The Daily - The Making of Boris Johnson

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

After trying and failing to withdraw Britain from the European Union, Theresa May will resign this week as the country’s prime minister. Here’s how the man expected to succeed her, Boris Johnson, made Brexit — and how Brexit may soon make him prime minister. Guest: Sarah Lyall, a writer at large for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Mr. Johnson has become one of the great escape artists of British politics.Some of Mr. Johnson’s family members, once staunch opponents of Brexit, have had to perform a complicated political jujitsu around his candidacy for prime minister.Prime Minister Theresa May is scheduled to step down on Wednesday. Only 160,000 Conservative Party members can vote for the next leader, sidelining 99 percent of registered voters.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. After trying and failing to deliver Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May will resign this week. Today, the story of how the man expected to succeed her made Brexit, and how Brexit is now making him Prime Minister. It's Monday, July 22nd. I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold. I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity

to serve the country I love. Sarah Lyle, you've covered Britain for years. Catch me up on what happened after the moment when Theresa May announces that she's stepping down. Well, it touched off an immediate mad scramble over who would replace her. And under party rules, the next party leader is chosen only by members of the Conservative Party. And it's they who will be selecting the next leader of the party, and thus the next prime minister of the UK. And who is that expected to be at this point? At this point, it's a shoe-in for Boris Johnson. Unless something bizarre happens, he will be the next prime minister.

And Sarah, who is Boris Johnson? He is the conservative MP for Henley, he's editor of The Spectator, and it seems he's 92 times better than me at hosting topical news quizzes. Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson. He is a celebrity politician. This is a totally ecumenical cross-party venture, my friends. Now, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

And he's extraordinarily visible by the way he looks. He has a massive shock of bright white hair. And how long have you been cutting your own hair? He's incredibly articulate. He's incredibly funny. He's incredibly funny. He's incredibly charming. Have you snorted cocaine? I've tried to, but I'm

unsuccessfully a long time ago. Sorry. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I sneezed. I sneezed. He's also incredibly what the Brits would call shambolic. He doesn't get to places on time.

He's disorganized. He's ill-prepared. He can't remember what meeting he's at and what he's supposed to be doing. We've got a fantastic guy called... He's a superb man. Sterling, Girling, something like that. What's he called? Come on, what is it again?

Tell me the name. Come on. Stop sitting there like a great big fat Buddha and tell me the name of this guy. Sir, when I think of British government, and certainly when I think about the Prime Minister, I think of a certain level of kind of stuffy formality and sobriety. How does this person that you're describing, how does that person become

the first in line to become prime minister? So there's really two ways to look at him. I mean, he is all those things. He is bumbling. He is shambolic. But at the same time, a lot of his moves over his career have been quite calculated. It's often been in the service of either getting attention or getting power. So, for example, he started as a journalist. What was his reputation as a journalist? Well, very entertaining. He's really funny and inaccurate. And he would write articles about the European Union

where he'd exaggerate and sort of cast the European Union as this, you know, terrible bureaucracy trying to take things away from citizens. It was sort of stuff that made no sense. It was like the EU was going to regulate condoms and make them all one-size-fits-all. And it was going to ban shrimp-flavored potato chips. And it was going to really do neither.

No, it was going to do neither. And the other journalists who were covering the same things would be yelled at by their editors who would say, why aren't you covering the same stuff Boris is? And he set a tone for the coverage of the European Union that was just wrong. And when he was asked about it, he said, it doesn't matter what the facts are that you marshal in service of that thesis, the thesis is

right. And he talked about it once. He went on a program called Desert Island Discs, which is a BBC program where you talk about your favorite music. My castaway this week is a politician and a journalist prone to getting into scrapes, a word that suits his rather Woodhousian image. And he was talking about his coverage and he said... So everything I wrote from Brussels, I find was sort of... I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall.

