May retreated from the Commons to her office in tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told her staff. Two days later, MPs voted against Britain ever leaving the EU without a deal. Britain’s predicament seemed insoluble. Parliament was paralysed, the major political parties were split, the government was crumbling and the prime minister was losing her judgement. Relieved by the removal of the no-deal threat, the EU’s leaders sniggered.
To delay the crisis, May was persuaded, Britain should extend its departure from the EU to 12 April and reintroduce the Withdrawal Bill for a vote in the Commons for a third time. The ERG Brexiteers, she hoped, would prefer to vote in favour of a bad Brexit rather than no Brexit.
To win the rebels’ support, she invited Boris to Downing Street. Would he, she asked, vote with the government if there was another vote. ‘No,’ he replied, unless the backstop was renegotiated, a condition he knew the EU had rejected. Punctuated by long silences, she explained that if MPs voted against the bill for a third time, Brexit would be delayed. Looking at the broken woman who in the past had enjoyed mocking him, Boris felt little sympathy. Two weeks earlier, he knew, the whips had told her that she would have to resign by the end of the year. ‘You need to rule out running again as leader,’ he said politely. ‘A snap election’, she replied, was possible. The threat of bringing down the party in retribution for her own failure exposed her lack of authority. The spectre of Corbyn did not frighten Boris. They sat in silence. At the end of forty minutes, he displayed no hint of dismay when, without any agreement, he left. Theresa May’s resignation crept closer. Impetuousness guided her next move.
The following day, Wednesday 20 March, May decided to address the nation on TV. On those rare, invariably difficult occasions, the prime minister seeks to enlist the electors’ understanding. That night, even sympathetic Tory MPs were shocked. Defiantly, May blamed MPs for the chaos. Even May’s closest advisers in Downing Street finally lost their confidence in her. Impervious to their sentiments, she threw another dice to survive.
To win over her opponents, she invited Boris, Iain Duncan Smith, Dominic Raab, Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis and Steve Baker, the ERG’s organiser, to Chequers on Sunday 24 March. Before arriving, the MPs had agreed their only purpose was to give May an ultimatum to resign. Electing a new leader before the party conference in the autumn was vital. Meeting on the first floor, she implored the MPs ‘Back me or there’ll be no Brexit.’ Her appeal was sidelined. ‘You must set a date for your departure,’ said Rees-Mogg. She refused. ‘You must set a timetable for resignation,’ said another. She talked around it. After the 2017 election, said Boris, ‘you said you would only remain as long as you want me’. She remained silent. So did Boris. Finally she snapped ‘I’m not resigning.’ The discussion ground to silence.
‘Let’s have some tea,’ she suggested. ‘It’s ready downstairs.’ As everyone headed for the stairs, Iain Duncan Smith stood with May in an alcove. ‘I don’t find this easy,’ he told her, ‘but the honest truth is that the party is not prepared to support you anymore. You must go before the summer break and let your successor sort out the mess.’ May’s eyes welled up with tears. If she announced that she would resign at the 1922 Committee meeting set for Wednesday, continued Duncan Smith, the ERG group would support the government in the third vote. ‘The choice is yours,’ he concluded and headed down for tea.
After the group left Chequers, they were assured by Duncan Smith that May would announce her departure date at the 1922 Committee meeting of Tory MPs three days later. In advance, she approved the script with the precise words including her departure date. Unexpectedly, before she reached the committee room, she decided to ignore the script and renege on her agreement with Duncan Smith. Uppermost in her mind, was theatrically to stage her exit at the party conference in October. She would gamble that over the following two days, the threat of no Brexit would secure sufficient converts to win the third vote on 29 March. Standing in front of MPs, she delivered her surprise. She would only resign, she said, if her Brexit deal was passed. She gave no date for her resignation. Iain Duncan Smith was furious. But the ERG group was divided.
Boris’s ambitions depended on sticking with the ERG group. He noticed that Dominic Raab came to every ERG meeting and his popularity was rising. Over the following forty-eight hours, Boris arrived punctually at meetings to witness the ERG split. As Steve Baker, a key organiser, observed, ‘Boris quietly watched to know what was happening with his rivals.’ He also witnessed the agony of lifelong Brexiteers. Peter Lilley argued that it was marginally better to leave the EU with vassal status rather than abandon Brexit altogether. In the future, he said, Britain could renegotiate or even renege on the agreement with the EU. Rees-Mogg agreed. ‘I apologise for changing my mind,’ he would say. He chose to vote for May and abandon the DUP rather than lose Brexit. To avoid the chaos, Iain Duncan Smith also reluctantly agreed. To Steve Baker’s surprise, Dominic Cummings urged MPs to support the government. ‘You’ll be strategic idiots if you don’t,’ said Cummings.
‘You haven’t read the bill,’ replied Baker.
