Get a free bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Whiskey when you subscribe to The Spectator in a Black Friday sale. Go to spectator.co.uk forward slash Friday. Hello and welcome to a special edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Boris Johnson.
Great honour to be here. A great honour to have you. It's fantastic. My place of former employment. Exactly. Not that I was ever based here. No, you were never in this office, were you? I was in Doughty Street. Yeah. Do you like the look of it? It looks fantastic. It looks very, very, very good. I like this.
book line there that you've given me. Fantastic. Now, you've been touring your book for a while. I think you were trying to save the best till last by... This is the juddering climax of the... publicists program, which has been exhausting. I've come, I've been in the Gulf, I've been where I didn't. sell very many copies, but quite a few. Paris, I sold a lot. I did a two-day tour in France. And Entable is selling well there.
And I'm about to go off to Australia and other places. And you also went to Argentina, which we read about with Javier Malay. Did you? Yes. It was reported that you were now organizing a meeting for him with Mick Jagger. Yes. Are you the intermediary? Is that correct? Yes, that's right. But I haven't yet swung it. And I feel it's got to happen. This is a guy. He is a...
Absolutely fantastic guy. And he loves the Rolling Stones. He loves Britain, by the way. Javier Millet, the president of Argentina. Quite remarkable guy. Look, I think that... We all in Europe need to learn from what he has to say about the size of the state and government departments. And Argentina is a particular case. And Argentina is way out on the spectrum.
And they have a particular problem and have had for many, many years. But nobody in the UK or most Western European economies could say that, you know, we're immune from this problem. The state is too big. And we need to fix it. He's right about that. And perhaps Donald Trump, who will come to you later, may also be learning some lessons from Malay. Now, to go to your book, Unleashed. Yes, Unleashed. Hang on, where is it? It's here.
Yeah, OK, we'll see how many times you're going to say that. Now, were you kind of doing diary entries as you went? Was it quite therapeutic to think back and put it all together? So what Charles Moore said, because he's talked to a lot of... former prime ministers, is that none of them can remember anything. And it's all a great blur. And if you look at your diary entries, the official diary, it's in fact incredibly unhelpful because it's just packed with events.
And I didn't sit down in the evenings and scribble notes to myself except practical things about what I needed to do next and just aid memoirs about, you know... plans that I had. I never put reflective things about conversations or... odd things that had happened in the day. Never. And I, of course, I regret that. Everyone always regrets that. But you don't have time. You're the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a G7 economy, and you are taking a huge number of decisions.
every day, and you simply don't have time for introspection. But what you can do later is you can recollect in tranquility. And you can more or less piece together what happened. And you will have enough in your head to get it all right. I've got to admit that in the course of writing Unleashed, I didn't... just rely on my own memory and the evidence that I had from the papers that I had and stuff, I would actually ring colleagues and say, just remind me of your great triumph.
in whatever it was and just how spectacularly you succeeded with the whatever it was. And they would remember what we did in our conversations much better than I did. Then you could piece it together. And so then you got, so it's like... Basic journalism. You needed... Returning to your roots. You needed several points of view. Now, obviously, there's lots to get through when it comes to what the book charts. But if you start with Downing Street...
Yes. In your chapter Earthquake, you detail the 2019 election win. Obviously a high point. And then it ends with a sentence, I comforted myself with this thought that unlike many other new occupants of Number 10, I had done a decade of hands-on delivery across almost every area of public policy. On getting into 10 Down the Street, how comforting was that as you started to realise how the government machine worked compared to, say, City Hall? In fact, it was a sham, a snare and a delusion.
