This mirthless farce had tragic real-world consequences. Utterly unsuited to handling a crisis as grave as the pandemic, his endless prevarications and about-turns cost lives. “He wildly oscillated in what he thought,” observes one official. “In one day he would have three meetings in which he would say three completely different things depending on who was present, and then deny that he had changed his position.” His personal brush with Covid encouraged some to think it might prompt a reform of his behaviour. They were disappointed. Even coming near to death couldn’t remedy character flaws that were so deeply ingrained. To think of BJ as an intellect is wrong. He would name drop his admiration for Roman emperors like Pericles and Augustus, but would never engage with their leadership and achievements at a deeper level, and try to transfer their traits into his own leadership. He liked classic films like Buch Cassidy (a film choice of Jeremy Clarkson) but again was unable to think more deeply about what these films meant or represented. In short, his intellect/attempts to come across like a WC historian were shallow and vein. If he had engaged with history at a deeper level, he would have known that one of the key lessons to being a great PM was that you had to work through your team and the cabinet (a point Churchill knew) to achieve favourable policy outcomes.

Johnson at 10 rings with disapproval at Boris’s endless Johnson at 10 rings with disapproval at Boris’s endless

Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops He lied to everyone around him: the authors point out it was more the Court of Henry VIII than a modern functioning government. Boris Johnson has never made any secret of his admiration for Winston Churchill or discouraged comparisons between himself and his predecessor as prime minister. Yet a better parallel, argue Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell in their account of Johnson’s time in office, is David Lloyd George. Survival by divide and rule and the blame game - even “her upstairs” got to carry the can from time to time! Weak and needy, hence the plethora of advisers, some more dysfunctional than others. Comparisons with other PMs, especially Lloyd George, though the authors see Johnson as a very poor second to the Welsh wizzard.

Inside 24 hours of Westminster chaos as Boris Johnson tried to spin the Sue Gray report to MPs

The book states that Johnson described his then-fiancee Carrie as “mad and crazy” as he used her as an excuse to avoid confrontations. Cummings also barred Johnson from meeting Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, it states. “It was a very odd insight into the mentality of No 10 and resulted in a grovelling phone call of apology,” said Brady. “Cummings had contempt for our MPs and thought that we should be grateful for being in government, for the general election result, and that our job was now merely to behave.” Everyone he dealt with sooner or later found him dissembling, because he was only ever willing to commit to a position if he thought there was some immediate personal advantage or because his hand had been forced. One of his officials says he lied “morning, noon and night”. He lied not just to the public, but also and often to his closest associates.

Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell review

In another of his roles, Seldon has been tasked with examining how institutional competence and trust might be re-established. He has recently become deputy chair of something called the Commission on the Centre of Government, created by the Institute for Government, which will recommend steps to improve the workings of the Cabinet Office and No 10, post-pandemic and Brexit and Johnson and Cummings. Of the 57 people who have held the highest office, Seldon suggests, Johnson was probably unique in that he came to it with “no sense of any fixed position. No religious faith, no political ideology”. His only discernible ambition, Seldon says, was that “like Roman emperors he wanted monuments in his name”. The authors do apportion some praise as well as criticism. His greatest accomplishments were on global issues where broad brush strokes were needed and not the fine detail he struggles with. Getting a deal on Brexit, Net Zero and Ukraine is what he'll be remembered for. With the right team and without Covid (which saw off Trump too) he could have been a better PM, but his decision-making around appointments sounds consistently poor. About a decade ago, Seldon, who is a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, began an informal programme with David Cameron’s government that sought to provide for the present incumbents of the highest office some history of No 10 itself and their predecessors there. He staged a series of talks from prominent historians, as well as performances of Shakespeare in the rose garden, in the belief that politicians “might root themselves in the arts, in the benchmark of what is good and true”. He recalls a performance that the RSC gave for Cameron and guests just before the former resigned as prime minister: “It was quite a moving occasion in the garden. The killing of Caesar was one of the scenes and I remember watching Cameron with his daughter leaning on his shoulder and Samantha next to him.”We can agree on that much, I suggest. But does he really think that the lessons of Johnson’s government have been learned? Well,” he says, “this is the reason why for the moment Starmer is disappointing, because there is this enormous desire for renewal. But Starmer seems micro when he could be macro, cautious when he could be passionate, dull where he could be inspirational.” The third is a moment in which Seldon and Newell analyse one of the elements in Johnson’s downfall. This is what they say: Johnson was clearly a man unfit to govern. He was lazy; his attention was spasmodic; he chose to be surrounded by people who would not challenge him; he was unable to make decisions effectively; he was often torn between what Carrie, his wife, would say, what his advisers were advising and what he felt ought to be done; he did not cultivate his MPs; his inclinations were at odds with the influential (and obstinate) Conservative right-wingers; he was a liar, arrogantly self-confident, inconsistent to the exasperation of his aides and advisers, often unbriefable, utterly casual over detail… And so on and so forth. He was a vortex of chaos, and No 10 became one as well without the kind of clear and consistent leadership that makes for an effective administration. The heart of government was, in fact, under Johnson, dysfunctional.