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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Boris Johnson, the UK's new Prime Minister, has ruled out holding an early general election. But, as we've seen, anything can happen in today's politics. There are few politicians who could genuinely be described as a phenomenon. Boris Johnson is undoubtedly one. With a shake of that foppish blond mop, a glimmer of his madcap smile and the voice of a demented public school boy, Boris provides comedy gold every time he opens his erudite mouth. The allure of this blundering rapscallion to many on the Tory benches and to the membership of the Conservative Party at large is all too obvious. He says what few others will say in public and, indeed, he will do so on the record – appearing to care little what people think of him or his views. This book is big on fun, comedy, life and spirit. Containing a selection of the very finest Boris-isms and illustrated by specially commissioned cartoons, The Big Book of Boris is a highly amusing read, straight from the gaffe-strewn mouth of Britain's most colourful politician.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE
There are few politicians who could genuinely be described as a phenomenon. Boris Johnson is one. Whatever ‘it’ is, he’s got it in spades. Walk down the street with him and he is mobbed by people wanting selfies. Borismania happened way before Corbynmania became a ‘thing’.
Boris’s appearances on Have I Got News For You propelled him into the political stratosphere, building him a fan base way beyond the confines of politics. Boris has star quality. He’s loved by many, ridiculed by some and feared by others.
My abiding memory of Boris was spending a day with him when I was campaigning as the Conservative Party candidate in North Norfolk back in 2004. Boris kindly agreed to come and support my efforts to be an MP (which sadly failed!). I had heard terrible stories of him being late or turning up on the wrong day, so when I answered the phone at ten to nine that morning, my heart was already in my mouth. I thought I’d covered every organisational base there was to cover, but, oh no, I hadn’t. ‘Morning, old bean,’ chirruped Boris. ‘Nearly at the station now.’ As the train was due to depart for Norwich at 9 a.m, I was already worried. ‘Where exactly are you, Boris?’ I whimpered. ‘Just coming into King’s Cross now,’ came the rather worrying response. Why worrying? Well, he was supposed to be at Liverpool Street. I just about managed not to cry and rapidly created a Plan B. I got him on the train to King’s Lynn – a mere ninety-minute drive from my home near North Walsham, and then of course a ninety-minute drive back. Bearing in mind he was due to speak at a lunch for 150 people at 1 p.m., things were not looking good. In the end we managed to go to the glass-making factory, do an interview with North Norfolk Radio and conduct an interview with the local paper in the back of the car without too much trouble. However, it meant we were forty-five minutes late for the lunch.
We walked into the room and I expected to be lynched. But they all stood and cheered, because, frankly, they had never expected him to be on time. ‘Good old Boris,’ they cried. Only Boris could have got away with it. Meanwhile, I slumped into my chair, a nervous wreck, thinking to myself, ‘Never again.’
In 2008, he successfully ousted Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. Since then he has brought a new energy and unique style of governance to City Hall. As an LBC radio presenter, I have had the pleasure of interviewing Boris on more than a few occasions over the years, and his charm and wit remain to this day. He gives good interview, as they say, even though he has a very annoying habit of never looking you in the eye when you ask him a difficult question. It makes it very difficult to interrupt him, as he well knows. Sometimes I have had to remind him that an interview consists of me asking a question, with him answering it, rather than him indulging in a monologue.
Boris is underestimated by many of his opponents because they can’t comprehend his popular, cross-party appeal. The left try to paint him as an alt-right, populist extremist, when he is nothing of the sort. Just as they misjudged George W. Bush and tried to dismiss him as ‘stupid’, they are making the same mistake with Boris. They may live to regret it.
Boris was the coalition government’s worst critic. He lambasted the government’s housing policy as ‘social cleansing’, went against Conservative policy and called for a referendum on the EU and warned the government to rethink cuts to police numbers in the wake of the London riots. Boris is the darling of the Conservative grassroots and is seen by many as the only man standing up for Conservative values.
When he finished his eight years as Mayor of London, everyone speculated that No. 10 would be his logical next destination. His leading role in the referendum campaign enabled him to announce he wished to succeed David Cameron. But it was not to be and he withdrew from the contest after an incendiary intervention from Michael Gove. To everyone’s surprise, Theresa May appointed him Foreign Secretary, giving him the chance to prove himself on a world stage. It’s fair to say that despite one or two triumphs, his tenure at the Foreign Office was not seen as a success. Despite that, when he announced his candidacy to succeed Theresa May, Boris Johnson was instantly made the red-hot favourite.
