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1https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-dossier-in-full-cpdrwfzj3
2
3Below is the 4,000-word document prepared by Downing Street aides on Boris Johnson
4
5BORIS – THE INDIVIDUAL
6
7Boris Johnson: the life and times
8
919 June 1964: Born ‘Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’ in New York to Stanley Johnson and Charlotte Johnson Wahl.
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111975-77: Ashdown House Preparatory School
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131977-82: Eton College
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151978: His parents divorce
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171982-83: Gap year teacher of English and Latin at Geelong Grammar in Australia
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191983-87: Balliol College, Oxford studying Classics. Member of Bullingdon Club during time at Oxford.
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21c.1983-87: ‘Boris was present at the now infamous Bullingdon evening in Oxford when a pot plant was thrown through a restaurant window and a couple of members ended up in police cells…Boris claims he was one of those locked up overnight, before being released without charge. Others, who were incarcerated, insist he is merely trying to play up his prankster past and that he was never in fact held in custody’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.64).
22
23Autumn 1984: Failed in first bid to become President of Oxford Union. In trying to get elected ‘he even handed out bottles of red wine to Gridiron [a club] members in a particularly brazen, even crass, attempt to “buy” their votes’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.73).
24
25Autumn 1985: Becomes Oxford Union President by pretending to be aligned with the SDP. According to Anthony Frieze, one of Boris’s helpers: ‘It was all driven by a very strong sense of coalition with the SDP supporting Limehouse Group…we let them think that we were all for the realignment of politics, that Boris was “one of them” – the whole thing was a game of flexible geometry (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.81). [Others say the alignment was genuine]
26
275 September 1987: Boris marries his first wife Allegra Owen-Mostyn
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29Autumn 1987: Boris starts his first job at LEK Consulting in London: ‘Boris bolted after only a week – staying just long enough to collect the joining fee’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.95).
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31Late 1987: Begins as a graduate trainee at the Times newspaper. He is initially sent to work on a 3 month placement at the Express & Star in Wolverhampton. Derek Turner, then news editor of the Express & Star remembers Boris as “the most disorganised person I’ve ever encountered; he was clearly not cut out for life in the Black Country” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.99).
32
33Spring 1988: Boris begins as a news reporter at the Times. Senior colleague David Sapsted recalls his news editor asked him to replace Boris because he couldn’t cope: ‘I got a call from John Jinks, the Times news editor at home one evening. “Sappers he said, [the editor] wants you in Dover first thing in the morning to cover the National Union of Seamen’s strike. We sent Boris but it’s kicking off down there and he can’t cope”’
34
35Summer 1988: Boris is sacked from the Times after making up a quote about a dig of a lost palace of Edward II. Says one of his biographers: ‘He could not resist inserting a titillating paragraph about how the King would use the palace to cavort with his catamite Piers Gavestone. The quote he used was sourced to a certain Dr Colin Lucas of Balliol College, Oxford…Lucas wrote back saying there was no way Boris could have obtained this quote from him because it was not right’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.101).
36
37Mid 1988: Boris is hired by the Daily Telegraph as a leader writer
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39Spring 1989: Boris becomes Brussels Correspondent at the Daily Telegraph where he gains a reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts. ‘ “When they discovered asbestos in The Berlaymont [the Commision HQ] Boris wrote a colourful story that teams of sappers were going to mine the building and blow it up” recalls one long suffering EU official. “The story really took off. Another paper made their poor correspondent ring up to see whether they could press the trigger for the dynamite but it just wasn’t true” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.125).
40
411990: Boris splits with Allegra and begins seeing lawyer Marina Wheeler. There may be some overlap as Allegra and Boris finally split for good in 1992 (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.132).
42
4326 April 1993: Boris and Allegra’s divorce is finalised.
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458 May 1993: Boris and Marina Wheeler marry in Horsham, Sussex.
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4712 June 1993: Marina Wheeler goes into labour with their first child, Lara.
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491994: Boris returns to London and works as Telegraph columnist.