And this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England, everything I wrote from Brussels were having this amazing explosive effect on the Tory party. And it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power. But this made your reputation as a journalist, didn't it? It started to inform the Tory party's attitude toward Europe. And so he was welcomed by them as someone really, you know, telling the truth about Europe for the first time. So he was finding an audience among Britain's conservatives.

Yes. And was he himself actually a conservative? Yeah, he was always a conservative. But, you know, there are different strains in the conservative party. And at least in the beginning, it seemed his biggest motivation was to get in parliament and that way to start building a base toward having more power. But at that point, it was sort of unclear what his convictions were. And as he said in an interview at the time, when he was asked what he would resign over, if he was any principle that would be so important to him, he said, I'm a bit of an optimist, so it doesn't tend to occur to me to resign. I tend to think of a way of sellotaping everything together and quietly finding a way through if I can. In other words, he would sort of do what it took to kind of paper over the edges in order to get through it, in order to remain in office. Which is another way of saying, when it comes to his convictions, they are malleable. Yes. And that's illustrated again when he runs for mayor in 2008,

because he refashions himself then. He positions himself as a liberal, urbane man of multicultural London. He's pro-business, but he's pro-immigrants. If you've been here for more than 10, 12 years, I'm afraid the authorities no longer really pursue you. They give up. So should we have that amnesty? Well, why not be honest about what is going on? So have an amnesty.

Yeah, absolutely. Like he's this really old-fashioned conservative who went to Oxford, speaks in a really posh accent, which isn't supposed to go over well with regular people. And regular people love him. He would walk through the streets of London and people would sort of yell, hey, Boris. Women found him really attractive. Boris says what he means and he delivers. There's just something about him that made him a really good candidate.

So then he gets elected mayor, which was actually an amazing feat. A conservative would never get elected in London. And it was based purely on personal popularity. I do not for one minute believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a conservative city. And then he continued with these sort of funny statements, and he also showed to the world a kind of physical comedy. He got himself into pretty deep water today. So he once was, you know, at the Thames doing something, and he fell into the river. And then really badly.

This is the best bit. He actually pulled down the volunteer with him. And then what a lot of people saw was during the 2012 Olympics, he was trying to promote Britain or promote London or something, and he went down this zip wire, and he got stuck in the zip wire, and he had this sort of wedgie, and he was stuck in the middle. He looked so ridiculous. Look at his little blue hat.

He's wearing the most ill-fitting outfit. Oop, it just stopped and he's dangling. He's really kind of hamming it up. Yes, he is. And the crowd beneath him seems kind of charmed. Look at them all taking pictures of him laughing. He makes people feel good. He really does. Can you get me a rope?

Get me a rope, okay? Any other politician, that would have been the end, you know, to be photographed like that. But he turned it into a plus. He turned it into a virtue, and people thought it was hilarious, and they thought he was cuddly and cute. you and people thought it was hilarious and they thought he was cuddly and cute. The thing about when he was mayor is, you know, the first time he had that much power and he was a fantastic figurehead. He was a fantastic front man. Finally, you have brought home a great truth about our country, that when we put our mind to it, there is absolutely nothing that this country cannot achieve.

He was not a details person. He showed up late to things. He was ill-prepared. He wouldn't read anything. He didn't know about the policies. And luckily, the mayor of London isn't that important a job, really. He doesn't have a lot of responsibility, so he couldn't really mess it up. But he was not a great mayor. really mess it up. But he was not a great mayor. So Boris Johnson has been a consistent source of kind of amusement and controversy. Boris is constantly getting himself into trouble and constantly finding a way out of it through basically charm and bluster and ability to talk himself out of any situation. And like what trouble does he get himself out of? Well,

there's been a lot of trouble with women. He fathered a child with someone other than his wife while he was mayor of London and managed to never really have to discuss it publicly. When he was editor of The Spectator, he had an affair with one of his employees who got pregnant, wrote about it. He denied in the beginning he'd had the affair.

