The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - (EXCLUSIVE) Boris Johnson: "They Were Looking at Engineering The Virus" And The Government Tried To Bribe Me!

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

He was the 55th Prime Minister, led through 3 of the biggest crises of the last century, and is one of the most controversial characters in the history of the United Kingdom. Boris Johnson is now ‘unleashed’.  Boris Johnson is the former UK Prime Minister, serving from 2019 to 2022, he has also served as Foreign Secretary and Mayor of London. He is also the author of books such as, ‘The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History’ and ‘Unleashed’. In this conversation, Boris and Steven discuss topics such as, his support for the Leave campaign without an exit plan, why he doesn't apologise for Partygate, his initial under appreciation of Covid's danger, and his predictions for the upcoming US election.  (00:00) Intro (02:25) What Do We Need To Understand About Your Early Years (04:52) Glue Ear Making You Deaf (05:47) Your Mother Charlotte (08:27) Why Was Your Mother Sent To A Psychiatric Ward (11:18) Why Did Your Mother Say You Were "Self Defending" (13:13) Why Did Your Parents Divorce? (14:42) Was There Physical Violence In The Household? (15:29) What Did Your Parents Teach You About Marriage And Love (18:04) Is Your Public Persona A Marketing Strategy? (24:36) The Imbalance Of The UK's Class System (28:25) Has The Conservative Government Done Enough To Level The UK? (38:30) Boris' Career Rundown (39:00) Did You Expect To Win The London Mayorship? (41:25) You Had 3 Significant Country Events, Do You Wish It Was Different? (43:06) Did You Think You Were Going To Win The Brexit Vote? (45:18) Your Secret Pro-Remain Letter (49:22) You Had No Plan After Brexit (59:41) Did David Cameron React Badly When You Said You Were Going To Leave? (01:01:33) How Does Someone Get A High-Level Job Without Having Done It Before? (01:03:39) If You're In Politics, You Need To Be Okay With Public Attacks (01:05:10) Is Politics All About Bringing Your Friends Up With You? (01:06:39) Do You Regret Brexit? (01:09:53) What Have The Downsides Of Brexit Been? (01:13:45) When Was The First Time You Heard About This Virus? (01:18:13) When Did You Call China To Address Covid (01:19:35) The Virus Was Actually Created In A Lab (01:20:37) Call Trump To Talk About Covid (01:21:29) Lockdowns (01:27:18) Were The Lockdowns Even Worth It (01:28:52) The Tiering System Was Bonkers (01:30:46) Was There A Mental Toll On You? (01:32:31) The Impact Of The Death Of Your Mother (01:36:30) Party Gate (01:47:13) How Many Children Do You Have? (01:47:37) Charlotte Owen (01:47:47) What Happens Next For Boris Johnson Follow Boris:  Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/GZMiyeVzyNb  Twitter - https://g2ul0.app.link/eQ5qEsXzyNb  You can purchase Boris’ book, ‘Unleashed’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/C9fcSpmAyNb  Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes  My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook  You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb  Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb  Sponsors: PerfectTed - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off

Do you really think I was deliberately partying and breaking the rules? It's all about leading by example, isn't it? But to say it was a party is a complete travesty. Seeing that photo when one of my friends can go to their grandmother's funeral is the most enraging thing. I think all gatherings should have been banned at number 10 because I think... What do you mean gatherings? Gatherings with alcohol and music and cake.

You should never have allowed that to happen. I apologise for that. The former prime minister of the UK, whose reign included Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war. He's one of the world's most famous politicians. On this point of Brexit, how did David Cameron react when you said you're going to vote leave? He said, if you come out and support leave, I will fuck you up forever. But if you support remain, you can have a top five job in the cabinet. But is that not a bit corrupt? And is that how the jobs are dished out in the government at the moment? Look, I'm sad to say that it's probably been the way politics has been since

the dawn of time. And then this letter you wrote about the decision to leave or stay within the EU, which was unpublished. You seemed torn. So do you regret Brexit? Well, the next big thing was the pandemic. There was a lot of stuff we didn't know. And I think it almost certainly was a lab accident. They were looking at engineering viruses and ways that they could manipulate it. Sadly, something went wrong. When you talk about lockdowns, you refer to them as bonkers, which is strange hearing it from the guy that put the rules in place.

Well, did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the very, very severe damage done to kids? What do you think the answer to that question is? Honestly, I think... Boris, I just wanted to ask a few more things. Trump or Kamala, who's the best for international relations? How many kids do you have? Charlotte Owen. You're not related, Terry. And then you have quite a distinct persona. People describe you as being a buffoon. When I first saw you, I thought you were a parody from Bo Selector. Is it calculated? Well, to get people interested in politics, you've got to sugar the pill. But also your mother said you had certain mechanisms to cope with pain because your mother is sent to a psychiatric facility when you were 10. I read there was physical violence in the house and then

at 14, your parents get divorced. Yes, we were in Somerset. My father told us. And I was, look, I was cross and said, you know, so why did you have us then? Yeah. Boris. Steve. Boris Steve What do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand the man that you are today? I think the key thing

is my wonderful happy very kind of peregrinating childhood in the company of my siblings. The key fact was that after 18 months of existence, my sister Rachel was born. And ever after, it was just a constant struggle to keep the pretense

of primacy with my siblings. But I think it is probably true to say that healthy, incessant sibling interaction, competition, whatever you want to call it, rivalry, definitely played a part in my formation. And we used to make fun of it too. We used to think it was rather pathetic. We all knew that there was a culture of trying to win. To be to say, oh, little baby wants to win and so we were kind of we

competed but we also deprecated the the competition at that age um say before the age of 10 how does that manifest in terms of a feeling because you can in hindsight say okay i was competitive but how did it feel you It felt like fun. But this idea that Rachel came along and then you were vying for attention and competition with her, how does that feel when you're under the age of 10? Because your father, at least, was very, very busy as a man. So I'm presuming he wasn't necessarily so present.

I was reading that you moved house 32 times in 14 years. Yeah, but that okay i mean he was um but really i think i you know i speak for all of my siblings now when i say that you really couldn't have had more loving caring you know they both of them i mean they're both very busy both my mother and father mother was painter um my father yeah writer did a huge number of things but they did invest a lot of time in us i mean really a lot it sounded like you had a rough sort of first 10 years of life because you also had gluia which is uh which made you deaf yes well i don't know i think we need to look very carefully at the... I definitely had adenoids and I had tonsillitis

and I spent a lot of time in St Bart's and had my adenoids out and my tonsillitis and everything like that. I did have glue here. But my deafness, there's no trace of it now particularly and i kind of wonder whether it was in fact a a cunning means to avoid my mother's questions and i i think i look i mean this i don't know it may be that i wasn't as deaf as as all that so i mean would you ever do that if your mother was asking you something you didn't actually want to engage and i don't think i'm that kind of do you want me not at eight years old your mother charlotte um she had four children you were the oldest of those four um she seems to be a really important character in your life

in fact when i opened up the first couple of pages of the book you you dedicate the book in memory of charlotte your mother i do she was an artist she had made paintings of her children but also other things i saw some of those paintings i did some research on those paintings um but one of the sort of really pivotal moments in her early upbringing is that she suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder she did yeah you're what 10 years old when your mother is put as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital and you're apart for eight months? Something like that, yes. What impact does that have on you in terms of shaping the Boris

that we know today, if any? I mean, I remember it all very, very well. And it's hard to say exactly what impact it had on me. But I think what certainly happened was that all four of us, all four of the children that my mother had, we definitely kind of coagulated as a group because it was a tough time. There were aspects that were tough because, you know,

she wasn't always there. And so I think it did breed a certain kind of group solidarity. And she always kind of blamed herself for not being there for the eight months, whatever period it was. And I remember feeling very strongly that that was unfair and that she actually did an amazing job. And you couldn't have asked for more. Did you notice anything unusual about her behaviour before she was taken?

Yes, so the OCD thing is absolutely right. She did have that. And, you know, it was very difficult. And I'm sure people who are watching this know exactly what it is. But she had lots of different patterns of behaviour. One of them was about cleanliness. So she would wash her hands, and then she would realise in order to turn the tap off,

she'd have to touch the faucet, the spigot, and she didn't want to do that because that would make her hands dirty again, she thought. But, you know, this is a very well-known symptom. And she totally got over it. I. And she totally got over it. I mean, she totally got over it. She got through it. Why was she sent to a psychiatric facility?

Well, I guess because she's, I think, that's a jolly good question. I don't really know the answer. I think she probably said that she thought she could benefit from therapy. And that's what she and my father decided was the best way forward. But I honestly don't know the answer to that. And who looked after you while she was in that facility at 10 years old? Well, my father was there, and we had a wonderful series of au pair girls and nannies

and so on and so forth. And at 14 years old? And they were all great too. But, you know, I don't want to give the impression, which would not be fair, that my mother kind of was absent for long periods or wasn't a presence in our lives, because she really was. It was more her words.