50
51C.1994: Boris begins a column on the Spectator
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531995: Son Milo Arthur is born
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55October 1995: Goes missing at Conservative Party conference: ‘He could not be found anywhere, but was needed to write an emergency leader on the death of a prominent politician. He did not answer his mobile phone…and had not booked into his hotel. In the end he was found at the eleventh hour, but again it went right up to the wire. I transpired that he had spent the weekend with the Eurosceptic politician Bill Cash at his home in Shrophsire’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.183).
56
571997: Daughter Cassia Peaches is born
58
59May 1997: Fights the safe Labour parliamentary seat of Clwyd South. According to the then chairman of Clwyd South Conservative Association Ian Reynolds: ‘Boris appeared to take absolutely no real interest in the detail and his [application] letter was a shocker…his thoughts don’t seem to be concentrated on the things that count’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.185).
60
61April 1998: Appears on Have I Got News For You where he is teased over Guppygate, proclaiming ‘I am not ashamed of it’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.176). Appears HIGNFY at least another six times.
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631999: Son Theodore Apollo is born
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65July 1999: Appointed Editor of the Spectator
66
6713 July 2000: Selected as Conservative candidate for Henley. Appals some in audience when replying flippantly to a question to NHS reforms by demanding ‘replacement toast’ for all users of the service (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.213).
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69June 2001: Elected Conservative MP for Henley.
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71Summer 2001: Backed Ken Clarke in the 2001 Conservative leadership election.
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73Late 2001: Assigned to standing committee of the Proceeds of Crime Bill. He was not a diligent member, according to his biographer: ‘Boris was also unused to the committee’s early starts (nine sharp!) and did not always make them or indeed all of the sessions’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.225).
74
752001-05: Ranked 525 th out of 659 MPs on attendance in votes.
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772001-05: Wrote an irregular column for the local Henley Standard.
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79c.2001-05: Alleged by Andrew Gimson: ‘It was said that Boris took the Spectator’s bridge columnist out to lunch in order to sack her, but slept with her instead’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.174).
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81July 2003-04: Appointed Conservative Party Vice Chairman. See below Michael Howard’s comment on his tenure.
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8310 July 2004: Wife of Rod Liddle Rachel Royce writes a Daily Mail expose on the licentious atmosphere at Spectator parties.
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85April 2004 – November 2004: Shadow BIS Minister with responsibility for arts.
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87October 2004: Gets in trouble after Spectator publishes leader criticising Liverpool for its grief over beheaded hostage Ken Bigley. Leader wrote ‘The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley’s murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian’. The piece also blamed Hillsborough fans for being drunk and understating the number of deaths at 50. Piece was actually written [on Johnson’s instructions] by Simon Heffer.
88
897 November 2004: Sunday Mirror breaks story about socialite Petronella Wyatt aborting Boris’s child; story contained claims that Boris had said he would not support child and also refusing to pay medical bills from abortion [which he denies]. In a series of news articles following story, Boris is accused of lying over the affair to journalists and has to resign post (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.266).
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91Summer 2005: backs David Cameron for leadership
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93December 2005 – July 2007: Shadow BIS Minister with responsibility for higher education.
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95December 2005: Leaves the Spectator
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972 April 2006: News of World run story of Boris having affair with journalist/policy specialist Anna Fazackerley, on one occasion visiting both her and Petronella Wyatt on the same night.
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99October 2006: Criticised after attacking Jamie Oliver and healthy eating at a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.305).
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101April 2007: Criticised after attacking Portsmouth for being a city ‘full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs’ (GQ Magazine, April 2007: reproduced in Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.296).
102
10316 July 2007: Boris announces he is standing for Mayor of London.
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1059 April 2008: Boris performs badly in a BBC Newsnight Mayor of London debate- grilled by Jeremy Paxman about how much his Routemaster policy would cost (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.339).