He lied to the journalist who affair. He lied to the journalist who asked. He lied to the prime minister. He got fired from his job. And somehow he got out of that too. And it started to become clear that his disheveled, bumbling persona was calculated. And people have said, and I've seen it too, before he goes on TV, he'll run his hands through his hair to make it look messier as if he couldn't be bothered to ever brush it. He wants to look like that. And someone recently told this amazing story about how Boris came to speak at some kind of civic meeting or meeting of some, you know, industry group and arrived five minutes late, right before he was supposed to speak and

sort of got up and sort of looked and said, where am I speaking? What group is this? And told these sort of anecdotes and how he totally snowed the crowd. The crowd thought it was hilarious. They loved him. And the guy was really happy he pulled it off until he saw Boris do the exact same thing at a totally different group some months later. The exact same thing. He came late. He said, you know, where am I? He told the same anecdotes as if it was just off the top of his head. And in fact, it was a routine.

It was a routine. It was a comedy routine designed to promote this view of him as this disheveled, bumbling person who could sort of pull it out at the last minute. He wants to seem that way. So a lot of this is an act. He wants to seem that way. So a lot of this is an act. It's kind of political theater.

Exactly. And during that whole time, when people asked him, did he want to be prime minister, what was he going to do next, he would always slough it off with what looked like more of an act. So is there a possibility you could become prime minister? I think that that is vanishing. I mean, I've about as much chance of being reincarnated as an olive. And so meanwhile, though,

he is quietly consolidating his popularity and preparing in his head somehow a way to challenge the prime minister, David Cameron. He's way more popular than David Cameron, though he's just an MP at this point. And the question is, how would he get there? What would he do? And then finally in 2016, he sees a chance. And what is that chance?

The chance is Brexit. We'll be right back. So, Sarah, pick us up where we left off. It's 2016, and you said that Boris Johnson sees his chance to become prime minister. What's happening at that moment? We are approaching one of the biggest decisions this country will face in our lifetimes, whether to remain in a reformed European Union or to leave. So it was then that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, called the referendum known as Brexit over whether Britain would leave the European Union.

The choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be and the future that we want for our children. He and his government were pro-Remain. My recommendation is clear. I believe that Britain will be safer, stronger, and better off in a reformed European Union. And everyone assumed that the country felt the same way. And he assumes that all his allies in the Conservative Party will follow along with him.

Including Johnson. Including Johnson to campaign to remain. So Johnson was one of the people who was supposed to support him, and at the very last minute... We have a chance actually to do something. I have a chance actually to do something. Boris became head of the Leave campaign. I would like to see a new relationship based more on trade, on cooperation,

but as I say, with much less of this supranational element. So that's where I'm coming from. Boris, if that's really what you've thought all along, why have you kept your party waiting for such a long time? The truth is that it has been agonizingly difficult. Is it clear at this moment whether Boris Johnson actually wants to leave the EU? Well, he wrote a famous editorial on the day he made this announcement of how he felt about it, saying we should leave the EU, Britain should leave the EU.

But it turned out later he'd written an opposing editorial saying the exact opposite thing. It was only at the last minute that he decided to run with the we should leave version. Suggesting that the depth of his conviction here might have been shallow. Suggesting there was no depth of his conviction at all, that it was just political calculation and pragmatism of what would be better for Boris. Better for Boris how? Better for Boris in that he wanted power. And what he thought would happen, what everyone thought would happen was the following, that Brexit would be voted down, that they'd remain in the European Union, but that David Cameron would be so weakened by the whole process that he would have to step down as prime minister,

leaving Boris in place to take over. And then Boris would lead the country not through Brexit, because Brexit would have been voted down, but he would have appeased the right wing of the party and thus consolidated his power better than Cameron ever could. So this whole kind of move to backstab David Cameron by supporting Brexit at the last minute is based on his belief that Brexit would not actually happen until it did.

