CONSERVATIVE MP Jesse Norman rates his former colleague Boris Johnson’s new memoir “a racy, charming romp” that highlights but fails to address the ex-prime minister’s many character flaws.
Writing in the FT, the Hereford and South Herefordshire member, whose constituency includes Pontrilas and Ewyas Harold, says the title of the former Prime Minster’s new 800-page tome Unleashed “is surely ironic, since the whole point of Johnson is that he has never recognised a leash of any kind”.
And while “in places wildly funny”, Mr Johnson’s account of his ascent to and the fall from power “is unlikely to charm the unconverted, and some readers will find it little more than a picaresque joker’s journey that leaves them cold”, says Mr Norman.
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He grants his former parliamentary colleague “had moments of undoubted greatness” during Covid and in his “immediate and vigorous support” for the invaded Ukraine.
But Mr Johnson’s account “does not touch on his fibbing, abuse of patronage, poor judgment of character, casualness with detail”, while his “unwillingness to interest himself in the economics of modern government is particularly notable”.
The two have a considerable political history together going back to the local MP’s support for Mr Johnson’s successful bid to become London mayor in 2007.
But near the end of Mr Johnson’s premiership in June 2022, Mr Norman, then a government minister, wrote to withdraw his support for the PM as leader, accusing him of “simply seeking to campaign, to keep changing the subject and to create political and cultural dividing lines mainly for your own advantage”, while “attempting to centralise power in 10 Downing Street”.
Mr Johnson reportedly received an advance of over half a million pounds for Unleashed, which is already top of online retailer Amazon’s sales charts, where it is selling for £15, half the recommended retail price.
Mr Norman, who slammed Conservative Party leadership contender Robert Jenrick’s conference speech as “lazy, mendacious tripe”, is meanwhile backing Kemi Badenoch to beat him in the final membership election, with the result due in early November.