Because it was absolutely true that on a lot of the policy areas, I was very good by comparison with a lot of my contemporaries, but also a lot of my predecessors in number 10. So I really did know an awful lot about transport and housing and planning. And because I'd been Foreign Secretary, I knew a fair bit about foreign affairs. And there were a whole range of subjects where...
on a lot of the key issues. I already had some pretty well-formed views and some ideas, and so it was very exciting. But the thing was that I'd been used to being... Mayor of London, where I was a monarch. And the thing about the Mayor of London, it's a fantastic job, and it was created by the Blair government in the...
in the late 90s, without any real thought as to how it would operate and no real consciousness of how to limit its powers. And it actually has quite a lot of executive power and quite substantial budgets, 16, 20... billion or so. And on a lot of key decisions, you are the sole authority. More importantly, politically, no matter how much you stuff up as mayor of London, they can't come and get you. There are no men in grey suits. There are no backbenchers, no 22 committees, no Graham Brady.
sepulchrally telling you, you know, the letters are piling up like snowdrifts in his desk or whatever. And I think that... That sort of bred an artificial sense of security. And I think so. So although I had a great preparation for administrative life and enjoyed it politically. I was very, I was, one of the points I tried to make in Unleash is that politically, I was always much more vulnerable than I reckoned. And I kind of naively thought, hey,
I've got an enormous majority. I've got the biggest majority since, you know, we've got a fantastic agenda. Let's go. Hey, guys. And then COVID happened and... And then it was in that context of the backlash, the understandable conservative backlash against the COVID measures that... the going suddenly got, suddenly got much, much tougher. And it was after COVID had really been beaten, of course, you know, because it's only then that the...
the anger comes out, that I suddenly realised that there were so many Tory MPs who were, frankly, not on my side, for reasons, a host of different reasons. And so I think that... Being mayor was a wonderful preparation in lots of ways, but it deceived me.
also about the reality of my position. And you mentioned COVID, and of course, you know, so soon after that election victory, there was all this expectation of the things you would do, levelling up, for example, movement on Brexit. And then all of a sudden we're in a...
pandemic do you often wonder what would have happened had there not been a pandemic on your watch or is that the type of thinking that you must not give in to I do I think it's very sad I think I look I think I think that they would have tried I think that my I think My enemies, who were more numerous than I realized. Some in the Tory party, some outside it.
Correct. I mean, basically pretty ubiquitous. I think that they would have tried to make a move at some stage anyway, because the logic of the situation seemed to them...
to suggest that I could be easily replaced. Because we did have this huge majority, and we then had the boundary changes coming in. And I think for a lot of primitive Tory... calculated it looks well come on you know we we could we could move johnson out put somebody else in and we're still sitting on a big majority and we've got the boundary changes coming in and what's not to like and then then we've got a
our own person in charge, and, you know, we've got a better chance of preferment. And, which is how basically Tory MPs think, particularly towards the end of a... of a cycle because we'd already done 10 11 12 years or whatever perhaps you were the tool to get them through the next election and then that's right so i think i think i think i was as i had been Before in my life, I was the utensil for my beloved party to win. But then once I'd won, I was much more disposable than I...
And that's a tricky position to be in. And, you know, I think they've sensibly changed the rules now. I think that they would have tried to... Make a move anyway. Because if you look at the numbers of backbenchers who were really pretty hostile, and I put this all in Unleashed, if you look at the way it...
I had a lot of people who weren't. You mentioned the former ministers. You start to add them all up. Add them all up. It was tricky. If it was the beginning, if I'd won a majority de novo against... the Labour Party after a period of Labour administration. And everybody could look forward credibly to a long period of Tory government.
it might have been very different. Do you see what I'm saying? It was because people felt that time was running out for them. My God, what's the problem in my life? The problem, Johnson, he's squatting on me and... That was the issue. On the pandemic, do you think that was a crisis? You talk in the book about lots of your struggles, which played well to your skill set.
I remember at the time... What, the pandemic? Yeah, exactly. I remember some saying at the time... No, the pandemic was a nightmare for me because, you know, I mean, I think... I think we were fairly good at communicating some pretty unbelievably complicated policies. But I think that, honestly, I found the pandemic... a nightmare because I was genuinely uncertain as to the efficacy of some of the things that we were doing. And...