During the 2019 leadership campaign, I spent more time with him than any other journalist or broadcaster. I hosted ten of the sixteen leadership hustings between Johnson and Jeremy Hunt at venues all around the country, culminating in an amazing evening in London in front of 4,500 people. At the first hustings in Birmingham, I was roundly booed by the audience of Tory members for having the temerity to ask him about his private life, in particular the front-page newspaper reports about a row he was supposed to have had with his partner, Carrie Symonds. As the hustings progressed, I became more and more impressed by candidate Johnson. He purveyed such an optimistic message that I found myself being wound in at times.
One incident at the Carlisle hustings will stay with me for a long time. Jeremy Hunt had departed the stage and I was asking Boris Johnson whether he would declare a climate emergency, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a helicopter was landing nearby. Boris had also spotted it and blurted out: ‘Well, that’s a bit embarrassing. I bang on about climate change, and I think that might be my helicopter.’ The audience lapped it up and laughed. A minute or two later, I noticed that Jeremy Hunt was getting into his own helicopter. Boris chimed in: ‘Why are we all travelling in separate helicopters? One helicopter!’ Cue more laughter. As the helicopter took off, a gust of wind blew into the room. I saw Boris look to his right and it was then I realised the whole staging backdrop starting to fall on top of the both of us. I put my hand up to stop it and managed to push it back into position.
Apart from that, what happens on tour with Boris stays on tour.
On 24 July 2019, Boris Johnson became the most powerful Conservative politician in the country when he achieved his lifetime ambition of becoming Prime Minister.
This is the third and biggest incarnation of this book, since the original Little Book of Boris was published way back in 2007. My former PA, now a star journalist with the Sunday Times, Grant Tucker, helped me compile the second book, The Bigger Book of Boris, and for this volume I am delighted to have a co-author, my LBC producer Jakub Szweda, without whom I would not have had the time to meet the very stern deadline given to me by Biteback. Thanks also to another LBC colleague, Henry Riley, for his contribution.
As I finish writing this introduction at the end of July, Boris has been PM for less than a week. I’ve said quite often over the past few weeks that I expect Boris to be either one of our greatest Prime Ministers or one of the very worst. There are few shades of grey with Boris. He could be Prime Minister for years, or he be the political equivalent of Lady Jane Grey and end up as our shortest-serving premier.
However it turns out for him and the country, it’s surely going to be an interesting ride.
Iain Dale
North Norfolk, July 2019
LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF POWER
I had so massacred Bach that I became one of the first pupils in years to fail Grade 1 piano, and still I persevered, in spite of the gentle whispering campaign mounted by my piano teacher to persuade me to give up.
On his childhood aspiration to play the piano
I remember there were a lot of teacher strikes just after I finished teacher training college. I actually received a letter from a union asking if I’d like to sign up. I replied, tersely of course, explaining that I certainly would not, that I opposed their strikes and that they could stick their offer… well, you know.
Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth–profit matrix and stay conscious.
Explaining why he quit after a week as a management consultant
That’s one for the memoirs.
On being rescued after he was swept out to sea while swimming
Sometime before the end of August, I will grab a week’s leave, like a half-starved sea lion snatching an airborne mackerel, and whatever happens that leave will not be taken in some boarding house in Eastbourne. It will not take place in Cornwall or Scotland or the Norfolk Broads. I say stuff Skegness. I say bugger Bognor. I am going to take a holiday abroad.
On refusing to take a holiday in Britain
All the warning we had was a crackling of the alder branches that bend over the Exe, and the stag was upon us. I can see it now, stepping high in the water, eyes rolling, tongue protruding, foaming, antlers streaming bracken and leaves like the hat of some demented old woman, and behind it the sexual, high-pitched yipping of the dogs. You never saw such a piteous or terrible sight…
It was a stellar performance. I may as well give up now and make way for an older man.
On his father Stanley’s appearance on Have I Got News For You, Daily Express, 12 May 2004
I’m in charge here!
When things on Have I Got News For You threatened to get out of hand
I’ve got my fingers in several dykes.
Conservative Party conference, 6 October 2004
OK, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape.
Friends, Voters, Countrymen
What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored.
On the fears of MPs, 21 April 2005
I got to page 1,264 of War and Peace. It was really hotting up, but unfortunately I lost my copy.
There is no finer subject. I say that without prejudice to other subjects, which you can basically read in your bath.
On the subject of classics, 2005
I lost the job. Well, the honest truth is that this has been embellished… probably by me, in the sense that there were two of us who were taken on as trainees, and this was in the ’80s, I think it was the late ’80s, and it was him or me who was going to get the job at the end of… eight months or nine months. It was mano-a-mano and of course it was him who got it.
(In fact, rather than failing to beat another trainee to win a permanent position, he was sacked for falsifying a quotation)
I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I’d listen to this amazing crash from the greenhouse, next door, over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory Party, and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of, of power.