Over the next two days, Boris was torn. Britain, he still believed, should leave without a deal.7 On the other hand, loyalty to every institution he had belonged to – his schools, Oxford and City Hall – required him to show similar loyalty to his exhausted party. In a crisis, the priority was to show allegiance to the leader. He had to make himself unassailable among MPs as a flexible leader, willing to reach out to compromise. Even Churchill had voted in 1940 for Chamberlain after the disastrous Norway expedition and became prime minister soon after. He was persuaded by Rees-Mogg to vote for the bill. ‘I’m very, very sorry and though it fills me with pain,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to support this thing … We have got to get this over the line [because] I genuinely think the House of Commons is going to steal Brexit.’ Boris’s conversion had no influence on the ERG’s founders. ‘He was a cheerleader and one of us,’ recalled Craig Mackinlay, an ERG hard-line member of the self-named Spartans, ‘but he did not understand the detail.’8
Class divided the ERG. Opposed to the Old Etonians and other clubbable public school MPs who reluctantly supported May, were Steve Baker, Mark Francois, Craig Mackinlay and other non-public school Tories. For them, Brexit was a religion more important than the party. Under no circumstances were they prepared to compromise. To those purists, May’s refusal to name her resignation date at the 1922 meeting was a betrayal. Her speech, said Baker, was a ‘pantomime’ which had ‘consumed me with ferocious rage’. Parliament, he said, should be torn down. He would be ‘bulldozing it into the river’. Mark Francois, an equally passionate Brexiteer, said he wouldn’t back May’s deal even if someone ‘put a shotgun in my mouth’. Bernard Jenkin was tempted to support May but pulled back because to intend to break an international agreement in the future was wrong. To save Brexit, he would join the thirty Spartans. That made May’s defeat inevitable. A leadership campaign was imminent.
At Lynton Crosby’s behest, Boris reached out to the Remainers. ‘I agree with Heseltine about One Nation Toryism to make capitalism popular again,’ he tweeted. He also pledged support for Dominic Grieve, the leading Remainer who was threatened with deselection after losing a no-confidence vote in his local association. Former UKIP members had infiltrated the local party to sway the vote: ‘Sad to hear about Dominic Grieve. We disagree about the EU but he is a good man and a true Conservative.’ He did not tweet support for Nick Boles, dubbed by local activists in Grantham as a ‘traitor’, and also threatened with deselection.
On 29 March, May’s third attempt to pass the Withdrawal Agreement was defeated by fifty-eight votes. Thirty-four Tories voted against the government. May’s fate was sealed. Remainers feared the Tory Party would become a Brexit party. There was, however, some consolation. Convinced that a Brexiteer could not be a One Nation Tory, they calculated that a majority of party members would not choose Boris.
‘There’s no “Stop Boris” campaign,’ wrote Fraser Nelson, ‘because he hasn’t even started a campaign.’9 Surveying the ERG group, Matthew Parris was scathing: ‘We’re looking at an assemblage of ninnies and rascals here and they’re well on their way to being rumbled.’ And the Remainer reassured himself, ‘So far we are winning.’10 In The Times, Clare Foges wrote ‘If Boris were to make it into No. 10, it would be a very bad thing for our country … That he is a liar, a philanderer, a reckless stirrer, a man of unconstrained egoism. All this is true … what really matters is what Boris lacks:11 ideas, political purpose, a reason for seeking high office beyond personal ambition.’ Finding any support for Boris in the mainstream media was difficult, especially among women journalists. Many were particularly outraged by his character and behaviour.
Cap in hand, May extracted a further extension of Brexit from the EU until 31 October. She intended to garner enough support for a fourth vote. In desperation, she appealed to Jeremy Corbyn to join her in the interests of national unity. May’s trust that an anti-Semitic Marxist would negotiate honestly was beyond naive. Corbyn’s sole purpose was to intensify the Tory split and that proved successful. Boris spoke for many that her invitation to Corbyn was ‘utterly incredible … so bad and so disheartening that you can scarcely believe it’.12 The proof of May’s folly was an outburst by David Lammy, the black activist Labour MP for Tottenham. Brexiteers, said Lammy, were Nazis and Boris was ‘an extreme hard-right fascist’.13 Only May failed to grasp that an agreement with Labour was impossible.
With two imminent elections – for local government on 3 May and the European Parliament on 23 May – the Tory Party’s split was reflected by a deepening slump in the polls. The biggest threat was from Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party.
The Tory Party’s performance in the local elections was the worst since 1995: 1,330 Tory councillors lost their seats and the party lost control over forty-four councils. ‘It’s the end of the Tory era – like 1997,’ Remainer Tories wailed. The party, they cried, faced an existential crisis. ‘Bunkum,’ replied Boris. Labour’s good fortune, he reminded them, was that with the same 28 per cent share of the vote as the Tories, it had lost just eighty-four councillors.