I saw her doing an interview where she was talking about her belief that you had certain mechanisms to cope with the pain of her going to the facility for eight months but then also the divorce when you were 14 i thought those ages that sort of puberty age where you're figuring yourself out to get such a jolt of bad news is yeah i think that's i mean mean, classically, yes. And look, I'm not going to, I think you're onto it. You know, there's an element of self-defense that then, you know, many kids in our position then develop.

But I do insist that they both remained remarkable parents it wasn't like we were suddenly cut adrift by either of them, on the contrary Self-defence Well I don't know I'm quoting her on me by the way

I'm quoting you, quoting her You were there It didn't occur to me at the time. Yeah, I don't think it can for a 14-year-old. But in hindsight, as a man, you go, okay, that was, that created a pattern. I don't know, but I mean, but maybe, I've got nothing else to compare it to, right?

You know, you're growing up anyway. You're becoming more self-reliant. You've got to do things to yourself um so i think so go back to where it was with my my brothers and sisters i think certainly you know it was another thing that drove us all together why self-defense and how did that self-defense manifest in terms of behavior i just i can't i'd be the worst type of um well let me think how did i how did i how did my self-defense manifest i suppose i became yes unquestionably it was painful so how did i protect myself against that well one obvious thing to do which i suppose all we all do and i think i find the best therapy for

every type of pain emotional pain is to try to lose yourself in your work emotional pain is is about a lot about it's about self-esteem so so like with when parents split up um you know you the shock is well you you can't love us that much but if you're doing this right that's the that's the what it's all about which is not true of course but that's what the children that's what children feel they feel it's all about, which is not true, of course, but that's what children feel. They feel it's their failure. There's something wrong with them. And that's not true, but that's how kids feel. I suppose to protect myself against that,

like I had a natural avenue to build up my self-esteem, and that was academic work um that kind of thing but again and you know another i suppose another type of of competition and it and it is a good therapy work is a work is a is a great reliever or distraction well depends on your sort of theory of psychology but um i think it both both why did they divorce do you know i think formally speaking what had happened was that um you know my mother has simply decided she wanted to make another life and she you know, my mother has simply decided she wanted to make another life and she found someone wonderful and all the rest of it. But I think that my father and mother, the weird thing about their divorce was that they both continued to be very strongly affectionate towards each other. And, you know, again, I'm not trying to minimize the psychological importance of any of this stuff for us as kids but that was immensely fortifying because it was

so obvious that it wasn't like they were at war i mean you know they had a big bust-ups but it was we felt that there was a real residue of of love and affection between even if even if it was i mean i think the way the way we explained it to ourselves was that there was still a residue of of love and affection between even if even if it was i mean i think the way the way we explained it to ourselves was that there was still a residue of love and affection but that it was just practically impossible for them to to continue and so that was that was how we rationalized it and um they both found other people and and were very happy you say bust-ups that from everything that i've read there was physical violence in the household when you're younger yeah well this is this is something that um has been alleged by uh sadly by one of my biographers um so sorry so pompously to say one of my biographers um well some guy wrote a book um and put that stuff in you know what i

can tell you is i have no direct knowledge of of what he said um i don't want to get into it because i don't want to be disrespectful to my mother's memory and i i certainly don't want to say anything that i would cause pain or embarrassment to my father so But what I can say is I had, as a child, no direct knowledge of it myself. What did their relationship teach you that marriage and love was? So they met at university. They clearly loved each other. And I think if you ask my siblings, they'll tell you that.

So that, you know, it was upsetting when they split up because... Do you remember the day they told you? Yeah, yeah, I do, I do, I do, I do. It was, we were in Somerset, and my father said that we all had to go and and up by the the the gate towards the engine shed so he went and stood by the gate towards the engine shed and and we were told this you know sad news what did he say i don't remember exactly i don't remember exactly but i was look i was cross and and and said you know so what so why did you have us then? Because I thought, well, you know,

um, as you know, I think it is upsetting and kids do take, you know, kids take it upon themselves, right? And so they do think that there must be some fault or mistake in themselves. And that isn't true.

I mean, you know, it's very important for kids not to blame themselves for these things. So I think that, you know, back to the point I was making earlier on with you, I think, you know, you do need to feed the, the, your self-esteem and you need to get yourself back up again. And so work was my way of doing it.

I could see the emotion in your face when you talk about that moment as if you were teleported back to that moment for a second. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it may be. I mean, look, the actual, the truth is i'm i'm now told in retrospect that that is what i said i don't personally remember it do you remember how it

feels yeah but look i mean yes but i really wouldn't want to over egg it because my parents were incredibly kind to each other after that. You know, when you do this and you throw the coal in the air... I'm just stoking the furnace of my self-esteem. Yeah, yeah. You have quite a distinct persona. I mean, much of where you sort of first came to public knowledge was on the TV show Have I Got News For You. Yeah, I know. I think the BBC are very...

They live in permanent state of horror about what they did there because, you know, I think that's one of the reasons reasons that they i think they have a terrible sense of corporate guilt that they unleashed this thing is is there a link between your persona comedic kind of you know people often describe you as being a bit of a buffoon i actually thought you were a this is just being honest because i feel like it's important to be honest to someone if you've said it behind their back. But when I first saw you on the screen, I was a very young man.

I must have been, I don't know, 14. And I thought you were a parody from Beau Selector. Like I thought, I thought it was a parody. But then I came to learn it when you did the London Mayor thing, et cetera, that you were a politician and who you were and where you'd come from. But the external persona is very atypical of a politician.

And your general comedic sense, that shows up in the book a lot. You were very comedic on Have I Got News For You. Is that at all linked? When did that behavior show up? Because there was two points of reference that I was mulling. One is things your sister said about where you sort of learned that comedy was a useful device and the second one is something jimmy car actually said to me he said to me that um he goes if you ever meet anyone comedic or a comedian don't ask them if they're depressed

ask them which one of their parents they were trying to cheer up or win favor from i wondered if all i think i don't know i think that um one of the things i've tried to do in politics is to get people interested and one of the things i'm trying to do unleashed which is unquestionably a a mixture there's a lot of serious argument in it but also i'm trying to tell the story in as readable a way as possible. And you have to, you have to use, you've got to sugar the pill. You've got to say it's like a,

it's like a, it's like a packet of, of digestive biscuits. If you've got to have, so each of the chapters has a, some solid, you know, wheat germ pabulum, but it's covered with a little layer of chocolate. Did you sugar?

So you go down the packet compulsively. And each of those 60 chapters, I think there are 60 chapters in that book, is designed to give you a bit of both. So are you the pill that was sugared? You sugared yourself? No, well, it's the fact of the great things that I think that we did. We took back control of our country.

We went for a type of independence that people thought was impossible. No, I'm specifically on the persona. And the complicated arguments about um at least about you you know as a as a as a guide to the last 15 years in in politics i think it's it's pretty useful but i mean i worked in marketing for about 15 years so i find it quite fascinating that right now in the world it seems that there's a certain type of atypical personality that's breaking through and being resonant. Is your persona a carefully constructed marketing strategy?

Or is, because someone that knows you referred to you as a bit of a loner in private and a quite quiet person. Yeah, no, no, I live, I, so I'm very, I have a wonderful life. I spend my time, I do a lot of painting um I I do a lot of reading and writing um I muck around muck around with my kids it doesn't take much to you know for my cup to run over with with happiness but you know all this stuff like I know but that's I've got I've always had a lot of energy.

I've always had a lot of energy. You understand that that's part of your persona, right? Well, what am I supposed to do about that? But I'm trying to understand, is it calculated? Is it something that you've thought about and you understand is effective? Because they describe you as being one of the best sort of election winners of our time. I think what people will, I don't know. I mean, what people will also say is that

I haven't really changed. I mean, you know, going back to your earlier line of questioning, I can see where you're going with this. You're saying as part of the strategy for defence, do we adopt a comedic persona or whatever whatever um i don't think that was i think it was just with my brothers and sisters in our family there was a kind of horror of of you know being dull or not saying anything you know we we had to you know we all had to amuse each each other why that was was only polite.

You know, because it was more fun. Your brothers and sisters are less amusing than you are. I wouldn't say that. That's a very controversial thing to say. You would say that. No, I would not say that. You would say that. Who, I would say that?

Yeah. You think you're less amusing and less comedic. Have you met my brother Leo? No, I've not met him. Well, then you've got to get Leo on this show. But your sister... You've got to get my brother Joe. Yes, you're... Have you met my brother, Leo? No, I've not met him. Well, then you've got to get Leo on this show. But your sister. You've got to get my brother, Joe. Yes. You've met my brother, Joe?

Honestly, this is... No, look, honestly, there's a serious risk of... We had a wonderful childhood, and they wouldn't deny this, because we all, you know, we had a lot of fun trying to interest and amuse each other. And to your point, probably our parents as well. That's not to say that we were, you know, we didn't do kind of charades and Christmas masks and plays and God knows what.