I'm still not sure to what extent the NPIs, the non-pharmaceutical interventions, actually bent that curve down further and faster than natural... Now, I think that they did. I think that they did. But the question that we need to ask, and the question that I hope Dame Heather's inquiry will... helped to establish is to exactly what extent did the MPIs bend down the curve of the disease? And if you can calculate that, was it worth it?
for the colossal damage done in lost life chances, lost education, economic damage, and so forth. And so that's the calculation. I found incredibly difficult. I don't believe anybody was able to make that calculation. And to be honest, I think people still don't know the answer. And I suppose for our viewers, and obviously the spectator raised lots of questions during the pandemic. Fraser took the late lamented, well, we're not, I mean, obviously we rejoice.
I know how you want to feel. We rejoice at the arrival of his successor, my long-standing buddy, Michael. But Fraser was a very good editor also for a very long time. And he took... Fraser took a very... anti-lockdown position And he kept citing Sweden and so on and so forth. Actually, I don't think that the comparison was very fair, because if you look at it, actually the Swedes implemented the same sorts of measures. They just did it without quite as much legal.
And they also have a very different type of society in Sweden. And so I didn't think that the read across was wholly fair. But I think what is certainly where I think the lockdown sceptics have...
They have a case that really needs to be answered. And we must be very clear about what was going on at the time. At the time, humanity, including the British people... were frightened by a disease for which there was no known cure, a disease for which there was no known cure, except, and there was no way of controlling, except to try to forbid human contact. And that led, that fear of an incurable disease.
that was very contagious, led, I think, to a kind of, and I say this in Unleashed, you know, I think to a... a very primitive but natural human response, which is the authorities, the state, the government, the elders of the tribe must pronounce some rules by which we can try to... And just as the tribes of Israel produced various nostrums for stopping the spread of...
intestinal parasites or whatever, that may or may not have been efficacious or useful. They became quasi-religious. And that's the reality. People needed some rules, even if those rules were... not demonstrably efficacious in themselves. And you must have had some nights where you think about, you know, you're probably looking at measures of curfew, scotch egg with a drink and so forth. And you're wondering what happened to, you know, Boris Johnson, the freedom fighting.
Well, I know, well, I know. I used to literally hold my hand. There was a wonderful man called... Do you know Henry Cook? You must know Henry Cook. Great man. And so you'd know all these people. We'd be sitting literally around the table in the cabinet room for hours and hours and hours trying to... trying to find the right balance between freedom and public health. And it did lead us into the most extraordinary... you know, rules of great complexity. You know, you were able to, you know...
meet with a childminder in a garden but not a nanny or all this sort of stuff. And you're able to go to a National Trust property but not to a fun fair. Or, I mean, just sort of... And then you have to defend them. You have to remember them. You have to defend them. You have to explain, you know, the two-meter rule, the one-meter rule. And all this was – I'm not going to say it was of no epidemiological value because that –
probably is wrong. You don't regret it necessarily. I'm sure it was of some epidemiological value, but clearly it became too complex. And I think what we need to... What we need to work out in future is ways of managing crises like this without imposing such rococo complexity in the rules.
How do you think Boris Johnson, the columnist, would rate Boris Johnson, the prime minister? Well, very highly, obviously, because I've had the opportunity, Boris Johnson, the columnist. That's a post-prime minister columnist. Boris Johnson, the columnist, Boris Johnson, the editor. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, the trinity is incarnated in me. They just agree. And there is a miraculous agreement on the point. No, but there's a miraculous doctrinal coherence.
