JUST BORIS: A Tale of Blond Ambition (35 page)

Somewhat ostentatiously, Boris also paid homage to Michael Heseltine and the most colourful moment in his political career when he brandished the Parliamentary mace at Labour left-wingers. In March 2001, he seized the less-impressive Henley Town Council’s version at the Mayor’s Annual Dinner, providing an arresting photograph for the front page of the
Henley Standard
. Not for the last time would Boris court and play the local press with all the skills and insider understanding of a consummate journalist.

When the general election was called in mid-May, Boris handed over the reins of the
Spectator
to his deputy, suspended his
Telegraph
column and began his campaign in Henley in earnest. Many in the constituency were allowed to believe that when he became MP – as seemed certain – he would permanently resign from both posts to focus on his political life. Boris went down well on the streets of Henley, providing plenty of laughter. When one woman offered him her vote, he enchanted her with the reply: ‘But madam, why?’ Life with Boris certainly seemed to be more fun – he was the light relief in a tale of almost unremitting Tory gloom. On occasion, it was only Heseltine who would sit through Boris’s joke-fests straight-faced, valiantly trying (and failing) to introduce a serious discussion of policy.

Boris endured the candidate’s usual lot of door-slamming and ferocious dogs, but his fame and bonhomie mostly drew handshakes, back slapping and outbreaks of general geniality. He discovered that
appearances on a programme such as
Have I Got News For You
genuinely made people feel that they knew him; that he was one of them. In the end his TV career may have proved his greatest electoral asset, even trumping Marina and the children in boosting his popularity.

AA Gill was dispatched by the
Sunday Times
to cover the fun. First, he insulted Henley as a ‘faux rural’ area, where the main industry was ‘cutting barrels in half and stuffing them with pansies’ and then he started on Boris, or ‘Quisling Boris,’ as he called him for crossing the border from journalism into politics. There followed an amusing series of canvassing mishaps and the soon-to-be notorious conclusion: ‘Boris Johnson is without doubt the very worst putative politician I’ve ever seen in action. He is utterly, chronically useless – and I can’t think of a higher compliment.’
²⁶

At last it came to election day itself: Thursday, 7 June, and a final tour of the constituency after a breakfast of decaying Asda cheese – the only edible item left in the fridge of his rented cottage in Swyncombe. Later, following a nap and supper at the Shepherd’s Hut in Ewelme, Marina and Boris made their way to Icknield Community College in Watlington for the count. It was a gruelling night for the Conservatives generally, unexpectedly losing affluent southeast England seats such as Guildford to the Liberal Democrats while failing to make inroads into Blair’s 1997 majority.

The count dragged on and on, past two, three then four in the morning towards the sort of territory normally occupied by hard-to-call marginal seats rather than the foregone conclusions of a constituency like Henley. The Liberal Democrats allowed themselves a little cheer by noticing a rise in support in some areas, but there was never any real doubt. Watching the piles of Boris votes grow ever-bigger, he allowed himself to let rip with an enormous yawn, unveiling his epiglottis to a Press Association photographer.

As dawn broke outside, Boris was confirmed as Henley’s new MP – albeit with a majority down to just under 8,500 compared to Heseltine’s 11,167 of 1997. But it was more than enough. Boris advised the poor souls still in the hall with him to ‘go back home and prepare for breakfast.’
²⁷
In a rare quote, Marina said she and the rest of the
family were ‘very proud. I am so pleased for him. I think he will be a brilliant MP and I am looking forward to being an MP’s wife.’
²⁸
But Anna Ford from the BBC – whom Boris had been ogling all evening – was not so sold on the idea. ‘How can you expect to look after this constituency,’ she asked him in all seriousness, ‘when you can’t even look after yourself ?’
²⁹
The bookies took a different view of his prospects, though, immediately setting the odds on his becoming Conservative Party Leader at 50:1.

Boris found his first day in Parliament on the Tuesday after the June 2001 election like starting at a new school. He was by far the most famous among the batch of Tory newcomers but in turn he also knew a few of his fellow novices. David Cameron was a familiar face from Eton and Oxford, Mark Field had been active in the Oxford Union and Hugo Swire, although older than the others, was also an Old Etonian. When they met over coffee and biscuits following an induction meeting in one of the Commons committee rooms with the Chief Whip James Arbuthnot, many greeted him like old friends.