Jeremy Corbyn said, Boris is a calculated intelligent who lives in a persona which is the opposite. Is that true at all? No. I mean, I think that... I wish it were true in some ways, but I don't... Because most of your most viewed videos on YouTube are you tackling a small child while playing rugby and things like this. By the way, I reckon he could be much older than he looked.

The guy in Japan. The kid you tackled. The kid in Japan, the one I accidentally knocked over in Japan. They're all comedy videos. Yeah, but he... Anyway. Eton. It's pretty crazy to me. So you went to Eton at 13 years old. The crazy thing for me is that approximately

20 of the 57 individuals who have served as prime minister went to eaton which is roughly 35 percent of the uk prime ministers were educated at eaton roughly yeah this for me when i read that i go something's broken here because for one school to contribute so many of the most powerful people in in the land feels like a little bit of like someone's got their hands on the scale. Or there's some kind of... That's why you need to read the book. Because the book contains this is the whole theme of the book, right?

Not the whole theme of the book. It's one of the major themes of the book. It's about levelling up. Yeah. And if you remember what I say about I don't know whether you got through that bit, but so I went there on a scholarship. It was fantastic. I was very lucky.

I was paid for by Henry VI, the legacy of Henry VI. And I remember feeling this incredible sense of amazement that there were kids from some of the most famous, illustrious families in Britain who plainly didn't have, you know, much intellectual interest, academic, you know, spark in them. And kids who come from backgrounds all over the country who were incredible and i and i my my insight at school very very very young was there's there's a fundamental problem which is that there is ambition and energy and genius and talent probably completely evenly distributed throughout the UK population.

And opportunity is not. Yeah, I agree. And that is the problem. That is the basic problem in our country. And this country has more potential, arguably, than any other major European economy because it's so imbalanced. And if you look at the schools like mine, Provence and London and the Southeast in the UK economy, it's actually unlike France, Germany, Italy, Holland.

It's also totally unlike the United States. And so I decided very early on that there was massive, massive wasted potential. And so when I became mayor of London, one of my biggest projects was really the biggest thing we did was really all about trying to lift the boroughs that people said were locked in a permanent cycle of disadvantage. And, you know, you know what I mean, the inner donut of London, hat me where, you know, all that. And it was total rubbish, total rubbish. And you can change people's aspirations, but you can then also change the culture of achievement. And I saw it happen

in London. And I was only mayor for eight years. But in that period, you really did see the city change in quite a significant way. And I believe very, very strongly that that is fundamentally what needs to happen in the whole of the UK. And I think that this is the job of politicians. I don't care whether they're Labour or Conservative or whoever. I think that that is what we need to be doing. And I think there are very simple ingredients. There's limits to what politicians can do. But there are some simple things that politicians need to be doing to make that happen.

Has the Conservative government done well enough at levelling up the whole of the UK over the last decade? Obviously not, because it's not happening fast. I mean, it is happening. Levelling up is happening. But it's nothing like fast enough. Yeah. And, you know, so, you know, I was proud of doing things like running out gigabit broadband from, you know, 70% to almost 69, 70% of households in three years, which is not bad going.

I was proud of all the infrastructure stuff we were doing. I think it's a mistake to stop that. Infrastructure is crucial for leveling up transport infrastructure is a great is a great equalizer of opportunity so things like hs2 northern powerhouse rail we should be going on with those in in my view. And, you know, whatever my defects as a politician, I think one thing I was good at was getting a lot of stuff done fast and driving projects. But Eton was, back to your question, that youthful experience was...

I was also at primary school in London, and I really, really decided that this was... Because I think our country has this problem worse than most comparable countries. But if you think of how strong the UK economy already is, then imagine what we could achieve if we leveled up, right? Do you know this stat around Eton, that 20 out of the 57 individuals who've served as prime minister

came from there? Isn't that just the clearest example of the fact that... It is, yeah. ...the people that are coming into politics, but also generally the people that are getting to the top in society are starting with a unfair advantage to some degree i well i think what it shows is that i mean you could probably point to cultures like france or wherever where, you know, a lot of the country is run by the people from the great schools. But, yeah, I mean, fundamentally, yes. So I think that the great choice for anybody who's interested

in public policy is, well, okay, this is clearly a problem. It's clearly wrong. It's clearly imbalanced. What do you do? Do you set out to launch a kind of cultural assault, Pol Pot style, on the successful institutions? Or do you say, actually, what we're going to do is try to spread opportunity? So it's more like America. And if you look at America, the growth rates have spectacularly outperformed

European growth rates. There's a different sense. People have a different sense of what they can do. And we need to have a culture in the uk where people don't feel prisoners of their geography of their background but that certainly is the case isn't it at the moment in the uk too much the case i mean it's less it's less than it was i went undercover i went undercover in a school in liverpool that's uh was very poorly ranked on the offstead rankings and i remember being in that school and just thinking, how on earth are these kids going to have a chance at... Well, they're not going to have a chance if their teachers tell them

that they're never going to get into a Russell Group university. Well, what I observed when I was there was I observed one teacher running from one classroom to the next classroom. This was under a Tory government, trying to teach two classes at the same time. And I remember sitting down with her, because I got kicked kicked out of school then I was unexposed from school so I had a bit of my own prejudices about school I thought teachers were the problem and what I came to learn from speaking to the headmaster of the school was that this is effectively run like a

business and the amount of students that choose that school every year determines how much money the school is given by the conservative government and the amount of the parents choose schools based on the league table. And the league table is determined by grades. So really, if you think about the structure here, the reason why they're driving kids like me to do subjects which I absolutely hated when I was really interested in business was because if they don't get me to get

12 As to Cs or whatever the nonsense is in certain subjects, they rank poorly in the league table that's right less parents choose the school they get less money from the government and it's this downward spiral and because this school was so people are people are naturally skewed to doing subjects that perhaps that no interest of them they had me pushing some plastic baby around the school in health and social care when i was running businesses in the school and i was i was spending so much time in my exclusion unit, because I was falling asleep in classrooms, turns out I had ADHD. I wasn't interested in these

things. But I was obsessed in these things. The system is designed to just sort of spread bet you across multiple subjects. And you're a failure if you're not good at that. But going back to the sort of the economics of the school, I watched this teacher run from one classroom to the other teaching two classrooms at the same time. And she told me that because less students had chosen that school this year, she was having to pay for the footballs and the pencils in her classroom. This school, I observed the quality of education. With all due respect, they did the best with what they had, but oh my God, it doesn't compare. It doesn't compare to a lot of the other schools that I've observed. And I thought, God, these children in this school are starting out life with a significant disadvantage. And much of that is just down to the funding situation.

They don't have the teachers. The teachers are dropping like flies because they're getting sick because they're understaffed. And I just thought that's such a, if we think about, you know, what's the furthest upstream thing we can do to give people a fair shake in life so that they can become a prime minister or a CEO or whatever they want to be, it starts there. It starts with education and just giving everyone the same sort of equality of opportunity. But right now, and especially under the sort of last 10, 15 years of government, that's certainly not been the case. I think I probably ought to resist some of that because, 15 years of government, that's certainly not been the case. I think I probably ought to resist some of that

because, yeah, I mean, I think teaching is incredible. I tried to be a teacher myself. It's unbelievably difficult and demanding job. And I hugely admire teachers. When I came in in 2019, we put a lot of money into the education budgets and made sure teachers were going to be paid. New teachers are starting to have at least 30,000 pounds and put that period of the conservative administration, I think most fair-minded people say, look, the UK went up the PISA rankings for literacy and numeracy. Most people actually would say that education was one of the whole academy program i mean not remotely denying what

you say about um the teacher you you know the teacher you saw being being totally run run ragged um and you know they need the maximum possible support But if you look at the data, schools did get appreciably better in this country during that period. not just school children, but also kids who'd left school at 16, the types of skills that they were going to need to compete and to make sure that business felt that they had in the schools, in the FE colleges, in wherever it was, they had the talent that they needed to invest in that area because that's ultimately what it's all about it's about having the um the confidence that the the state is doing enough to deliver private sector investment that is that is ultimately what will transform the the neighborhood and and you get instead of

getting the vicious cycle of decline that you talked about you'll get a you'll get a uh a positive feedback loop and uh parents want to move that i want to send their kids to the to the school at school get a good a good reputation and and so things will things will turn around as they did in london look at london schools um you know i can't i can't comment on the school you mentioned in Liverpool, but London schools really, really change a lot. I think even with the levelling up thing, one of the easiest ways to level up without building the train line

would just be to improve the quality of education in these areas. Sure, and I think if you look at what the Conservatives did, they really focused on that. And they focused on the curriculum, they focused on standards, they focused on quality. And I think that was very important because you know i mean it's also it's very very important to to fund schools properly um but you know you shouldn't underestimate what what a great teacher can achieve and the difference that they can make. And, you know, if you emphasize quality and you emphasize attainment

and you focus on that, that's why I'm slightly worried about what's happening now with Ofsted. I mean, I can understand why people don't like one-word Ofsted gradings, but parents need to know whether a school is going to deliver. You went to Oxford University, then you had a job as a management consultant, which lasted only a week, I hear. Yeah, I wasn't really cut out for management consultancy, no. You then become a journalist. Yes.

