Boris Johnson, Unleashed, Is Back in the Game and Trousering a Tidy Sum, To Boot

At one point, the book vying with Boris Johnson’s “Unleashed” for the top spot on the British non-fiction chart was a memoir by a comedian, entitled “I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You.” This caused the British press a great deal of hilarity — but then again, too, Boris always did make his people laugh.Luckily he’s one of us fortunate types who don’t really care if people laugh with us or at us, so long as we’ve got a receptive audience and lots of lovely narcissistic fuel. Some politicians feel sad when they’re ejected from Parliament, if they have to go back to some boring job — but politicians who were once journalists feel a sense of relief.Now the gamekeeper can turn poacher once more; the hunter can run with the fox. Though only 14 years a journalist compared to 23 years a politician Boris Johnson is one of us, in his perfidy and his charm. Like that other great Tory leader and writer Disraeli (another outsider too witty for workaday politics) taking risks kept Boris’ lively mind engaged, finding its ultimate gamble in Brexit; his gift to the British people.Besides Brexit and striding the world stage regularly, though, the Top Job involved lots of policy detail, political navigation and little money — i.e., not to the taste of Mr. Toad. When, having been raised as a Communist and still left-wing in many ways, I voted Conservative for the first time in 2019 to get Brexit done, I was fully aware of what Boris Johnson was. Namely, an adulterous, carousing, boozing hack, like me. I never expected him to have a moral compass, but I did expect him to possess a political sat-nav rather than appear to be a Sunday driver at the wheel of an out-of-control juggernaut, as was increasingly the case during the pandemic. It was as if Falstaff tried to become Henry V and ended up as Hamlet, bumbling about on the battlements, trying to keep everybody happy and thus displeasing one and all.Boris was always a bit too big for the role (contrarily, Keir Starmer is a tad too small) and the life of a famous writer suits him better. For a start, there’s the money; he earned £164,000 as PM, compared to £275,000 as a newspaper columnist (reported to involve working around ten hours a month) and with speaking engagements aplenty he was already rolling in it even before the publication of his autobiography, for which he got a £2 million advance.It sold more than 42,000 copies, making it the bestselling book of its first week; “When you win, nothing hurts,” your sporting hero Joe Namath once wisely said, and I don’t imagine that Boris spends many sleepless nights fretting over the limp social media jibes which show his opus placed next to toilet paper and kitty litter in supermarkets, and beneath the FICTION sign in bookshops.His haters have noted keenly that sales of “Unleashed” have slumped by more than 60 percent in the second week, but having trousered that two million, the rascal, it can be speculated, hardly cares. It’s almost cooler not to get back your advance as it confirms what a “player” one is — and anyway, the paperback sales are guaranteed to keep the publishers happy.No, no matter how much it keeps his detractors awake at night, I think we might conclude that Mr. Johnson is having a smashing time. He is incorrigible, and the incorrigible tend to enjoy their nine lives greatly; he has great “bounce-back” — resilience, the greatest gift in life — and, like his hero Churchill, realizes that “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”He will luxuriate in his young family and beaver away on the book about Shakespeare, for which he was, way back in 2015, given another stonking advance which was put on hold when he became a minister. Perhaps, once in a while, he will get that old familiar glint in his eye which indicates that he is plotting something, a comeback or a defenestration, perhaps.Just for larks, obviously. It being Boris, though, we’ll sigh and roll our eyes and be kind of glad to see him in the headlines once again. Because even if he hasn’t been entirely honest with us, he contributes greatly to the gaiety of nations — and that’s certainly something no one is ever going to say about Sir Keir.

Boris Johnson, Unleashed, Is Back in the Game and Trousering a Tidy Sum, To Boot

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