Fearing another bloodbath in the forthcoming European elections, 79 per cent of the party members urged May to resign before her government collapsed. The Queen would be obliged to invite Corbyn to enter Downing Street. As ever, the problem was identifying her successor. Just as in the 2016 referendum, no outstanding Remainer MP had emerged. While Amber Rudd huffed and puffed, casting more insults at Boris and urging voters to reject a Brexiteer spouting ‘narrow nationalism’ as the next Tory leader, Brexiteers led by Bill Cash began to look seriously at Boris as the party’s saviour.
‘I’m going for it,’ Boris told an insurance brokers’ conference in Manchester on 16 May. ‘Of course I’m going for it.’ Only he could face off Farage and Corbyn and offer One Nation Toryism. The YouGov poll reported Boris with 35 per cent as the clear favourite among party members. Raab was second with 13 per cent. While 31 per cent of Tory members judged Boris as a ‘poor’ leader, 70 per cent trusted him to win an election.14 Waiting for just one more calamity, Boris’s machine was well organised. By then, over half the Tory MPs had entered his Portcullis House office for their fifteen-minute slot.
Determined to prevent his victory, May urged MPs to get Brexit settled to prevent a Brexiteer inheriting the leadership. To get a Commons majority in the fourth vote, she proposed to make two radical concessions: Britain would agree to remain a member of the single market, and once the deal was finalised there would be a second referendum. May was not only proposing to betray the Tory manifesto but to split fundamentally the party. ‘It’s hard to recall a time when the Conservative Party was a greater shambles,’ The Times rightly concluded, and then added the poison: infected by extremism, the Tories should accept May’s deal.15 The newspaper was unrealistic. Exhausted and discredited, May was bust. She had made the Tory brand toxic.
On the eve of the European elections, Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, refused to present the fourth Withdrawal Bill to the Commons and resigned. In her bunker, May would not meet other ministers. ‘The sofa is up against the door,’ said Iain Duncan Smith. ‘She’s not leaving. She refuses to resign.’ The electorate fired the fatal shot.
In the European elections, Nigel Farage won 31.6 per cent of the vote. The Tories won just 9.1 per cent, the party’s worst result in any election in 200 years. Fifth behind the Greens, the Tory Party faced oblivion. Tearfully, May announced she would step down on 7 June. Even her closest supporters in Parliament and the media were not surprised. The leadership race had officially started.
Boris sprang forward and instantly pledged to take Britain out of the EU on 31 October, ‘deal or no deal’. Only by sticking to leave on 31 October, he said, would the Tories recover their voters. And the only way to extract a better deal was to threaten no-deal. The alternative, he said, was the Conservatives ‘permanently haemorrhaging support’. Terrified that Corbyn could become prime minister, even some Boris haters agreed. Six months earlier, Iain Martin in The Times had written off Boris as a has-been buffoon, a doomed blond bombshell with a dud fuse. Martin now suggested, ‘Boris has to find a way through the wreckage. He must now unite the centre right.’16 Only Boris haters preferred May to remain. A vote for Boris, Ruth Davidson said, was a vote for Scottish independence. Expecting the EU to abandon the backstop, said Amber Rudd, was a fantasy. Matthew Parris pleaded against opening the door to an ‘incompetent scoundrel’. Boris, Parris predicted, would ‘rat on his promise to leave the EU’. If elected, his ‘reckless caprice, lazy disregard for principle, weak negotiating skills, moral turpitude … which has been so destructive of others’ lives and failure as Foreign Secretary to achieve anything but an extension of his notoriety beyond these shores’ would prove him to be a disaster.17 Philip Hammond representing the One Nation group predicted that if Boris ignored Parliament and headed for no-deal, ‘he cannot expect to survive very long’. Trying to get no-deal through Parliament, forecast Jeremy Hunt, would be ‘political suicide’.
For Boris’s diehard opponents, Trump’s endorsement of him on the eve of his state visit to Britain confirmed the challenger’s unsuitability. ‘He would do a good job,’ said Trump. ‘I think he would be excellent.’ Rather than meet Trump during his visit in London, Boris spoke to him on the telephone.
After the Brexit Party pushed the Tories into third place in the Peterborough by-election, more Tories concluded that only Boris could save the party. Instead of winning in a Brexit constituency, the Tories lost 25 per cent of their vote. A poll of party members put Boris at 43 per cent. Now, he not only attracted Brexit supporters but also those desperate to defeat Corbyn.18 Reports by Katya Adler, the BBC’s European editor in Brussels, that the EU adamantly refused to reopen negotiations for the Withdrawal Agreement, and were appalled that Boris might renege on the £39 billion ‘divorce’ payment, only increased his popularity. ‘They think he may possess a kind of magic,’ Matthew Parris said about party members, and warned, ‘The magic, my friends will fade.’19 Parris urged the re-election of May without a contest ‘to unite and heal the party’.20 His fantasy was shattered by the first real poll: eighty-three Tory MPs had already endorsed Boris, while Jeremy Hunt, his main rival, attracted just thirty-seven MPs.