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1071 May 2008: Boris elected Mayor of London
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109December 2008: Boris criticised for allegedly tipping off Damian Green that he was about to be arrested by the Met Police (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.383). [Johnson strongly denies this]
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111July 2010: Story comes out in Daily Mirror alleging that Boris Johnson is father of love child with ‘wealthy socialite’ and art consultant Helen Macintyre.
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113May 2012: Boris re-elected Mayor of London
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115September 2014: Boris selected as Conservative candidate for Uxbridge
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117May 2015: Boris elected as MP for Uxbridge
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119QUOTES BY BORIS
120
121“Boris infamously told a girlfriend that such was the number of his sexual partners that he hadn’t had ‘to have a wank for twenty years’” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.37).
122
123On cocaine:
1241. ‘I tried it at university and I remember it vividly. And it achieved no pharmacological, psychotropic or any other effect on me whatsoever’ (GQ Magazine, June 2007: reproduced on Sky News link).
125
1262. ‘I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so did it not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar’ (BBC, Have I Got News For you, 2005: reproduced in Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.59).
127
128On electoral reform when Oxford Union President in a debate on 28 November 1985: ‘There is an overwhelming case for some type of electoral reform, some form of proportional representation. What sort of democracy is it where one party can get only two per cent less of the vote than another party and end up with a hundred fewer seats in the House of Commons’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.83).
129
130On comprehensive schooling:
131‘Because we live in Islington, I extracted them [his children]. I have no embarrassment about it whatever’ (Times, 15 March 2008).
132
133On China:
134‘China is becoming in our imaginations the fashionable new dread, the incubator of strange diseases, a vast polluted landscape of Victorian factories where coolies sit in expectorating rows, nourished on nothing but rice and the spleens of pangolins’ (Daily Telegraph, 1 September 2005).
135
136On former colonial countries:
137‘The Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies’ (Daily Telegraph, 10 January 2002).
138
139On former colonial countries:
140‘News reaches us, perhaps brought into a cleft stick by some piccaninny from the steaming Mato Grosso’ (Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1997).
141
142On Africa:
143‘The continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more’ (Spectator, 2 February 2002).
144
145On disparity of wealth:
146‘If British history had not allowed outrageous financial rewards for a few people, there would be no Chatsworth, no Longleat [posh houses]’ (Daily Telegraph, 27 February 1995: reproduced in Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.169).
147
148On the grief following Princess Diana’s death:
149‘The Princess is a symbol for every woman who has ever felt wronged by a man’ (Daily Telegraph, 3 September 1997).
150
151On the repeal of Section 28:
152‘This British legislator [Lord Grenfell] is voting in favour of Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it’ (Spectator, 15 April 2000).
153
154On Portsmouth:
155‘Full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs’ (GQ Magazine, April 2007: reproduced in Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.296).
156
157On Papua New Guinea:
158‘For 10 years, we in the Tory party have became used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing; and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party’ (Daily Telegraph, 7 September 2006).
159
160On healthy eating:
161‘I say let people eat what they like! Why shouldn’t they push pies through the railings? If I was in charge, I would get rid of Jamie Oliver’ (Reported remarks at Conservative Party Conference fringe event, October 2006; Daily Mail, 4 October 2006).
162
163On equality/One Nation:
164‘We must pursue actively the one-nation policies that are among David Cameron’s fine legacy, such as his campaigns on the Living Wage and Life Chances’ (Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2016, link).
165
166On inequality:
167‘Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130.
168
169The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top…I stress: I don’t believe that economic equality is possible; indeed, some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity’ (Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture, Centre for Policy Studies, 27 November 2013, link).
170
171On inequality:
172‘Like it or not, the free market economy is the only show in town. Britain is competing in an increasingly impatient and globalised economy, in which the competition is getting ever stiffer. No one can ignore the harshness of that competition, or the inequality that it inevitably accentuates; and I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability’ (Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture, Centre for Policy Studies, 27 November 2013, link).
173
174Speaking to his biographer Andrew Gimson:
175‘If it’s a pisstake that’s ok…anything that purported to tell the truth would really be intolerable’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, kindle location 121).