You become a journalist for the next couple of years. You then appear on Have I Got News For You. Is it now faded from the memory? It's slightly fading. It's still a great show, but it's still slightly fading. You were then editor of The Spectator. You mustn't tell Ian Hislop that it's faded. You were an MP at the House of Coms.

Then eventually you run for London Mayor. Did you expect to win the London Mayorship? Well, you see, this is the way you... I hadn to win the london mayorship i well you see this is the way you i hadn't got the faintest idea i mean it seemed the thing was that i'd actually been quite an admirer of ken livingston in the old days and i thought that he had some some bold and original ideas for london i mean i thought he was good on the environment he's got on air quality he was good on on i thought there were some there there were some good things that he did. But it was clear that after eight years, you know,

he started to get a bit ragged. Did you think he would win? I suppose I must have done. I suppose I must have thought it was a good chance. It was a pretty exhausting campaign. If you ask me if I thought I would win something, I can tell you in hindsight whether I thought I'd win. I did soccer last year, this year, and I can tell you if I thought I would win something, I can tell you in hindsight whether I thought I'd win. I did soccer last year, this year,

and I can tell you if I thought I was going to win. Did you think you were going to win when you ran? I thought there was a good-ish chance, but it wasn't obvious. I mean, I think the bookies didn't really have me as the favourite for a long time. I think it then changed. I can't remember exactly, but, you know, you make your own luck, right?

I mean, I had to go in there and make the arguments. I mean, I think that one of the things that Ken didn't pay enough attention to was crime. And I thought there was a real issue that needed to be addressed, and that was the numbers of teenage kids being murdered. And we really, really went at that hard. And again, it was one of those things where, together with a lot of other people,

Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor, and Stephen Greenhalgh, Paul Stevenson, the Commissioner, Bernard Hogan Howe, who followed him. We really, really tried to fix knife crime and gang crime. I used to literally lie awake at night worrying about it, because it was so on me. You know, every single casualty, having to talk to the parents, you know, the misery of their suffering. We really felt it. And it was a good example of democracy because we'd pledged to fix it.

And if we didn't, we had nowhere to go. One of the things I'm proud of is we cut the murder rate in London during my time by 50%. In 2016, at 52 years old, you become co-leader alongside Michael Gove of the campaign to take Britain out of the EU. When I look at your premiership as Prime Minister of the UK, there's three really significant moments, isn't there, that typically don't fall all in one person's role as Prime Minister. You had the brexit issues you had covid and you had the ukraine war yeah um before i before i talk about those particular issues in hindsight now how do you feel about the fact that you had to contend with three

generational crises and issues but you know that's the job of being prime minister. But most prime ministers don't get a pandemic, leaving the EU in a while. Some prime ministers have had wars. Some prime ministers have had terrible crises, sterling crises, terrible... Do you wish you got a different hand? No, I think actually...

Do you think you'd still be in politics now as prime minister if you got a different hand no i i think actually do you think you'd still be in politics now and as prime minister if you if you got a different hand no i think there are i think honestly i think there were other reasons for for for that i mean i'm sorry i'm proud of of the things that we did with with the country i think it was very you know people now say, Brexit war. Actually, you know, one of the points I make in Unleashed is that if you look at it, the model of national independence that we got was crucial. So full freedom to do what we wanted in legislation and regulation. That was actually crucial when it came to that pandemic, because we were able to vaccinate faster than any other European country, much faster. Did you think you were going to win the Brexit vote? Honestly.

When I was outside London, yes. When I was inside London, no. So whenever I travelled around the country, I thought, my God, people are going to vote. But when I got back into the metropolis, it felt very different. So if you had to put your house on it, remain or leave in terms of the probability of the outcome, your predicted outcome, which one would you have voted on?

Well, the polls were basically more for remain than for leave. But I sort of thought that our voters were more motivated. So I hoped that they would come out. I hoped that they would, that that was shot. But it did go on a scale that no one had foreseen. I mean, because we had 17.4 million people voted leave, which was the biggest number voted for any proposition in history. And, but, you know, there were plenty of times where I, you know,

you could be in a, I was at St. Andrews University in Scotland for my daughter's graduation day. And you really wouldn't have thought that we were going to vote Leave talking to those people there. So, you know, it depended. Do you know what's interesting? When I was reading your book, but also when I was reading some of your previous writings, you seemed really conflicted on which way to go, leave or remain. Right up until you wrote your sort of first announcement piece that you were supporting leave, you to be really really conflicted the the reasons for for for not leaving were it seemed to me to be more to do with britain's duty to the rest of europe our need to be good partners uh our need not to be negative

uh to be friendly. Those were the things that worried me. The positive reasons for leaving. People point at this letter, which was unpublished. You know the letter I'm referring to. The unpublished letter you wrote about the decision to leave or stay within the EU. No, you mean the article? The unpublished article.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where you said, here's some of the phrases from that piece. Think of Britain, think of the rest of the EU, think think of the future think of the desire of our children and our grandchildren to live and work in other european countries to sell things there to make friends perhaps to find partners there i like the sound of freedom i like the sound of restoring democracy but what are the downsides and here we must be honest there is the worry about scotland about the possibility that the english only leave vote could lead to the breakup of the Union. There is the Putin factor. We don't want to do anything to encourage more shirtless swaggering from the Russian leader, not the Middle East, not anywhere. And then there is the whole geostrategic anxiety. Britain is a great nation, a global force for good.

It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU. Lastly, this is a market on our doorstep, ready for future exploitation by British firms. The membership fee seems rather small for all that access. Why are we so determined to turn our back on it? Shouldn't our policy be like our policy on cake, pro-having it and pro-eating it, pro-Europe and pro-rest of the world? So when I read that, but then I also, I read the very vivid description you gave of that night when you're trying to make your decision in your book, Unleashed, and you seemed torn. But the guy that went out and campaigned didn't seem torn. There was a real lack of nuance in the campaign. But there's such a huge amount of nuance in both the moment you were making the decision and the articles you wrote about that decision? There are arguments both ways. And I say it in the book.

And it's certainly true that, as I said just now, the case for Stegen is, I think, one about not seeming to be hostile, not seeming to be detached. But I had to decide, because being in the EU isn't like just being in a club where the rules don't change. It's a project to create a United States of Europe with a single currency, with a single parliament, and so on. And I thought that we weren't ever going to get the choice again the chance again to have national democratic independence and as i said in so i wrote the article you just quoted was a sort of pastiche of a of a counter argument which i wrote for myself as an exercise after I'd already written the piece to come out. And I wanted to

set them side by side and to think. But that's nuanced, but the campaign wasn't nuanced. But if you read the other article, you'll see the points that I came down in favor of. And that was about having full national independence and be able to do things your own way. And the trouble with staying in the EU was that it meant that we were going to become less and less democratic. And in the end, you've got to be able to, as a politician,

you've got to be able to, as a politician, you've got to be able to answer the question, who puts you in authority over me? And how can I remove you from office? And the problem with the EU is there's no way they can answer that question. They're not democratically elected. Is there not a way you can reform the relationship with the EU while being in the EU? You know, it's interesting,

because I was thinking of a football analogy as you were talking there, and right now Manchester United, my team, are having a bit of struggle, right? And my friends in the group chat are saying, do you think that we should get rid of the manager? And I'm saying, when you think about making a decision like that, you also have to factor in what you do after,

i.e. who replaces the manager. So many fans will just say sack the manager. But then the question becomes, but then what? And it was quite clear in your book that although you wanted to leave the EU, you had no idea what the plan would be thereafter. And in fact... Well, no, but what we need to do is take back control. And so...

That's like fire the manager. I'm saying, but then what? It wasn't... I was just wanting to win an argument with the public about their democracy and whether they should control it or not. And I thought that ultimately we had to do that. And I think that if you look at...

So going back to the points that we were talking about earlier to growth rates in America and Europe, you couldn't say that the EU model has been economically successful. Not at all. It's got chronically bad growth rates, very low innovation by comparison with the United States. Something is not working.

So whatever they're doing in Brussels to provide this great body of regulation, it's not actually delivering results for the people of Europe. And if you... I want to be clear, when compared to America? Well, so from 2008 on to 15, take the 15 years 2008 2020 to whatever to a change three um but does that mean that the eu is doing something wrong or that the americans are

doing something right because when i think of america i think of insane innovation you know i think of a lot a bit about a lot i mean a lot of both so i mean the amer, by the way, would never dream of trading away national sovereignty over anything. They just don't. They never, in any way... NATO is a bit of an act where they've formed lines. The Americans have complete hegemony in NATO.

I mean, you know, that's the... But they joined forces to make the sum greater than the parts. Yeah, but, you know, that's the... But they joined forces to make the sum greater than the parts. Yeah, but, you know, there's no... The EU provides a body of new... and a continuously evolving body of new law, which the British Parliament can't change. And so to get back to... So why... I mean, I'm not pretending it wasn't a difficult decision.