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The tension within Boris’s campaign headquarters, set up in the home of Tory peer Greville Howard in Westminster’s Lord North Street, mirrored the chaos and conflicts of his private life. Behind the street’s only double-fronted house, decorated with Howard’s wife Corty’s elegant window boxes, Lynton Crosby, the trusted strategist, was resolutely in charge. Among his key aides was Gavin Williamson, fired as Defence Secretary by Theresa May for leaking National Security Council information. Each MP was invited for a face-to-face session with Boris not only to make sure their commitment was genuine but also to give them an opportunity to declare their own ambitions. Many like Craig Mackinlay left his office convinced by Boris’s assurance of a ministerial post in his administration.
Boris relied on Iain Duncan Smith to bring ERG votes into his camp. In preparation for two meetings with twenty ERG members, he listened to advice about how best to present his policies and explain his complicated private life.
‘What line will you take about that sensitive issue?’ he was asked during a group meeting.
‘I’ll say “People are electing me and not my family”, and if they persist I’d say that those who cast stones are usually hypocrites.’
Ever since his lie about his relationship with Petronella Wyatt in 2004, Boris had refused to answer any questions about his family. Few in the room thought his prevarication could succeed but as journalists jumped at the opportunity to embarrass him, the team discovered that his stubborn refusal to engage won the public’s sympathy. Even when asked, ‘How many children do you have?’ he refused to reply, triggering the forlorn chase to discover a rumoured unknown child in Bournemouth! Similarly, when asked whether he had used cocaine, he remained mute. The majority of the British public accepted he was a rogue and wanted to move on. During two sessions, Mark Francois and Steve Baker, the ERG’s most trenchant activists, demanded specific answers about no-deal. He would not rule out, he said, suspending Parliament to get no-deal Brexit through. At the end of his interrogation, Francois offered his hand to confirm his support. For the moment, other ERG members supported Raab. Simultaneously, to attract Remainer MPs, Boris promised he wanted a deal. As for the rest who disagreed with him, he was coached to make the right noises.
One week into the campaign, long-standing tensions erupted. Crosby was frozen out by Carrie Symonds. Convinced that Crosby had orchestrated her recent departure from Central Office, Boris’s girlfriend also blamed Crosby for a run of negative stories in the Daily Mail. Unusually, Boris allowed himself to be influenced by Carrie and argued with Crosby. After the split, Boris decided that Dominic Cummings was critical to his campaign and his premiership. Cummings, he knew, would insist on working with Michael Gove. They came as an inseparable pair. Despite Gove’s untrustworthiness and his support for May’s deal, Boris agreed that Gove should be recruited. Importing Cummings added fuel to the fire. Overnight, Boris’s operation was staffed by Vote Leave campaigners. For Iain Duncan Smith and other ERG members who disliked Cummings, that was a breaking point. They left Lord North Street but some still expected to be included in Boris’s first government.
In parallel, intimate meetings were hosted across Mayfair by Ben Elliot, nephew of the Duchess of Cornwall, to raise money for the campaign. Renowned as ‘a fabulous flirt’, Elliot invited hedge-fund managers, venture capitalists and social billionaires to meet Boris and sign cheques of between £10,000 and £20,000. Anthony Bamford gave £89,000.
In the run-up to the first round, Amber Rudd once again dumped on Boris despite his earlier offer of the Chancellorship in his government. ‘It is not enough to be told to shut your eyes, cross your fingers, pick up some magic beans and believe in Britain,’ she said when endorsing Hunt. ‘We need a skilled negotiator and deal-maker, not an instruction for more optimism.’21 Her words proved to be futile. In a knockout blow in the first round, Boris won 114 votes – one-third of Tory MPs. Several losers abandoned the race and joined Boris. His fight was now focused against Hunt.
Unable to campaign without Crosby, Boris called and apologised. The Australian returned with his colleague Mark Fullbrook. As usual, their tactics included limiting the gaffes. Press conferences would be restricted to six questions and Boris would not agree to a TV debate with Hunt. The challenger retorted that Boris was a ‘coward’ – and that, Boris decided, sealed Hunt’s fate in the event that Boris won. With victory more certain, a transition team including Matt Hancock, Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak was established in a Westminster town house owned by Andrew Griffith, a Sky executive. In the next ballot, Boris received 160 votes, equal to more than half the total. He entered the final round – the party members’ votes – as the favourite.