So, look, Boris Johnson, the prime minister, delivered something that Boris Johnson, the columnist, had been campaigning on for 20 or 30 years, which was the absence of democracy in our relations with the European Union. and our European economic communities it was when I first started writing about it and that was a pretty significant thing to do. You know, our government, the government that I led, unquestionably gave this country back its national independence. And a lot of people still...
rant about that and say it was all wrong. And, you know, I'm sadly, I expect a lot of spectator readers, you know, read some of the, some of your more... timid colonists and think it was the wrong thing to do. It wasn't. And it really was the right thing to do. I really think that you should do a series of articles trying to understand and explain.
why European economies remain so stagnant and so incapable of innovation by comparison with the United States. And I think, you know, one of the central claims I make in in Unleashed is about the vaccine rollout, which did go very fast. And at least partly it went fast because we were outside the European Medicines Agency. 27 countries decided to stay in the EU vaccine procurement program and to wait weeks and weeks and weeks for the EMA to give approval for...
Pfizer and AstraZeneca and so on. And the Remainers, when you tell them this fact... They just blow a gasket. Their little heads go round and round and round and pop off. Because it infuriates them so much. It infuriates them so much. But it was true. And it is true. that it was because of, or at least partly because of Brexit, that we were able to inoculate elderly, vulnerable, terrified people faster than...
people in the European Union. And that's something that people who campaigned for Brexit and who believed in the possibilities of Brexit should not... you know, lose track of. And I believe very strongly that in a globalized economy, there will be more and more things where it will be useful for the UK to have its own...
And I want to talk about that because you mentioned the UK and the US and the EU and the US, which leads us on nicely. So I appreciate the segue to Trump. He features a lot in your book, as does foreign affairs more generally. And you mentioned there European economies, flatlining. Obviously, the UK growth prospects at the moment aren't looking too great for Rachel Reeves' budget.
There is a decision. And one of the things you say about Donald Trump in the book is that he actually surprised on the upside on Russia and the action he took. Yes. I mean, I'm saying it's more in a spirit of hope than absolute conviction. But there is a decision that the current UK government is going to need to make as Trump returns to the White House when it comes to, do they pivot closer to the EU? Do they move towards the US on trade? It feels as though they're going to move to...
Sorry, but who's got the faster growth rates? Where are UK exports really surging? I mean, it's so obvious. How did you find that UK-US trade deal when you were in government? Because someone on your team were a bit worried about it. It's the right thing to do. And look, I mean, by the way, here's something you should do.
Okay, go on. Here's what the spectator should do. And since we're against anti-scientific mumbo-jumbo, right? The spectator believes in, you know, logic and freedom and evidence. Yeah? Right? Have a... Tasting. of hormone treatment. Get Bruce Anderson. Have a beefsteak dinner. Get Bruce Anderson to have a huge slap-up beefsteak dinner. Half the guests have American or Canadian.
or Canadian, a hormone-treated beef. No, because this is the sticking point. One of the biggest sticking points in the deal. We'll get both. And get some British beef. Now, British beef will be absolutely delicious and it'll be first-rate. But the American beef, I'm sorry to say... The Canadians eat about, I don't know, 60% more beef than us. It's a lot more. I did a piece on the statistics. They eat a lot more beef than us, but they also live a lot longer. And they have hormones in their beef.
So I'm just saying, on the free trade deal, the problem I had was that I came in in 2019 and Trump, if you remember, loses. at the end of 2020. So we only have a year. We only have a year to get it going. And we do a lot, actually. I mean, there was a lot. And it would have been, we would have been capable of closing the free trade. But then Joe...
came in, and Joe Biden, and he made it clear right from the beginning that he had no interest in a free trade deal. And the White House immediately said, sorry, this is not a priority for us. Whereas Donald had said it wasn't.
He definitely wanted to do it. So I hope now that the UK government will show some common sense and go for a free trade deal with the United States of America. Now, look, free trade deals on their own deliver nothing without... active business engagement and and export drives right it's not your free trade deal in itself is but there's no parsnips but it
There's a big opportunity for us. In the book, you also talk about Donald Trump and you say he gave me his enthusiastic endorsement. And in UK politics, if you can survive the endorsement of Donald Trump, you can survive anything. He did. Other the Tory MPs, of course. Yes, I know. So, look, I've got to tell you, the thing about Donald is that, you know, he is... Look, you've got to speak as you find. And I found him to be genuinely a...