It was a difficult decision for the reasons that we've gone into. But I wanted the country, our country, to be legislatively free again. And at the heart of the book, you know, you talk about the pandemic being the most difficult thing. It was very, very difficult. But, and it was very difficult to persuade the British public to very different ways of stopping the spread of the disease. But one thing we did better than any other European country was vaccinate.

And one reason we were able to vaccinate so fast is because we had regulatory freedom of exactly the kind. I mean, it's a complete fluke, but it turned out to be exactly the kind. We'll talk about that. That I had advocated. We'll talk about that. And so that, for me, was absolutely crucial. And then there are plenty of other examples.

I just want to make sure I'm clear. Because if I'm not clear moving forward, then my audience aren't going to be clear. This idea of, like, freedom. If we take the analogy of, a of a parachute if i cut the cords i'm free but i'm also in danger unless i have a paraglider waiting to catch me and my point here is i understand the head all the like the big emotional words that freedom and take back control etc it sounds compelling to me but as i said with the football analogy what's the plan thereafter

and i think i actually don't want it i don't want you talking about the parachute right and cutting the cords of the of the parachute um actually it was the other way around it was because we'd come out of the eu that we were able to equip ourselves with a parachute faster than anybody else. And we were able to get out of the burning plane faster and to get to ground safely faster, because we'd taken back control of our regulatory freedom. And that meant that by March 2021, we'd vaccinated 45% of the adult population and of the older people. I think we'd done almost over 80. We'd done almost 100%. And that was incredible.

If you remember, we had... We'll talk about the vaccines in a second. In those early days, but the two things are connected. In those early days, we had thousands, up to 1,000 people dying every day. And so it was incredibly important that we were able to give elderly and vulnerable people in the UK a protection from a lethal disease. On this point of Brexit, though, in your book, you say you almost sort of disconnect yourself

from the fact that there had to be a plan associated with the decision, because you seem almost angry that people would expect you to have the plan even though you led the campaign yeah so i mean i'm trying to make the connection between brexit and the real world and why brexit delivers value was there a plan for leaving so so but on the in 2016 and i think what you're really saying is, what was our plan for the referendum outcome? So everybody who campaigned to leave, were we expecting to win? Were we expecting to form the next government?

Let me quote your book. This is a good promotion for your book, so you'll like this. Never at any point in that campaign did we, Boris and Michael Gove, discuss a future leave-based government, because we did not imagine that we would have to be in charge of government. The government stated policy was to implement the referendum result. It was a result. It was a referendum, not an election. We had no plans for government, no plans for negotiations because it was not our job. And insofar as the next few days were chaotic, which they were, it is utterly infuriating that we should be blamed it was up to the government to announce the plan to withdraw it was up to

the government to begin negotiations so this is i mean this is this is a huge issue because in the context of business because when it because why yeah because because because i think it's a fundamental misconception when you when a when a government decides to put something to the people in a referendum, the government is not saying, oh, you know, if it goes against our, you know, any particular position, we'll disappear. But the government said they wanted to remain. In France, for instance, Francois Mitterrand had a referendum on,

I can't remember which, I think it was the Maastricht Treaty, or it was one of the treaties that he lost the vote, and he didn't resign, he didn't disappear. Plenty of European leaders have had referendums on the EU, and they've gone against them, but they haven't vanished from the scene. And so, you know, let me put this the other way around. Imagine that Gove and I, or the whole of the Leave team,

had been specifically campaigning in the Leave vote to form the next government and to install ourselves as the rulers of the country people would have said this is not about um if this is you're plainly you're talking you're all your arguments are designed to advance your political careers you're not you're not talking about the issue of leave or remain you're talking about a plan to take over the government i know i'm not a politician i'm just i'm just a politician. I'm just a member of the public. So I'm just trying to explain why that was not possible.

I get it. But as a member of the public, I think if you're leading the charge for an outcome, you must have looked a couple of steps further to think about the implications and the reality of this outcome. Like you must have had, okay, we can do it like this,

we can negotiate like this. I assume that the government would have bring would have a white paper that said that brought they they were going to bring forward the options for the country and the plan to negotiate and a plan to and a plan to would to do what they said they were going to do but the government including your friend david cameron said this is a really bad idea he so one would one would from that, that the plan is not a good one. That they've looked at all the available options post-leaving and there's no good options here.

So if the people in charge were saying, we should not leave, there is no good plan, shouldn't we have listened to them? Well, no, because I think they were wrong. The way that I see it as a member of public is I see two people stood at a cliff edge and you've got one guy called David, one guy called Boris. And David has said, listen, I'm taking you to the cliff edge because it's your right to make this decision, but do not jump.

And this other guy called Boris is going, jump. I would assume that Boris knows something about how we survive once we start falling. But to find out that Boris had no plan and thought David was going to pull out the parachute for me is like well david david cameron the problem the problem was that i i then we then had to we then found ourselves because david prime minister cameron then disappeared from the scene immediately as i as i described in the book we then we then had a chaotic period where we had to work out what the hell we were going to do because it was clear that somebody was going to have to take over

and lead us through it. Did David Cameron react badly when you told him, when he thought that you might be voting to leave? Because you talk about in the book he swore at you. Yes, I did. But I mean, I describe it in the book yes i did but i mean but yeah i describe it um in the in the book he said he said he said um he said i well i said look i have i was really struggling with this because i didn't see a hug consistently because he'd offered me he said if

you come out and support remain you can have a top five job in the cabinet i couldn't work out what a top five job was and then he and then he said um and then i he i said well look i was finally very double because i've written lots and lots of articles pointing out the democratic problems of the of the eu and you know finally we had a chance to to resolve this and i was thinking of of coming out for leave and i you, didn't know how to put it to him, but that was the truth. And he said, this isn't about articles. This is about the future of the country.

And I said, well, I agree it was about the future of the country, but I was still thinking of coming out for leave. And he said, well, if you come out for leave, he said, and I apologize for using this language, he said, I will fuck you up forever. And which I thought was quite a big, you know, sort of promise to make. He said said, I will fuck you up forever. And which I thought was quite a big, you know, sort of promise to make. He said he was going to fuck you up forever.

Forever. And so I immediately went back home after, I went back home after that evening and cycled back from my office in City Hall and talked to my family, my kids. And one of my kids said immediately, well, you know, he's got no choice and he'll have to come out for leave. So, I mean, I put that in, I put all that in really just to show you

that there were very good arguments for having a quiet life. Do you know what's interesting in that is when I read that part in your book, there was two things that I thought. The first was him offering you a top five job if you followed his opinion. Is that not bribery? And is that how the jobs are dished out in the government at the moment? If you do what I say, I'll give you a top five. If you do what I say, I'll make you health secretary or defence secretary.

But it seems like, as someone who's not in government, it seems like a really corrupt way to dish out jobs. Like if you go in with... It wasn't clear. You've got to be fair to Dave. It wasn't clear what job he was offering. But top five is what defence secretary, health secretary... Well, I mean, I don't know. PMs were top five jobs, so there's really four remaining.

You thought in the book you talk about potentially defence secretary. I don't know you know pms were top five jobs so there's what really four remaining it's probably you thought in the book you talk about potentially defense secretary i don't know but yes but yeah i mean look but is that not a bit corrupt is that not like the definition of corruption because if i was to my own view i think it's a it's a huge mistake to do that kind of thing because there are always far more people that, you know, you end up, you know, thinking that you should be making a promise to than there are jobs you can possibly give. So the best thing in those circumstances is to say nothing. I've always wondered this about government, and I've never understood it,

is how does someone become the head of a department when they have no prior experience in it? Like, you made Matt Hancock health secretary. How did Margaret Thatcher become prime minister or secretary of state for education when she had no previous experience? How did Tony Blair become prime minister? No, the prime minister thing I understand. But how did Tony Blair become, you know, a shadow minister

when he had no experience? You tell me, do you think this is a good system? Well, I'd say this is a really, really important point because I think that there is a... I don't know. I do worry that it's quite hard to persuade, you know, really good administrative types to go into politics. And, you know, you see it the whole time.

It's called Diary of a CEO, right? And you see it the whole time. You see loads and loads of, I think, plenty of examples of top business people who try to get, who try to become politicians. And it just doesn't seem to work. And I don't know. I mean...

Can I have a guess? Go on. Well, if I look at the data, I go, if 35% of them come from one school, Eton, and then there's jobs being dished out based on, if you take my opinion, I'll give you a top five job. I go, I understand why I could never get in, even if I was the best candidate,

because it's not being done based on who's the best candidate. It's being done based on, like, the old boys club. I'll do you a favour, I'll lift you. Well, not under the Labour Party, presumably, or, you know, or any other party. Not under the... I mean, most Conservative cabinets... So just under the Tory party? No, I think under any party.

I think that business people do, for reasons I find hard to put my finger on, they don't necessarily flourish in that environment. Who flourishes? What I worry about is that the only people who are really going to start doing it are people who are willing to go through a lot of, you know, public... I think I say... Sociopaths.