On the eve of his runaway success, the Guardian contrived an extraordinary scandal. On 21 June, the newspaper reported that Boris and Carrie had been embroiled in a ferocious argument in her flat, a conversion in a Camberwell house. The circumstances and the facts were disclosed to the Guardian by their neighbours, Tom Penn and Eve Leigh. In Penn’s version, late on Thursday 20 June he heard an argument as he passed Carrie’s front door on his way to collect a delivery of takeaway food. He claimed to have heard the argument between Carrie and Boris continue after he returned to his flat. Then Penn did something quite unusual. He claimed to have recorded the argument on his mobile phone. Penn’s version, reported by the Guardian, was: ‘It was loud enough and angry enough that I felt frightened and concerned for the welfare of those involved, so I went inside my own home, closed the door, and pressed record on the voice memos app on my phone.’ After the story was published, the builders of the house would say that the walls were too thick to record an argument. Penn, it was suggested, stuck his phone through Carrie’s letter box. (This assumes there even was a recording, because the Guardian and Penn refused to produce one.)
The key phrases of the argument reproduced by the Guardian were Carrie screaming that Boris had spilled red wine on her sofa: ‘You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt. You have no care for money or anything.’ Then Boris shouted, ‘Get off my fucking laptop,’ followed by a loud crashing noise of glasses or plates. Then Carrie shouted, ‘Get off me’, and ‘Get out of my flat’.
Soon after, Penn called the police. Arriving just after midnight, the police were satisfied that neither Carrie nor Boris was at risk and left. Penn and Eve Leigh then decided that the public had a right to know about the private argument. ‘Once clear that no one was harmed,’ Penn said, ‘I contacted the Guardian, as I felt that it was of important public interest. I believe it is reasonable for someone who is likely to become our next prime minister to be held accountable for all of their words, actions, and behaviours.’ The Guardian agreed with that sentiment. The same newspaper which campaigned about infringing celebrities’ privacy by hacking their telephones decided that publishing a secret recording of an invasion of privacy was different. The newspaper preferred not to mention that Tom Penn and Eve Leigh were political opponents of Boris or about Eve Leigh’s internet boast the previous weekend: ‘just gave Boris Johnson the finger, this weekend is unstoppable’. Leigh described her theatrical work as an attack against the ‘huge ugly edifice of capitalist heteropatriarchy’.
Under the headline ‘Police called to loud altercation at potential PM’s home’, the Guardian splashed the allegations. After the event, Carrie told a close friend that she did not shout ‘Get off me’ and other so-called quotations published by the Guardian. The newspaper, she said, had fabricated some phrases. No one disputed there had been an argument, and that fuelled intense speculation about the cause. Some said Carrie was furious that Boris had returned late from seeing Marina, who at the time was recovering from cervical cancer. Others claimed Carrie was angry that Petronella had texted Boris mocking Carrie’s ‘undignified half-naked’ performance on top of a car (she had posted a fun photo of herself on Instagram), and that ‘she needs her teeth fixed’. There were claims that he was looking at photos of Jennifer Arcuri. Finally, the internet was awash with a graphic but fabricated account of Boris arriving late home from a sexual encounter in a restaurant with his female barber. The truth was that Carrie, in an emotional outburst, was upset by Boris’s spilling a glass of red wine on her sofa: just a domestic tiff. The only question for insiders was whether Carrie, unlike Marina, could cope with Boris’s endless needs and bouts of depression.
Because Boris, contrary to advice, remained silent and the Guardian refused to release the recording, the truth was never conclusively established but the circumstances were extraordinary. Britain’s future prime minister was involved in yet another unseemly affair while camping out in his girlfriend’s home. More shocking to many was a photograph of the interior of Boris’s car, parked illegally outside the house. That revealed a gruesome mess. Books, newspapers, clothes, coffee cups and food debris were strewn across the passenger seats and inside the boot. That image said more about Boris’s character than the tiff. In an attempt to repair the damage, a photo was released of the two holding hands in a pub garden taken from a distance. The suggestion that it was a chance snap taken the previous day was accurately ridiculed by the length of Boris’s hair! Asked twenty-six times by Nick Ferrari on LBC when the photo was taken, he consistently refused to answer. In the end, the only result of the Guardian’s story was that Tom Penn and Eve Leigh ended up ‘evicting’ neighbours who may not have conformed with their political tastes. Carrie was forced to sell her home.
Two weeks later, another incident undermined Boris. Confidential reports to the Foreign Office from Kim Darroch, the British ambassador in Washington, featured critical judgements about President Trump’s administration as ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘inept’. A Foreign Office official had accumulated the messages and leaked them to a newspaper. Darroch was embarrassed, and worse, the president declared that his administration would no longer engage with the ambassador. In an ITV leadership interview, Boris was asked four times whether he supported Darroch and he refused to give a straight answer. Questioned on 12 July by Andrew Neil, Boris again refused to endorse Darroch. Although he did not see either TV interview, Darroch resigned, blaming Boris’s refusal to support him. Boris later admitted his silence was mistaken. He had decided there was no advantage in annoying Trump. Boris was the victim of accidents, dirty tricks and fabrication, but his own gaffes were just that – self-made.