There we are. That is now statistically, mathematically there that the Leave campaign have won. And we're expecting at the end of the count, 52% for leave, 48% for remain. Quite an extraordinary moment. Everybody was shocked. And if you see, there was an amazing moment where Boris Johnson comes out. Today, I think all of us politicians, the head of this campaign, should thank the British people to give a press conference, because in a way they have been doing our job for us. To basically reassure the country that he's in control, that he knows what he's doing.

They hire us to deal with the hard questions. And this year we gave them one of the biggest and toughest questions of all. And he looks so frightened. I believe the British people have spoken up for democracy. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He has no plan. It becomes clear he has no plan. Thank you finally to everybody at Vote Leave for the extraordinary and positive campaign you've run. Thank you. Then what happens? It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years.

So then David Cameron quits, and they're left with a power vacuum. Who is going to be the next prime minister? And at that point, it looked like Boris was a she-win. He was definitely going to get it. He had been the head of the Leave campaign. He was the most popular politician in the country. And this is what he's always wanted. Yeah. Everybody knew who he was. It's what he's always wanted. Yeah. Everybody knew who he was. It's what he's always wanted. And he had a colleague, Michael Gove, who'd also betrayed Cameron and helped him, helped Boris with the anti-Europe campaign.

And the idea was that Boris would be prime minister and Michael Gove would be like chancellor of the exchequer or some other really good job. And they sort of planned it all out. And there really weren't any other legitimate candidates at that point. So that was like on a Friday, I think. And there was, I think, six days to figure this out or about a week to figure it out. And they're campaigning and everyone's like, what are they going to do? They have to put out some sort of plan.

Boris writes this editorial for The Telegraph that's supposedly putting out his political plan. There isn't really a plan. It's all chaotic. It's all weird. Everyone's getting scared. And then the day before, Boris is meant to formally announce that he is putting his name forward to be prime minister. I thought it was right that following the decision that the British people took last week. Michael Gove, his great friend and ally through the whole campaign.

And I hoped that Boris Johnson would be someone who could ensure that the government followed the instructions of the British people and also build and unite a team around him in order to lead this country forward. Calls a press conference and says. And Boris is an amazing and an impressive person. conference and says... And Boris is an amazing and an impressive person. But I've realized in the last few days that Boris isn't capable of building that team and providing that unity. He doesn't trust Boris. He thinks Boris would be a bad prime minister. Good lord. And he's withdrawing his support. Yes. And so... Well, I must tell you... Everybody who thought Boris is going to be a prime minister is now saying he's not going to be, and Boris has to withdraw from the race.

I have concluded that person cannot be me. This is pretty humiliating. Really humiliating, and it felt like everything had finally caught up to him. He'd been exposed. The lying, the blundering, the sort of, you know, lack of preparation, the blundering, the sort of, you know, lack of preparation, the inability to follow through on things, had all finally, finally come back to haunt him. He'd always gotten away with everything before.

He was like the Teflon politician. And suddenly he was having to accept the repercussions of what he had done. What happens? They have to find a compromise candidate. And everyone is sort of poisoned in one way or another. So they settle on this super unlikely figure, Theresa May. I have just been to Buckingham Palace, where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new government. And I accept it. And she tries and she tries.

And no one likes what she does. And where is Boris during all this period? Well, Boris is a dangerous figure. So she felt, the way Cameron did before, that she could sort of neuter him by giving him a job in her cabinet. So she makes him foreign secretary, another job he's not very good at. Either they're dissembling or lying, or you are. Four ambassadors said they heard it several times.

You said it's not government policy, but you do support free movement. That's four of them. They're not lying. That's a complete nonsense. Yes. Well, I think that they have been misrepresented. And if I may say so, I'm not entirely convinced that your reporter talked to those ambassadors. entirely convinced that your reporter talked to those ambassadors. And I think... He's underprepared. He's disheveled. He says things that aren't true. And he makes some bad blunders, but he sort of soldiers on.