Well, I mean, well, the fact... So, look, one of the interesting things that's happened recently is that social media has become very, very virulent. And, I mean, I don't read it myself, but I think it becomes very oppressive for politicians and also for journalists. And I think journalists, you know, they get a lot of shellacking and a lot of abuse if they're not thought to be taking one line or the other or going easy on someone. I mean, there's somebody who's going to interview me

for this book. Laura. Yeah. And she's a very, very good journalist. But you look at the stuff that she gets online about her being an inquisitor of mine or whatever,

and it's appalling. It's reallyalling and i think so i think that and i think that it's also the same for mps i think that they get very um they think they think that if it's a choice between having a life where i can you know avoid this sort of stuff and you, having a wonderful existence doing something else or putting myself through this. On the point that I said, thinking that it's related to the fact that people have got their hands on the scales, they're pulling their friends up, it's a bit of a boys' club. Is there any truth in that?

I think, but I think, look, I'm sad to say, Steve, I think that it's probably been the way politics has been since the dawn of time. I think that politicians, I think politics has tended to be factional since the dawn of time. I think it's tended to be just sad, but I think true. The good thing is that in the end, the people who are really successful are the people who get things done that the people want done. Do you think it's a magnet? And so it's a magnet for very determined characters

who are willing to put themselves through a lot. Sociopaths and narcissists. Well, I mean, have I used those words no no but that's the kind of person you're making me sound like you're quoting me no no maybe maybe you are but yeah but the kind of person i think would be compelled and succeed in such an environment um i think i think you have to have a pretty thick skin okay but the but because of the because of the way it works the people who actually succeed are the people who really can drive something forward and and deliver it closing off on brexit um 62 percent of british

people view brexit as more of a failure according to you gov and nine percent consider it more of a success um according to you gov as well 46 percent of british people say they should there should be a second eu referendum in in 10 years compared to just 36 percent that say it shouldn't be according to okay let me just finish the stats that you can respond to um according to the uk's real gross added the GVA, a measure of the size of the economy, they say there was approximately 140 billion less in 2023 in the UK economy compared to if the UK had stayed in the single EU market. According to the same thing, they say that 300 billion has been wiped off the value of the UK's economy by 2035. And my last stat here is a report from the Centre of European Reform in

2023 estimates that UK GDP was 5.5% smaller by mid 2023, compared to a scenario where the UK had remained in the EU. This equates to an economic loss of about 40 billion annually. And just as a business owner myself, I was looking at some stats around what business owners think, and about 33% of small businesses reported that Brexit has made it harder for them to trade with the EU due to increased paperwork and things like this. And the London School of Economics said that Brexit added 6% to food prices between 2020 and 2023. With all of this in mind, do you regret Brexit? Not at all. Not at all. I mean, honestly. So we've outgrown Germany, France,

from 2016 onwards. Sorry, certainly outgrown Italy since 2016 onwards. Last time I looked, Germany and Italy were both members of the EU. And the statistics that you give, I mean, they are dwarfed, for instance, by COVID. You know, even if I even if you accept that, which I don't necessarily, that Brexit has caused problems, it's also caused massive opportunities, because we because we were able to come out of the lockdown

earlier than any other country. Remember, we came out of lockdown in July 2021. We ended all restrictions. And that meant that we had the fastest economic rebound of any G7 country. And that would not have happened, in my view, without the assistance of Brexit freedoms. Do you know that OECD, do you know what that body is? Yes, yes. They say the UK is the only major rich economy that remains smaller, poorer than prior to the pandemic. And Brexit may be a factor in that. And the government's independent watchdog, which I know you know,

the Office for Budget Responsibility, thinks the UK will ultimately be 4% worse off than it would have been had it not voted for Brexit. When I, you know, in business, everything is a trade-off. Everything is a trade-off. So you must be able to identify the trade-off that the UK has made

for all of the upsides that you claim Brexit has delivered. So I think it's intellectually honest of anyone to be able to identify both sides of the argument here. So what is the trade-off? What has Brexit cost us? I've just given... No, what's it cost us? Oh, I see, what's it cost us?

Yeah. I think that it's certainly true that the way that some of it is being managed by some of our European friends is unnecessarily bureaucratic at the moment. I think that will get better. I accept that criticism. I don't think it's the end of the world. But I do think ultimately the advantage of being free to do your own thing,

free to run your own country, to control your own voice. You didn't tell me a trade-off. No, I have. But the impact for us in the UK. For me as an average citizen, what's the trade-off? What's the downside? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it's certainly true

that some businesses are finding it harder to, there is paperwork that I don't think there needs to be. And we need to fix that. But I think that we have technological solutions to that. I don't think that we need to be part of a European empire of law, an ever denser and more detailed empire of law, controlling our freedom and stopping us. Is there an economic trade-off?

I don't think... I think that ultimately we will be richer as a result. But in the near term, we're going to be poorer. Well, again, people were very emotional about this. Look, can I just remind you, before the referendum, people said that... And no-one ever holds these people to account. People said that there would be millions more unemployed, right?

Do you remember that? People said there would have to be an emergency tax-raising budget if the people voted to leave the EU. Actually, when I ceased to be prime minister, unemployment was at a 50-year low, and we had 620,000 more people in paid employment than before the pandemic began the economic i'm just saying that people people make all sorts of prognostications about brexit the stats that i read you do you believe them that there's an economic struggle in the short people said that we would be we would have a million people on the dole queue because it's fine but do you believe that there's a in the near term they're now saying because they're now saying it's it's confirmation bias right people but you said we will be richer eventually so i'm saying i hope that we will if

we do the right thing sure so in the near term do you think there's a little bit of struggle to get through economically as a result of brexit i think the i think that think that's certainly the case if we make the mistake of staying, I mean, which is what Keir Starmer and the Labour Party want to do, is staying in alignment with the EU. They basically want us to be rules takers. I think that's a huge, huge mistake.

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2019, beginning of 2020. I can't remember exactly when, but there's a day when I'm walking through the lobby of the House of Commons with the health secretary and he says, you know, I'm worried about this Chinese virus. Was that Hancock the right person to be handling that? Because that is a generational, once-in-a-lifetime health issue. Yeah. And in hindsight... Look, I think he did a very good job yes i think he

was he's very energetic was he the best person to be handling it i think it i think he i think he did a very good job and i think that was he the best person to be handling it in hindsight well i i certainly think that he well yes because i think yes i think that he, well, yes, because I think, yes, I think that he had the right mixture of energy and realism. Don't forget, we didn't know about the disease. We didn't know how lethal it was. We didn't know how contagious it was. And we didn't know exactly how it was transmitted. There was a lot of stuff we didn't know how contagious it was and we didn't know exactly how it was transmitted there was a lot of stuff we didn't know some quotes from your book here you said

the problem wasn't that i was ignorant to zoonotic diseases the problem was that i felt i knew all about them um after more than 30 years of writing about or dealing with new zoonotic diseases, I felt I knew my SARS and my Ebola, so to speak. And I concluded two things. First, that these novel zoonotic plagues tend to sort themselves out. And second, that the greater risk of destruction from attempts to stop them by politicians was their sort of attempts to contain the diseases, that the prevention would probably be worse than the cause in some respects.

So when Hancock started talking about a new coronavirus, possibly from bats and the risk that it would sweep the country, it was hardly surprising that I felt I'd had this all before. Little did we know. Yes. I mean, I think that i'm i'm being very honest there about about um as i am throughout uh unleashed about the my state of mind because you know i'd i'd covered in great detail um the uh salmon and eggs panic, when millions of chickens were slaughtered needlessly. I'd covered the bovine spongiform encephalopathy panic,

mad cow disease, when a vast proportion of the UK dairy cattle herd was slaughtered probably needlessly. The livelihoods of farmers were destroyed. I'd been mayor of London when we were threatened with the bird flu epidemic. So you didn't think it was a big deal. And we'd laid on stocks of Tamiflu, which turned out not to be necessary. So I'd seen SARS come and go Ebola and so on and in each of these cases

what seemed to have happened was that there'd been a rational anxiety about the risk of a zoonotic disease often from Asia or wherever we'd do our best to get ready often from Asia or wherever, we would get in a real, we'd do our best to get ready, and then it would mysteriously leave us almost completely unaffected. I remember the swine flu epidemic. Is that what you thought was going to happen in this case?

And I didn't know. Of course I didn't know. But what I was trying to do was to give you... Context. The context and the state of mind that I think a lot of people were in when they heard about COVID. When did you call China? February 2020, there was a call you made to the leader of China. To Xi Jinping? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I would have called him. I mean, it'll be in the book. And you were sending supplies. Yeah, at that stage, we were still sending... Supplies to help them. We were sending... What did he say about the virus? Well, I said... Look, my memory of the conversation is hazy now,

but I think I, you know, um, congratulate him on what seemed to be his efforts to control the disease, but said, I was, I was anxious about the, what was happening in these wet markets, because at that stage we were given to understand that these, the disease would have occurred,

um, spontaneously in a, in a market in Wuhan. What did he say? And I can't remember what he said to that. I don't think... Look, I mean, he was a president of China. I don't think he wanted particularly the implication that China was in any way at fault,

and I can't totally understand that. But I now think that probably wasn't right. I know I think there certainly was a lab accident or it was as a result of something that went wrong in that lab. Can I ask about this? Because this started as a conspiracy

theory that is now widely accepted as the probable likely outcome. Why were they messing around with a virus in a lab in Wuhan? Well, you may well ask. I mean, I think they were... Why do you think they were? As someone that is so far away from why people do such a thing.