Charming, well-brought-up, polite guy who was very keen to... He's a kindly and thoughtful man, so it seemed to me. So it seemed to me. So... I like so many human beings. I'm a primitive sort of guy. If I have a good relationship with somebody and somebody obviously likes me, I tend to like them. And I do like it. I like him and I think he likes this country. And I think we're very fortunate in that. And I think he's a friend of the UK and a supporter of...
many good things about Britain. And come on, folks, let's do a deal. Do you want to do another state banquet? Of course. Yeah. Although he should definitely do that. Not confirming it. Have you got any tips for Sir Keir Starmer? on how he should forge a good relationship with Donald Trump? Yeah, look, I think, you know, I got to sort of...
You know, on this, I've become very political, boring politician, right? Boring politician answer to this. It's not a steak dinner. No, steak dinner. Have a steak dinner. But the answer is that whatever idiocies Starmer may have committed... Before, you know, this thing of sending Labour stooges out to campaign in Virginia, all that, it's all crazy. But that's over now. The relationship between the UK and the US.
is far, far more important than the vagaries of the individuals who occupy the White House and Number 10. And what brings them together will be far, far more important. Just a final thing on Keir Starmer, and it does relate to the book. You talk a bit in the chapter about India, about how it was actually quite nice when you had domestic troubles at home to have a bit of relief in a trip abroad where everyone's very polite to you.
Yes, that's right. And obviously he's now got the nickname Never Hear Keir because Keir Starmer's accused of going on too many trips. Have you got any sympathy for him? No, I mean, I understand, but I think that he probably does need to... to focus on what's going on here. Honestly, I think that it's been epically bad. It sort of feels to me as though they organically, institutionally, didn't believe they were going to win the next election, right? So they...
I think it feels to me like Starmer was put in as a sort of placeholder for Wes Streeting or whoever. Wild Wes. Wild Wes. And... You know, now they're stumbling around. The real problem with the government at the moment is that they have no agenda for the country. They have no plan. You know, whatever you say about us, we were...
We were pretty rammed full of vision. We got Brexit done, and then we had a huge agenda of levelling up. And it was going to take a... It was a 10-year programme. I don't know what Starmer was trying to do. I don't know where Starmer was trying to take the... And you can see this sort of chopping and changing on domestic and...
And foreign policy, you see you have an agenda for growth, but then you put up taxes on every single business in the country and inflation is going up again, which is going to necessitate higher interest rates. I mean, it's all totally contradictory. On foreign policy, he says he stands with Israel, shoulder to shoulder with Israel, but he's simultaneously putting an arms embargo on Israel and threatening to clap the Prime Minister of Israel in jail.
So it's just a total mush. And I think he's, I think the Prime Minister's, the Starmer's defamation professionnel is that he is a lawyer. who takes one case and then another. And he thinks of politics like that. Whereas you have to have a course and a vision. Now, in the book, you say, when you talk about being picked and how you get ahead in politics, some people have a...
for being in the right place at the right time. Yes. The apple plops onto their lap. Somebody will have to bash and butt at the base of the tree for an awfully long time. You say you were in the second group. Which category is Kemi Bajanokan? Well, I think... I think it's early days. I think that she's actually doing a very good job right now. And look, I warm to her because she seems to me to have a kind of... impatience and zap about her that, you know, is refreshing. And, I mean, you know...
Starmer really is crash-a-rooney-snooze-fest stodgerama, you know, by comparison. And I think she can score a lot of runs. I really do. And so if you take, so provided our party is sensible and well-organized and gets a grip on things, you know. in the run-up to the election campaign. And if Labour keep screwing up in the way that they're doing at the moment, I think it's every chance there'll be a one-term...