It was not only his fame that set him apart from the other new Conservative MPs that day, however: he was about to take yet another ‘death wish’ decision that could derail his fledgling political career. William Hague had already resigned as Conservative Leader after his party’s drubbing at the polls, sparking a five-way race to succeed him. Iain Duncan Smith was a leading candidate and standard-bearer for the Thatcherite legacy (and had previously been praised by Boris as the ‘future of Conservatism.’) Boris was expected to back him or Michael Portillo, although the latter was now losing some of his lustre through an ill-judged campaign. Portillo was accused by some party supporters of ‘treachery and trickery’ and specifically of having undermined William Hague while he was Leader. Margaret Thatcher was also angered at what she thought were Portillo’s attempts to use her in his campaign, when in fact she did not support him.

Boris had conversely praised father-of-four IDS for being young,
affable and able – and having ‘oodles’ of children (always a virility badge worthy of praise in his book). But unaccountably for many, Boris immediately threw his weight – and that of the
Spectator
– not behind IDS, but behind the only pro-European in the pack, Ken Clarke. He was the only new entrant to do so. A week after he was elected to Henley on a Eurosceptic tide of support, Boris plastered the front cover of his magazine with: ‘The Case for Ken. Peter Oborne says Clarke is a winner’. As the contest drew to the final vote in September that year, Boris’s consistent support culminated in a rallying leader entitled ‘THE APPEAL OF CLARKE’. ‘By choosing Ken Clarke,’ it read, ‘Tories would be addressing their most serious defects in the eyes of the electorate: that they are only really interested in their own problems, and in themselves.’ Clarke, who never had any real chance with the party at large, lost the final ballot to IDS (60 to 40 per cent in the popular vote).

On more than one level, it was a strange and even provocative decision to back him. Boris and Clarke were seen to be poles apart on Europe and Clarke’s views on the subject were always going to count against him in the Conservative party of that time, whatever his obvious talents. Politically, IDS or Portillo seemed far more at one with Boris. So why did he opt for Clarke? Was it a case of the journalist in Boris trumping the politician? Certainly it made a better story to back the ‘Big Beast’ although a lot of other journalists attributed his choice to a ‘streak of contrariness’. Others believed that Boris identified a kindred spirit in Clarke and genuinely liked and hoped to influence him. ‘There’s that issue of discipline, they both shoot from the hip,’ says one senior commentator. ‘They both like being contrary, they both have affectations. If Ken had been leader, he would, like Boris, have struggled with the discipline.’ But what would this do to Boris’s reputation in the Commons as a serious and consistent Eurosceptic? Indeed, was it the beginning of a realisation that he needed to move on from self-destructive European sectarianism and align with a more liberal, (Islington-friendly) broad-brush political creed? What seems most likely was that this
was
the start of another reinvention of the Boris brand, risky though it was.

After the event, Boris was worried that his vote for Clarke had
damaged his career and repeatedly asked others whether they thought it had. Several Eurosceptic MPs who had previously considered Boris ‘sound’ now saw him as suspect and ‘unserious’. There were questions of consistency and loyalty. Did Boris believe in anything? However entertaining, his own rendition of his particular Conservative credo failed to answer all the questions. His beliefs were, he said, ‘free-market, tolerant, broadly libertarian (though perhaps not ultra-libertarian), inclined to see the merit of traditions, anti-regulation, pro-immigrant, pro-standing on your own two feet, pro-alcohol, pro-hunting, pro-motorist and ready to defend to the death the right of [football manager] Glenn Hoddle to believe in reincarnation.’
¹

In the meantime, he was struggling with the drudgery of back-bench life. With so few new MPs to choose from – the Tories had added only a single net seat to their Parliamentary tally – the new intake had been swiftly put to work. The whips ensured that Boris would be broken into Parliamentary ways by being treated the same as the other new boys and girls. He was assigned to a standing committee on the Proceeds of Crime Bill, a giant 462-clause piece of legislation that set up the Assets Recovery Agency and was packed with complex new provisions on money laundering. The committee’s job was to grind through every letter of the bill, line by line, two-and-a-half hours a day every Tuesday and Thursday over two whole months. It was an important task, but not a glamorous one and a rather dreary comedown compared to Boris’s celebrity outside life.