I genuinely don't know, but I think that they were... They were, you know, science... The point of science is to keep pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge everywhere and to see what they could do. do i think it was a weapon i don't i didn't have any reason to think so i don't have any reason to think so i think it was a terrible accident i think the thing um escaped from the lab i think that you know that they they were uh looking at engineering these viruses assuming a function gain of the virus

and ways that they could manipulate it. And sadly, something went wrong. That's my best guess. And a lot of people now seem to think that. You called Trump around this time as well to speak to him about it? I did, yes. What did he think?

Well, yeah, I mean, he took the firm view that, you know, China had a case to answer, but so did a lot of people. And in the book you talk about the World Health Organization's response being seemingly hesitant because they wanted to keep Beijing in favor. Yes, I think a lot of scientists were anxious about cheesing off the chinese and i think a lot of scientists you know because china is very heavily involved in the support and sponsorship for a lot of um academic research and and so on so there was a sort of hesitant i felt i mean i might have been wrong about this my impression was was there was a sort of gingerliness about seeming to finger the Chinese too much. On lockdowns, it's interesting

that I was reading in your book that around the 8th of March, you start to see what's going on in Italy. And I think we can all vividly remember those scenes from those Italian hospitals where there was patients in the corridors being pushed around on trolleys, and there was not enough beds. And I think for me as well, that was one of the big moments where I realized, watching it actually play out on Twitter, that this was an incredibly serious situation, something that I'd never seen in my lifetime before. Was that the penny drop moment for you,

that this wasn't just another bird flu? I was very anxious about it, because I knew the Italian healthcare system. I thought it was broadly excellent. And I remember when, you know, one of our kids had a, fell into a swimming pool in Italy once. You know, when everybody was having a lie in,

you know, it's the most shattering thing that could ever happen to you. And the Italian pronto soccorso came and they were unbelievably good. They were so fast. And I thought, you know, if the Italians are having problems with this thing, and, you know, frankly, our population is about as elderly as theirs, then this could be very, very serious.

So I think that did really register with me. And so if you look at the – Obviously, I defer completely to the inquiry into all this under Dame Heather Hallett, but if you look at what happened from then on in, you see a series through March up till the 23rd of March, you see a series of intensifying steps to try to get people to take precautions. What I observed, I saw that in the book,

and you kind of have the stages that you break down that you went through from that moment onwards. What I observed, though, and I think this is probably a fair estimation or a fair description of what happened, was there was indecision. Because it seemed like there was facts coming from one ear, facts coming from the other ear,

and there was almost a bit of paralysis. And when you look at the rest of the European numbers, which I was looking through yesterday, about when different sort of European markets made that decision, the UK appears to make the decision to lock down much slower than all the other European nations. Slower to close the schools schools the shops and events seem to be later than our European counterparts

and Matt Hancock went on to say they were ahead of us in the epic curve anyway so you mentioned the Italian situation and they were already ahead of us and we could see that we were going to have to bring in measures. But, you know, again, this will be for the inquiry to comment upon. But it's pretty clear to me that we couldn't reasonably have instituted these measures in the UK, which were novel and draconian,

in advance of the scientific advice or opinion. And that's what it would have been. Them being ahead of us isn't relevant because the chart I have here shows how many days it took us to take decisive action after the third death. And it shows that for all of the European nations. And when I was reading about the information you were getting from scientists on this end and from other people in politics

it was so contradictory that i think i was guessing that that's what caused the indecision and also your own sort of philosophy towards shutting down society we had this group called the scientific advisory group on emergencies right the. And they were, so we were going to be led by the science. And we basically had to, I decided that we had to follow what SAGE advised. And for a long time, to your point, they hesitated about schools because of all the disbenefits. And if you remember, the argument was that if you went too early, then there was a risk that you'd have to keep doing it because, you know, the public would lose patience with the lockdown. And there was a second argument, which was there would then be bounce back. If you went too early and you kept on for too,

you'd then take the measures off and the virus would flare up again, which indeed did happen throughout the course of the pandemic. So there were, the scientific advice was, I mean, it wasn't, I wouldn't say it was particularly confused at that stage. I think it was, they were struggling to assess exactly what to do. And there were different views within the scientists about certain things like... Matt Hancock said that we could have saved 30,000 lives.

Masks and so on. Is that true? Matt Hancock said... If we'd locked down earlier. I can't say that for sure. I've no way of knowing that. But what I can say is that the to have locked down earlier would have been to have um

gone beyond to have anticipated scientific advice it would not have been something and i'm you know I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm not a scientist. I was being asked to... What was on the agenda was imprisoning the whole UK population. It wasn't something the scientists were yet recommending. In the book, you seem to question

whether those lockdowns really even worked. So I'm not saying that. What I'm saying... So it depends on what you mean by work. I think that they certainly did have a role in stopping the spread of the disease and they helped probably to turn down the curve of the disease. Probably, you know, almost certainly.

What I find very difficult to gauge now, and, you know, again, this is for Heather Hallett, is to what extent was it the lockdowns what did it, and to what extent was this going to happen naturally as a result of the natural parabola? And you suspect it was going to happen anyway? What I'm saying is that to some extent, or to a large extent, it was perhaps going to happen anyway.

Perhaps. And given that it was perhaps, to a large extent, perhaps going to happen anyway. The question is, did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the very, very severe damage done to kids' life chances at school, which we talked about earlier? What do you think the answer to that question is? I think that we did the right thing. You think we did the right thing?

I think we did the right thing. But I'm conscious that there are lots of people who disagree. And what I hope is that the COVID inquiry will say that, yes, we did do the right thing. In your book, when you talk about those measures, you refer to them as bonkers. There's sort of different areas. Yeah, I think that's later. That's when we got to the tiering system. The tiering system, you talked about it as bonkers and you seemed surprised

that people would follow this stuff and that they wanted to follow this stuff. Which is strange hearing it from the guy that put the rules in place. You think it's, the tiering system was bonkers

and you were surprised that anyone... I'm talking about hindsight, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the time, at the time, it seemed, so we had a situation.

So coming out of the first, the time, it seemed so. We had a situation. So coming out of the first lockdown, so in the summer of 2020, and going into the autumn and things start to get more difficult again, we have a situation where some parts of the country in places like Leicester or West Midlands or wherever, Northwest. You have the tears. You've got a problem, which is that some areas haven't really seen COVID really go down anything like as much as it went down, say, West Country, Cornwall.

Was that a bad idea in hindsight? And so you had people saying, you know, why the hell should Paz be closing Cornwall when there's no COVID? And just because there's transmission in Bolton or wherever. So was that a bad idea in hindsight? Well, no, it was a good idea in principle because because because after all um it was it was crazy it seemed but the problem the problem was that it was very very difficult to draw the boundaries and as soon as you as soon as you said you know well this bit of leicester's in uh tier which whatever or and or yeah it was impossible people went crazy but it was very

invidious. On a human level, when you're leading the country during a pandemic and you're getting these numbers every day that people are dying and that people are sick, and then, you know, I know you got sick yourself. Is there a mental toll on you throughout that period? Well, I think it was... So, as you will discover, it unleashed.

I like it when I can go forward and when I have things, positive projects to do. So it was very, very difficult when I was constantly having to shut the country down, constantly trying to stop the transmission of the disease by these very, very crude methods. But once, by end of 2020, we had the prospect of a vaccination,

then my mood totally changed. Because then I had something I could- My question was about you as a human being. When you're dealing with tragic news and this escalating pandemic, what's the human toll? If I'd been a fly on the wall in your hardest moments throughout that pandemic what would i've seen well i think that i think

it was certainly pretty tough i had a bad bout of covid what was the hardest day outside of the getting the illness yourself what was the hardest day for you throughout that period i think that ah boy i think it was there was a lot of tough times, but I think having to go back into lockdown in the end of 2020 was pretty awful. Because we'd really, really hoped that Turing would work. And, you know, some people still think it could have worked

um but it just was you know we couldn't i couldn't take the risk the quote from your book that i pulled out which really shocked me was the real question i suppose is why on earth the public so avidly crave these rules and why they were so willing to have their doings circumscribed in such a rabbinical detail in their complexity they were also like a kind of religion detailed rituals you just obeyed leviticus like in the hope of salvation because science was slow to help us on the 13th of september 2021 your mother charlotte passes away while at the same time you're dealing with all of this fallout and the recovery from the pandemic that's a tough moment yeah but that's the same for any person and any um in any walk