Sounds like Boris Johnson. It sounds like Boris Johnson. He's Boris being Boris. And then he ends up resigning from the cabinet over what he says is Theresa May's poor handling of the Brexit negotiations. We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels. And we never made it into a negotiating offer. Instead, we dithered. But really what he's doing is starting to plot his next move. But really what he's doing is starting to plot his next move.

So the no's have it. The no's have it. Unlock. Indeed. Point of order. The prime minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the House has spoken and the government will listen. It is clear that the House does not support this deal. But tonight's vote tells us nothing about what it does support. Theresa May is like one of those, she's like, I'm afraid, like a bull in a bull ring who has tons of stuff sticking out of her, you know, and she's staggering around and people are throwing spears at her and they're sticking it and she's bleeding and everyone's criticizing her. This is so graphic. Sorry. And she keeps coming back.

So the no's have it. The no's have it. Unlock. And trying again. And nobody likes anything she does. On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I profoundly regret the decision that this House has taken tonight. And she becomes more and more unpopular. So the no's have it. The no's have it. Unlock. And by the end, people are almost like, whoever gets in, we prefer to Theresa May. Mr. Speaker, I think it should be a matter of profound regret to every member of this House that once again we have been unable to support leaving the European Union in an orderly fashion. So the moment that Theresa May announces that she's stepping down,

Boris Johnson sees his second chance. To be prime minister. To be prime minister. Get her out and then he can go in. I am pleased today. I am proud today to introduce the candidate whom I shall support to lead the Conservative Party and our nation. Conservative Party and our nation. A man who has already shown that he can lead this great global city through two successful turns. Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson. Sarah, are we to understand that all of this played out exactly the way that Boris Johnson would have hoped?

That after he elevated Brexit, no matter what you think of it, Brexit has come around to elevate him. I think that's right. I think in the last three years since the vote, he's had to get his head around the fact this is what's going to happen. And if he has a conviction, this is now his conviction. And it's a poison chalice, in my opinion. I feel like he's set himself up for a task that's almost impossible to carry out. And it's kind of ironic that he's gotten this job through something that he put into place and made it so difficult for himself. His political hero is Winston Churchill. He always wanted to be Winston Churchill. And I don't see how anyone could be Winston Churchill throughout the Brexit process. Why not? It's not like defeating the Nazis during the Second World War. It's not a war. It's a very, very complicated divorce from an entity that Britain is incredibly connected to in ways that most people don't understand and take for granted. And I don't see anyone coming out of it better off

than they were before. So now this man with what appears to be no deeply rooted political views is going to be steering the UK through its greatest political challenge, perhaps in history. And it's exactly what he wanted. I'm not sure he wanted to have to be prime minister at this moment in history, but it's the only chance he's going to get. And he has a sort of blind optimism that he will be able to figure something out when he gets a job. And I think that's the approach he's taking now. Sarah, thank you very much.

Thank you. And good luck in London. Thank you. Yeah, I'm flying there soon. So you're going to be there for the... I'll be there again, yeah. And I'll do what I thought I was supposed to do two years ago, the last time this came around, three years ago. Which is? I will write the story saying that Boris Johnson has become prime minister. That was supposed to happen before, and maybe it'll happen this time.

The winner of the Conservative Party election for prime minister is expected to be announced tomorrow. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Internal documents from drug makers, distributors, and pharmacies, released on Friday, reveal a lax approach to tracking suspicious orders of opioids that went on to kill tens of thousands of Americans.

A Walgreens in Port Ritchie, Florida, ordered 3,271 bottles of oxycodone a month, despite a local population of just 2,831. despite a local population of just 2,831. According to the records, the Walgreens employee in charge of flagging such orders cleared them anyway. The records show that companies had little or no oversight in place for flagging suspiciously large orders. One major drugmaker gave the job of stopping suspicious orders to sales staff, whose bonuses were tied to those sales. The records are now evidence in a major trial against the companies, brought by nearly 2,000 towns and cities devastated by the opioid crisis. devastated by the opioid crisis.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.