176
177On watching TV:
178‘They [the public] could be learning the piano. They could be knocking out a play. Instead, they sit like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, watching the flickering images before them and mistaking them for reality. That is the shocker: not that people are so foolish as to appear on TV, but that people are so idle as to watch it’ (Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2001).
179
180On grammar schools:
181‘The answer, as everybody knows but dare not admit, is to allow state schools the freedom once again to select on the basis of academic merit’ (Spectator, 25 April 2009).
182
183**Most of ‘Life in the Fast Lane: the Johnson Guide to Cars’ (2007) is pretty sexist in language used
184
185On EU membership:
186‘As for our own interests they are still on balance served by maintaining our membership. This has brought palpable benefits to Britain in free trade and in bestowing on British citizens the rights of free movement and free establishment in the EU; and withdrawal would potentially mean a worrying loss of influence’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, pp.11-12).
187
188On EU membership:
189‘Many of us moderate Euro-sceptics have spent our nights tossing and turning, and whether we can credibly argue for staying in the EU…but what always just about clinches it for me is that we would lose influence in the designing of the continent. And it has been the object of 500 years of British diplomacy to ensure that continental Europe is not united against our interests. It is also possible that the move would encourage a certain meanness in the national outlook (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.39).
190
191On Conservative members’ views on Europe:
192‘Before the [Henley hustings] debate, we are all given a sheet listing the questions people are likely to ask. You may or may not be surprised to hear that 10 out of 18 concern Europe. When, oh when, will the Tories stop picking this scab?’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.31).
193
194On his opponents at the selection for Henley in 2000:
195‘It was obvious that David [Platt] and Gill [Andrews] were good at policy. They had thought about local issues; they had clearly done our hosts the courtesy of mugging up, and I started to feel outclassed’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.9).
196
197On private health insurance:
198‘No wonder so many UK patients want to take advantage of one of their few positive benefits as EU ‘citizens’ and travel overseas for operations. But it is also true if you look at these other European countries, that they have a far larger private healthcare sector; and you have to ask yourself, as we prepare to spend more of our national wealth on health, how it should be done’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.134).
199
200On immigration:
201
202‘My optimistic view of immigration is that it will eventually produce a new syncretic British culture, absorbing the best from each immigrant population’ (Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001, p.191).
203
204On the minimum wage:
205Talking about the prospect of a Conservative victory at the 1997 election: ‘You begin to try to count your blessings. Golly, it occurs to you: no more minimum wage. The polls had been so confidently predicting a Labour victory that you had already made provision to pay your workers at least £4.10 an hour, putting up your costs and greatly reducing your ability to re-invest’ (Daily Telegraph, 31 January 1996).
206
207On holidays for workers:
208Talking about the prospect of a Conservative victory at the 1997 election: ‘You close your eyes, and then you remember that the Social Chapter won’t be coming into force after all. Hmm. None of that mandatory four week holiday for the staff, none of that ridiculous compulsorily paid paternity leave, none of those extra non-wage costs. That could be vital for a small business like yours’ (Daily Telegraph, 31 January 1996).
209
210QUOTES ABOUT BORIS
211
212‘Cries a childhood acquaintance. “I was brought up with generations of arrogant Etonian boys but Boris’s arrogance transcends any I’ve ever met. He is the ultimate Etonian product, an opportunist to the core’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.44).
213
214On his second Oxford Union president run in autumn 1985. One contemporary recalls: ‘You could read anything you liked into this new Boris. So if you were from a northern comprehensive like me, you liked the ‘I’m funny and you like funny, so vote for me pitch’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.82).
215
216Nick Robinson, former BBC Political Editor, says of their time together at Oxford University: ‘I had not the faintest clue that Boris was a Conservative. Indeed, I would have told you, if you had asked me at the time, that he was a supporter of the SDP/Liberal Alliance. I think he must have taken the decision not to be seen as a Tory because he knew to do so would be to lose’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.82).
217
218Derek Turner, news editor of the Express & Star in the West Midlands says of Boris: ‘The most disorganised person I’ve ever encountered; he was clearly not cut out for life in the Black Country’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.99).