In the last hustings for the leadership one week later, Boris was reckless. Vigorously waving a plastic-wrapped kipper in front of a large audience in London, he claimed that EU regulations on kippers had massively increased the costs of export because ‘Brussels bureaucrats are insisting that each kipper must be accompanied by a plastic ice pillow.’ That was untrue. British rules had introduced the measure. Once again, just like the £350 million on the bus, he used colourful language to secure the Brexiteers’ votes.22 Once again, his self-deprecating smile won him praise as an authentic figure.23
On the eve of the final vote, the Guardian likened Boris to a ruling-class trickster who ‘cynically gambles with the future of their country and the livelihoods of their fellow citizens’. But for his electorate – the Tory Eurosceptics – only Boris could save the party and country from Corbyn at the next election.
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On the morning of 23 July, the long-anticipated result was announced in Westminster’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Boris won 66 per cent of the members’ vote. His victory speech to a packed hall had been worked on for some time but bore the impression of the usual last-minute brainstorm. This was not the moment to be philosophical but punchy: ‘Get Brexit done, unite the party, defeat Corbyn and propel the country to greatness’ was not a curtain-raiser to a new era but defiantly buried the past three wasted years. ‘We’ll rise from the slumber and we’re going to believe in ourselves again’ was positive but nothing could please the pessimists. The speech’s gimmicky acronym ‘DUDE’ – ‘deliver, unite, defeat and energise’ – fell flat, yet his audience was bursting with relief. After three cataclysmic years, the nightmare of May’s premiership was over. But the Brexit crisis remained. Not only would he be leading a minority government unable to pass the law for Britain to leave the EU, but the divided Tory Party was incapable of agreeing to implement its manifesto pledge. The challenge was to bend reality to his will.
As Boris came down from the stage, he walked towards his family in the front row. There was a double kiss for Rachel, a warm glance at Jo, but a firm rejection of Stanley’s outstretched hand. More than ever Stanley needed Boris. But at his moment of triumph, Boris refused his father’s congratulation, a secret reminder that Stanley ignored his children when he was needed. Without showing a flicker of doubt, Boris walked out of the hall. Never previously in modern British history had a prime minister reached office in similar circumstances, but he believed himself to be exceptional – and now he would prove it.
On his way to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he already knew how he intended to run Downing Street. As in City Hall, he would be the chairman of meetings, encourage a free exchange of opinions, make decisions and delegate to ministers the delivery of his commands. Munira Mirza, the head of his policy unit, and Eddie Lister, his sixty-nine-year-old trusted adviser and chief of staff, would be his key aides. Neither, he knew, had the experience to force Whitehall and Westminster to implement the revolution he planned. Only Dominic Cummings matched his requirements as a strategist to push Brexit through the hostile Commons, and only Cummings would convince Brussels that Boris was ready for no-deal.
Some speculated that Boris was mesmerised by Cummings. That would be an exaggeration. Boris’s skill was to identify his own weaknesses and hire the right person to compensate for them. Cummings was not only a master of strategy, able to intensely focus on detail, but like Boris himself, was a rule-breaker. As a kindred spirit, he understood Boris’s anarchical spirit. Willpower would demolish their mutual enemies. His most important contribution would be instilling unyielding resolution never to compromise. His determination to march forward and trample the opposition was vital. Boris decided that he could not run Downing Street without him. His initial offers to Cummings to join him in Downing Street had been rejected. So he cycled to Cummings’ north London house which he shared with his wife Mary Wakefield (still employed at the Spectator, where she had worked during Boris’s editorship), to hear Cummings’ list of ‘terrorist demands’. He quickly conceded. Cummings’ target, they agreed, would be getting Brexit through, win the general election and then reform Whitehall. Civil servants lacking the skills to run a modern government, unable to manage service, procure goods or formulate good policies, would be ditched. Cummings would revolutionise Britain’s decrepit government machine, starting with the overstaffed and woefully incompetent Ministry of Defence.
Cummings’ more important demand related to his status and terms of work. The Downing Street administrative machine, he said, would be controlled by him. Not only would he appoint or approve the prime minister’s private staff but he would be the gatekeeper to control access to Boris himself. The only people he could trust, said Cummings, were the dedicated Vote Leave campaign staff. Those loyalists should come with him to Downing Street. Only through that command structure, said Cummings, could he accept Boris’s offer. With no alternative option and probably not realising the consequences, Boris agreed. He never considered the maxim that successful campaigners are not necessarily good administrators. In politics, there is a truism that leaders can be judged by the cronies they select to advise them. Boris’s public confession that Cummings was the cornerstone of his administration was telling. He failed to calculate that after Benedict Cumberbatch had portrayed Cummings in the feature film Brexit: The Uncivil War, his ego had become overblown.