As Mark Field, who sat on the same committee and is still an MP, recalls: ‘It wasn’t very Boris. He was so thinly spread with all his other commitments, too. I remember thinking back then that he wouldn’t last more than two terms here.’ Boris was also unused to the committee’s early starts (nine sharp!) and did not always make them, or indeed all of the sessions. It seems the experience confirmed him in his dislike of detail, even when it comes to policy, and by association, his antipathy to a backbench existence. Boris did not pop up on one of the prestigious select committees, such as Home Affairs (which Cameron joined almost straightaway), which are often seen as useful showcases for rising young talent. Gradually the feeling
began within Westminster that Boris, like his hero Disraeli, was similarly a ‘loose cannon on the backbenches, whose devotion to self was greater than that to his party or his leader.’
²

Field had not been a particular friend of Boris’s at university, but he felt sympathy for him now. ‘For the first two or three years here, he was like a fish out of water,’ he recalls. ‘Boris was a big personality as editor of the
Spectator
, writing a
Telegraph
column and appearing a lot on TV. He was put in a similar category to [businessman] Archie Norman and [Olympian] Sebastian Coe, well-known outside and subject to an institutional put down inside from older Parliamentarians, people from the other side of the House, even from the Whips Office. It’s one of the worst elements of this place, and Boris fell victim to it.’

His cause was not helped when he allowed his mobile phone to ring in the chamber during a debate on the Bristol heart babies’ scandal, earning him a rebuke from the Deputy Speaker. But perhaps what really counted against Boris was the fact that – against all expectations – he did not give up the
Spectator
, the
Telegraph
column, his TV appearances or his motoring column on
GQ
. It is also fair to say that he would on occasion rile his colleagues by flaunting whatever Maserati, Ferrari or Bentley he was test-driving that month. His multi-tasking did not go down well in his constituency either. ‘There were people who were angry that he had short-changed Henley,’ recalls Richard Pullen. ‘He never gave up the
Telegraph
or
Spectator
and he did say he would.’

To try and placate his critics, and illustrate his commitment to politics over journalism, Boris told the
Henley Standard
in October 2001 that he had given up part of his salary at the
Spectator
to reflect his reduced role there. But that is not Dan Colson’s recollection. ‘I don’t recall any discussion about a pay cut after he was elected,’ says Colson, who settled his salary. ‘Boris always came in and said he was impecunious [and] he always did very well in negotiations – don’t worry about him. My assistant at the
Telegraph
had a picture of Boris behind her desk; I asked her to take it down – it wasn’t helpful when I was renegotiating his pay.’ Even Stuart Reid, ever the loyal deputy, is critical of Boris for not stepping down from the magazine. ‘Boris
promised Conrad that he wouldn’t run for Parliament, and Henley that he would give up the
Spectator
,’ he says. ‘He betrayed them both.’

There were also mutterings of
folie de grandeur
when he publicly invoked the names of two of Britain’s most admired prime ministers in his defence. Their illustrious careers were proof, he argued, that there was no ‘conflict of interest’ in him continuing to serve as editor of the
Spectator
while being an MP. ‘It is not an unprecedented career path – I could mention Winston Churchill and Disraeli,’ Boris declared. ‘My plan is not to leave my job, not least because I would be broke.’ (That last comment might surprise Boris’s many other employers as well as Marina’s clients as a barrister. By now the couple must have together been pulling in several hundred thousand pounds a year.)

Both Churchill and Disraeli had indeed been writers in flurries of activity throughout their lives, although neither had edited a weekly magazine. But these exalted comparisons would not have surprised those who had worked closely with Boris, as he was known to be a devoted student of both. And indeed, Boris also drew on Churchill’s example privately in other ways, telling the influential wife of a senior Tory politician that he held a similar feeling of destiny to be leader of his country. Far from laughing at this presumptuousness, she recognised his leadership qualities and encouraged him to pursue his dream.