219
220Journalist and former Brussels colleague Michael Binyon says: ‘He was very inventive and creative. What he would say would never be simply untrue but would be on the edge of what might happen’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.116).
221
222John Palmer, former Guardian Brussels Bureau Chief says: ‘As a journalist he is thoroughly irresponsible, inventing stories’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.127).
223
224Former Daily Telegraph Editor Frank Taylor says: ‘Boris was indeed a major claimer of expenses. It may have been a bit extravagant, but that was Boris (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.141).
225
226A ‘former colleague, a very senior man’ in journalism: ‘If you just see him cracking jokes on Have I Got News For You, you think he’s a great bloke. If you’ve worked with him or relied on him it’s a different matter’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.183).
227
228Stuart Reid, a colleague on the Spectator: ‘He was an absentee editor because he had other interests: he certainly wasn’t nine to five. I used to get frustrated from time to time. Sometimes when I wanted to talk to Boris I just wasn’t able to. He just wouldn’t answer his phone’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.192).
229
230Stuart Reid commenting on Boris reacting to 9/11 as Spectator Editor: ‘He didn’t turn up till pretty late on 9/11. We’d all been sitting there in his office watching television and he came in and said. “Crikey, why’s everyone sitting in my bloody office?” (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.194).
231
232Former Conservative leader Michael Howard on Boris’ time as Conservative Vice Chairman 2003-04: ‘The fact is that he didn’t put much time in. With Boris, there is this issue with effort…Here was a Conservative who was much more popular than anyone else in the party and much better known. If he had contributed those attributes to campaigning for the Conservative Party, you might assume that it would be successful. But he didn’t. so it didn’t really work (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.243).
233
234Chris Cook, a former aide to David Willetts and now a journalist: ‘Boris and I got on because we have similar dislike of most members of the Conservative Party. He’s clearly not on the right wing but actually quite Europhile in Tory terms. He liked to come into our office to gossip and bitch about the right wingers, particularly Liam Fox’ (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris, 2011, p.296).
235
236His former Headmaster at Eton, Eric Anderson: ‘They [the students] were doing some scenes from Richard III with Boris as the King. He hadn’t had time to learn the lines, so had pasted them up behind various pillars. The whole performance consisted of him running from one side of the stage to the other and failing to read it properly (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.51).
237
238A close friend: ‘At the age of eighteen he set himself the target that he was going to be in the Cabinet by the age of thirty-five’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.56).
239
240Michael Gove on Boris’s run(s) for Oxford Union President: ‘Michael Gove who became a successful journalist at the Times and in 2005 followed Boris into the Commons as a Tory MP, cheerfully admitted: “I was Boris’s stooge. I became a votary of the Boris cult”’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.69).
241
242Frank Luntz on Boris’s run(s) for Oxford Union President: ‘He renounced his Conservative affiliation and fully embraced the SDP and the principles and the people who supported the SDP to help him get elected’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.70).
243
244Sarah Helm, a journalist colleague of Boris in Brussels: ‘I remember developing an instinctive feel that Boris was a complete charlatan’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.98).
245
246His biographer Andrew Gimson refers to BJ being unable to manage his finances properly: ‘Yet Sindall [his secretary at the Spectator] did help Boris in many other ways. When she started with him, his financial affairs were in total confusion. Unpaid parking tickets would increase in cost to £800 and bailiffs were about to break in’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.138).
247
248An anonymous Conservative backbench MP: ‘I was staggered at his economic ignorance. When he got in [to the House of Commons in 2001] he was put by the Whips, to test his ability to do big, gritty subjects, on a committee giving detailed scrutiny to a Bill. He didn’t make the reputation there he could have done for being able to do the nitty-gritty. There’s a laziness there’ (Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Rise of Boris Johnson, 2012 ed, p.148).
249
250Michael Gove on Boris: ‘If we Britons love our shambolic bumblers, then we must expect them, sometimes, to bumble into something of a shambles’ (Times, 19 October 2004).