Boris Johnson is a perpetual paradox for admirers and opponents alike: a loner who cannot bear to be by himself; a man of genuine intellect who still prefers to wing it; a figure of ferocious ambition and great laziness; someone desperate to lead but unwilling to manage and mindless of consequences; the liberal Brexiter; the low-tax, big-state interventionist; and a man determined to be marked in posterity but reluctant to put in the hard yards to ensure that he is remembered kindly.
The quest to find the last Russian doll inside the British prime minister has now been joined by the investigative journalist Tom Bower. The news that Bower, a noted literary hitman — previous targets have included Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson and Jeremy Corbyn — had turned his sights on Johnson will have left the prime minister’s enemies licking their lips. But those looking for a character assassination are going to be disappointed.
This is more an emotional than political biography. While Johnson’s flaws are never ignored, they are invariably described with mitigation in this surprisingly sympathetic work. The generosity appears to spring from what Bower regards as the book’s big reveal, namely the prime minister’s miserable childhood in a broken home with a neglectful, solipsistic and adulterous father who assaulted Johnson’s mother. Stanley Johnson emerges as the true villain of this story, though few will fail to note that his son has inherited some (though mercifully not all) of his less loveable traits.