Labour government, because they've got no agenda. They've got a massive majority, but it's built on sand. And the chance of Nigel Farage being the victor of that? Well, being the victim. The person who benefits, I suppose. No, I think it's zero, zero, zero. So look, I mean, you know, the problem with the 2024 election was that we let it get away from us. And Farage... the puffballed when we should have kept him under control. I mean, you know, all my political career we've managed to...
They were never about 4% when I was running the thing, and often on zero. So... So that's a goof, right? That's a goof. And, you know, we can go into why that happened and blah, blah, fish cakes. Basically, if you want to know the honest truth to your spectator readers, because they got rid of the visionary leader. But, you know, that's obviously my opinion. I'm not going to ask you.
you about leadership ambitions because i think you're going to tell me about corks and eyes and blind people going blind and the chances so instead you've been very nice about kemi badenock would you like to return to be an mp for her look i think so if you read unleashed i have i don't believe have you actually read all of it or you skimmed it
I've read it in depth. I just don't know which page you're going to ask, but I have read it. You say read it in depth, you mean in the deep end of the swimming pool. Exactly. Sort of propping it on a... That's what you mean by in depth. Propping it on the lilo. Yeah? I need you to read it a second time. All right. Go on. Okay, well, it's... Okay, so I think that... What was your question again? Would you like to return? Oh, yes, sorry, me. An MP for Kemi Bajanok. Look, I think so.
I think the point about politics, and this is after doing... I did 15 years of pretty big jobs from the mayoralty onwards and loved it, but the times I had to make... a big step, like to be mayor or to be prime minister. It was really only because the Conservative Party had run out of all other ideas for their candidate. I mean, if you look at it, in 2019... They tried everything to deliver Brexit, and they needed someone who was going to bash it through. In 2008...
They had nobody to take on Ken Livingston. They literally tried everybody else. Believe me, Dave asked Dave. He approached just about everybody. He approached you. Everybody turned it up. Let's put me in my place. What were you doing in 2008 then? I'll tell you after the interview. Because I've got one more question for you. Which is, imagining you were still an MP. Yes.
Okay. We have an assisted dying vote on Friday. It's a free vote. How would you approach it? What would you vote for? Look, I think I was in church the other day. I didn't go to church very much, but I happened to be in church. And a woman turned to me after the end of the service and said, please, please, please, whatever you do, vote in favor of this measure.
And, you know, I was really sort of wrung out by her because she said she had a tumult condition and she wanted the comfort of knowing that her end, when it came, would be dignified. and and painless and i said i really would you know think about it and and i understand why so many people in this country approve of this measure And I can understand why so many people instinctively want it. And I can see the logic of it. Having read it quite carefully...
I remain a bit unhappy. I mean, fatally unconvinced about... I worry about the possibility that it would become too... commonplace to routine for people to take their own lives or even to be encouraged to take their own lives. And I think we've got ourselves into a very difficult... position now, because I think the public will want something like this. And we have to find a way through. And I think it's very sad, but I think the reality is that...
We were in a better situation before the whole Harold Shipman nightmare. And, you know, many people sat at bedsides with people who were dying. and knew that their respiration was being actively suppressed by diamorphine, administered by the NHS. And that was how... I think that's now become more difficult, is my impression.
And honestly, I think that's a pity. But because I think it was humane, it was compassionate, everybody understood the trade-offs, everybody understood what was happening. I wouldn't vote for this bill. I think they need to go back to the drawing board. They need to go back and work. They need something that is humane and compassionate, but would not lead to the industrialization of...
of state-sponsored suicide. And I worry that we would be tending in that direction, even if this bill doesn't, wouldn't yet, wouldn't usher that in overnight. I worry that there are other jurisdictions where we can see where it's going. So I'm sorry, but I know that there will be many of our viewers who will want the freedom to take.
their own lives. I would say that, of course, they do have that freedom. But my judgment is that this is not the right way to do it. And I think that families would be... and I think the pressure on some elderly people might be very, very bad, very unbearable. Thank you, Boris Johnson, and thank you for your time today. Thank you.