On 24 July, while Boris was inside Buckingham Palace, Cummings had arrived in Downing Street. Outside Number 10, the new prime minister strode to the lectern to make a short speech. Brexit, he promised, would be done by Halloween – ‘No ifs, no buts … We are going to restore trust in our democracy.’ 31 October was the target date. He then turned towards the famous black door. Fifty-two years after declaring he wanted to be ‘world king’, his entry would manifest that dream. As he turned to wave to the cameras, romantics cited Disraeli: Boris had been chosen thanks to ‘the sublime instincts of an ancient people’. Other admirers intoned, ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man.’
Once through the door, he was welcomed by Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary. The TV cameras recorded the scene, spotting in the corner by the window a distinctly untidy individual dressed in a grey T-shirt and jeans: Dominic Cummings. In his typically confrontational manner, Cummings wanted his enemies to see his victory. The first people to be horrified by the pictures, as Cummings intended, were the ERG’s leaders. ‘If we’d known that Cummings would come,’ said Bill Cash, ‘it would have caused a lot of angst. I was against Vote Leave because of Cummings.’ ‘The ERG group was appalled,’ admitted Peter Lilley, ‘but they consoled themselves that Brussels would be more appalled.’
The BBC was clearly appalled by Boris’s success. A radio profile called ‘Who is Boris Johnson?’ featured the well-worn cast of detractors eager once again to portray an ideologically light, shambolic, lazy liar unprepared for public appearances.24 In the Guardian, selected women journalists described him as typical of that breed of ‘white men’ who ‘lash out’ and are ‘repellently dishonest, xenophobic and politically calculating’.25 The paper’s sketch-writer John Crace could not cope with the result: ‘Johnson is the career sociopath [who] doesn’t really believe in anything except himself.’ Years of their vitriol had failed to frustrate a determined man empowered by an unassailable majority and divided opposition to decide the country’s fate.
The trademark of the Johnson administration would be his kitchen cabinet. Automatically invited to join the inner circle and plan his government were the City Hall trustees, Munira Mirza, Eddie Lister, the ever-loyal aide Ben Gascoigne, and Will Walden, the experienced media adviser who would twice refuse Boris’s offer to be Downing Street’s director of communications. Gathered in an office with the well-used white drawing board leaning against the wall, they sat with Mark Spencer, the chief whip, trusted to nominate the junior ranks.
The Cabinet, Cummings persuaded Boris, should not include any opponents. Critical discussion was anathema to the control freak. Cabinet meetings should be limited to announcements and orders. All their departments would be controlled by himself from Downing Street. Boris’s criterion was the winner takes all. Gavin Williamson and Grant Shapps were rewarded for organising the leadership election. Michael Gove was allowed to become chief operating officer, a boring task to prove his worth. Sajid Javid’s fate was in doubt until Carrie Symonds urged his appointment as Chancellor. Reassured by Boris that the chances of leaving the EU without a deal were ‘a million to one’, Javid accepted. The first to be discarded were those he did not trust or had given him unwelcome advice. The crunch decision was Jeremy Hunt. Normally the defeated opponent would be offered a consolation prize. Hunt wanted to remain in the Foreign Office. Boris didn’t trust a Remainer in the Foreign Office. He owed Hunt nothing and did not rate his abilities. In the hope he would reject the offer, Hunt was assigned Defence. Take it on my terms or there’s the door, was Boris’s ultimatum. Hunt refused the demotion. ‘Hunt could not help the government so he and his people were out,’ said one adviser. Raab, an ardent Brexiteer, would be more reliable as Foreign Secretary and trusted as Boris’s deputy to champion ‘Britannia Unchained’, a vision for a deregulated state akin to ‘Singapore in the North Sea’. Along with Priti Patel as Home Secretary, Javid as Chancellor and James Cleverly, another City Hall loyalist, as party chairman, the Cabinet was noticeably diverse. And Amber Rudd was allowed to remain as minister of work and pensions. She would be a show of political cross-dressing to the One Nation wing of the party. Few thought she would last long.
Allies were shocked that despite the belief that Boris always wanted to be loved, his promises to some key supporters were ignored. Jake Berry, so crucial to Boris after 2016, was not given a major portfolio. ‘He didn’t fit in the jigsaw,’ said one aide. Another disappointed MP was Andrew Mitchell. Four days before the election, Boris had asked ‘It’s DFID [the Department for International Development] you want?’
‘Yes,’ replied Mitchell.
‘Right ho,’ said Boris. ‘I’m going to bring you back.’
But Mitchell was overlooked. ‘And I’ve been so loyal to him,’ said Mitchell.
As promises went unfulfilled, disappointment spread through the Tory ranks. ‘Boris means it only when he says it,’ complained another forgotten ally, ‘but then changes. He plays fast and loose with the truth.’ No longer needed, they blamed ‘the London crew’.
The most aggrieved were ERG group members critical to his election. Other than Jacob Rees-Mogg, an Old Etonian, appointed as leader of the Commons, the rest were forgotten. Invited to Downing Street, Steve Baker arrived fuming that Boris had failed to fulfil his promise. During the leadership campaign, Baker assumed that, as the reward for organising the ERG group’s support for Boris, he would be the Cabinet minister to negotiate Brexit. ‘You’re like me,’ Boris had told him with apparent sincerity. ‘You’ve got a wild uncontrollable spirit.’26 Instead, Baker watched compliant Steve Barclay appointed to that Cabinet post. ‘The fashionable and clubbable get the jobs,’ Baker raged, ‘while the difficult, edgy and ungentlemanly don’t. I can’t laugh at their jokes in Greek and Latin.’ Baker later reflected that during their conversations, ‘Boris had a playful glint to see into your mind and find out how he can make you like him. And then …’ Baker was kept waiting for one hour in Downing Street until, just as he was about to leave in anger, he was whisked into the Cabinet Room and offered the job of Barclay’s deputy. ‘It’s a Potemkin job,’ shouted Baker. ‘I delivered for you.’ Boris was startled. For forty-five minutes they argued. ‘You’ve got me wrong,’ raged Baker as Boris tried to urge calm. Baker departed without a job and a pledge to settle his grievance. ‘The ERG group felt so excluded,’ recalled Bernard Jenkin. ‘We felt that he doesn’t need us. It was galling that he went to the middle ground for support as if we’re toxic. Some of us resented that we were called Spartans and sacrificed.’
By the end, seventeen ministers from May’s team had been fired. Only those committed to Brexit remained. All were expected to loyally obey. With a Commons majority of just two, Boris could take no risk of a Cabinet split. None of the Cabinet could be classed as wise, experienced politicians. There would be no concessions, only boldness. In truth, not since 1940 had a British politician become prime minister with greater uncertainty. ‘He’ll be prime minister for either ten weeks or ten years,’ said Peter Lilley. ‘He’ll be a great prime minister or a great disappointment.’27
In Oxford, Jasper Griffin, Boris’s beloved tutor, was seriously ill. In a lucid moment, he was told that Boris was prime minister. ‘Prime minister won’t be enough for Boris,’ sighed Griffin. ‘He wants to be emperor.’ Matthew Leeming, Boris’s Oxford friend, wrote in congratulation: ‘Remember Caesar, you are mortal and all political careers end in failure.’ Elsewhere in the city, Oswyn Murray, a Balliol professor, mentioned that he had sent Boris a renuntiatio amicitiae – a formal ending of their relationship – in fury about his dishonest championing of Brexit. Roman emperors sent the renuntiatio, Boris knew, as an invitation to exile or suicide. Momentarily, he was sincerely hurt but not deflected. He had finally won.
Naturally he was comforted by Cummings’ certainty of purpose. He was also reassured by Lee Cain, his new director of communications. The former freelance journalist who had loyally spoken for him during his term as Foreign Secretary, was entrusted with the critical job of managing the prime minister’s relationship with the media and the electorate. In Cain’s favour was his loyalty to Boris, obedience to Cummings and shared distrust of the media. Downing Street, they agreed, was to operate in secrecy. Staff would be warned not to speak to even trusted journalists. Boris’s belief that the man dressed as a chicken during David Cameron’s 2010 election campaign and a lowly media official for Vote Leave possessed the necessary intellect and imagination to oversee the government’s entire communications operation was a leap of faith.
Everything about the first days of the Johnson administration was unconventional. Prime ministers normally arrive with a wife, but Boris would invite Carrie Symonds to quietly join him. No prime minister had ever lived in Downing Street with an unmarried partner. Nor had any predecessor been faced by the constant media attention of their personal life disintegrating around them. Facing incoming fire from his closest family, they whispered that he missed Marina and that his affair with Carrie was no more than a fling and not a life choice. His first weekend at Chequers reflected the loner’s existence. His guests were friends of Carrie and Michael Gove.
‘So the party of family values,’ wrote Paul Dacre in the Spectator, admitting astonishment about his mistaken predictions, ‘has chosen as leader a man of whom to say he has the morals of an alley cat would be to libel the feline species. Thus the Tories, with two women PMs to their credit, have achieved another historic first: scuppering the belief – argued by the Daily Mail in my 26 years as editor – that politicians with scandalous private lives cannot hold high office. I make no comment on this, or about the 31-year-old minx who is the current Boris Johnson bedwarmer, but ask you instead to spare a thought for Petronella’s abortion, Helen’s love child, Marina’s humiliation and her four children’s agony … As for the Minx, mark my words: there will be tears before midnight.’28
With that blast, the critics were temporarily silenced. The litany of their dire warnings, smiled Boris, had been ignored.