of life you know that's always a very very tough moment um i think that um you know to your to your point about the point about why do people obey the rules so much and my feelings about that, I think... No, I'm asking about your mother here. Yeah, sorry. Your mother passed away in September 2021. And you don't touch on it so heavily in the book, the circumstances of that. But that must be a particularly tough moment for a person that's dealing with all of these other social issues and political issues at the same time yes i know but i mean i think i suppose the point i make there is that is our our common human

lot isn't it and yes it was tough and for me and my my and sisters, my family. Very, very, very tough. You know, we miss her to this day, all of us. But, you know, a lot of people were suffering a lot throughout that pandemic. And a lot of people lost loved ones. And, you know, I had to be very, very mindful of what was happening every day in households across the country. And I had to try to, and I had a desperately difficult, because one of the interesting things about being prime minister is the way it works now is how much of it is just funneled upwards. And, you know, you have to take those decisions decisions there's nobody else who can do it for you but you remember where you were when you found out that charlotte was had passed away i think it was i was driving driving to london i'd been i'd been out on a

visit and it was unexpected well i mean you know um she'd had she'd been ill for a long time with um with parkinson's and she had various complications associated with parkinson's um and she'd had a bad scare about a year previously so no i couldn't say it was you know medically I could not say it was medically totally unexpected no did you have a chance to grieve her passing I certainly did grieve her passing

but if you mean did I sort of process it mourn it to the best of my ability yes are you a natural at that sort of thing that sort of emotional

I guess connection with yourself god I don't know I think it's probably go back to some of the earlier things we were we were saying I mean I did grieve and you know I do miss her I'm like all my brothers and sisters I do I do miss her today but you know um I also had a huge amount to to think about and to get done. And we just had to, you know, we had to do it. Many members of the UK population were also mourning and grieving at the same time. And I think that's why the party gate scenario, which you talk about in the book,

was so enraging for many people. Because as someone who, who again is not very close to politics like myself it's optics here you know and i think that's really the issue when you've got people who are unable to see their loved ones because of the situation with funerals and the pandemic even the suggestion that there was a rave going on in number 10 is the most enraging thing that i think anyone could say there wasn't a rave going on i mean you'll find it all there you'll find it unleashed and then what and i feel desperate about it i really do and i understand and i understand you know completely why people got so enraged i really do understand that and i did my i did my best to to try and you know i

think i mishandled the whole thing the the the revelations as such as they were. But also reality. But, you know... Because at the end of the book, you do seem to highlight that you could have done things to... Well, what I could have done was, what I could have done, I think, so I wonder why I commissioned Sue Gray to conduct an investigation into it.

I mean, I was informed that she was, you know, politically impartial and a model of sort of, you know, obsessed with probity. And neither of those things now seem to me to be true. I've got a picture here. There was 17 parties that were alleged during the sort of party gate time frame. And one of the pictures that leaked to the public was this picture

of you enjoying some cheese and some wine, I believe, at 10 Downing Street. Now, as, again, a member of the public, I look at this. I look at some of these key dates. I know you were fined for one particular date, which was your birthday, I think, where you were raising the glass of wine with some colleagues. No, I wasn't. Again, you see, people say this kind of thing. Was it an AIDS leaving drink that you were fined for?

No, I wasn't fined for that. What were you fined for? I was fined for going into a stand at my desk in the cabinet room between meetings. With a glass of wine? No, not with a glass of wine. And several members of staff were also there, but they were people I saw throughout the working day anyway.

But this picture. And just because people think that I had a cake and that we didn't have a cake. I didn't even see a cake. To say it was a party is a complete travesty it was about the most lugubrious event in the it was it consisted of people who were part of my normal working life that that picture that you're pointing to there was the the metropolitan police did look at that they decided there was no offense committed because what you've got is people sitting outside as as people tried to do during

those times because there was much less risk of infection let me just read some of this stuff so 15th of may 2020 cheese and wine um at downing street approximately 349 people had died from covid that day in the uk mr johnson was photographed sitting with his wife carrie and some staff at a table with wine and cheese in the number 10 garden at this time covid restrictions so that people could not just reasonable excuse let me just read this and then i'll but we were i was that that's my that is my home i know that's the garden i was supposed to be i understand may 20th um there was a bring your own booze party on the same day that 308 people died from the pandemic.

And you attended for about 30 minutes. You say it was 25 minutes. And then the 19th of June was your birthday. Sorry, can I just go back over there? I mean, you know, none of this washes with the public because they all think that we were, you know, having dancing around and getting drunk. And the last one was 12th of April, Johnson announces that he's been fined 50 pounds by the police do you know what it is though it like it's all about it's all it's all about

leading by example isn't it and you know this yeah i think my opinion is that whatever's going on at number 10 needs to be the extreme demonstration of the perfect example. The extreme demonstration. Because, of course, you're going to be attacked. You know that. Yeah. Of course, if you sneeze, you'll be attacked. And I say that.

And I say that in the book. That's what I'm saying. So what we should have done, and I say this, I should have said to everybody, look, people are going to say, a manner, because it was in fact, as I tried to explain, impossible to maintain perfect social distancing in the office environment that we were in. People were working around the clock.

And I think that I should have said something to the staff, like people are going to be out to get us. For God's sake, you know, not only obey the rules, but be seen to obey the rules. Now we had, you know, all the signs in the corridors and stuff like that. I think that there were a lot of people by that stage who were perhaps not altogether friendly to me,

who wanted to stitch me up. That's fine, but honestly, I can't help but believe, because I try and remain pretty impartial on these things. So I try and apply common sense as like a business person. Do you really think I was deliberately partying and breaking the rules? For me, seeing that photo, when one of my friends can go to their grandmother's funeral, and seeing that there's people drinking

and appearing to have a whale of a time, just in this photo, but also the other photos where you're cheersing with wine, I go, you should never have allowed that to happen. And I think you agree with me. You agree with me. Actually, no. Because you said at the end of the book,

you said, I should have said to my whole team, don't even let them appear to be breaking the rules. In the course of almost two years of people working around the clock in number 10, in conditions of great proximity to each other um there were going to be moments when of course when colleagues are saying are going away when you raise a glass to them unless you're going to ban that i think you should have well that's the point of view because i just think you banned alcohol in 1940 we wouldn't have won the second world war i think prime minister during a pandemic i think you just have to be the most extreme example but what's sorry sorry, but we got a ban on alcohol in this country? No,

I think, I think, I think genuinely. If we, if we, if we banned alcohol in number 10 in 1940. I think all gatherings should have been banned at number 10 because I think. Sorry,

but we were gathering, we, that means banning meetings. What do you mean gatherings? Gatherings with alcohol and music and cake, I think should have been bad and i've tried to explain to you there was no cake or i saw no cake i said i was at no event where there was there was music or dancing that total nonsense now maybe those things took place but they certainly

didn't place take place when i was there i think one of the problem one of the mistakes I made was beginning the whole thing by issuing this general apology. And so what happened was, so people think that there was vomiting. Do you still apologize? I don't apologize for allegations of vomiting or fistfights, because they turned out to not be true. And, well, insofar as people broke the rules on my watch, insofar as I'm responsible, of course I apologize for that.

But what I'm saying in Unleashed is that the problem with leading with a blanket apology was that it then meant that absolutely any allegation that was made, you know, you've said, you've just made a couple of yourself. You know, any allegation that was then made about in Sue Gray's initial report that she had to change it. She said there were, there was a, you know, violent altercation and vomiting and somebody, both of those things turned out not to be true.

You said you made the mistake, in your book, you say you made the mistake of issuing pathetic and grovelling apologies over the scandal, which made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were. Which is just the point I've just made. Because it looked as though, but by issuing a sort of universal apology, it meant that any subsequent allegation, people assume well that must be what happened and you and you to be fair i kind of get the feeling that's what you think

and no no no no and that for me it's largely my fault because i seem to be it's not valid the apology is is not i seem to be validating everything that people said about what was going on and what was actually going on was that people were working unbelievably hard around the clock to get a lot of very difficult things done i don't and for me and and actually what the the things that they were successful in are very creditable and i and so i feel badly about them on page 705 of your book you say in retrospect i should have done more to protect myself and the rest of whitehall against party allegations i should have said to the entire staff perhaps in the letter about the vital importance of not only obeying the rules but also to be seen to be obeying them and reminding.

And I think that is actually my point, which is apologies, I think, are good things. I think people should apologise. No, but I'm trying to explain. If you apologise in advance, the problem was that a lot of things were said about staff in number 10 that weren't true and weren't fair to them.

And my blanket apology looked as though I was validating and accepting all those criticisms. Okay. Which I think was, in retrospect, I think I should have waited to see exactly what people, you know, said and what was established to be true. And then I should haveised for what actually happened. Do you see what I'm saying?

I understand. And also, I want to stick up again for those officials who were working around the clock to sort out the government's and the country's response to COVID, and when it came to it, did an absolutely outstanding job. And I don't want to... I understand. I understand.

I just want to wrap it up now. You've been very patient me you you know you've you've allowed me to talk for almost two and a half hours and uh for what i thought was going to be an hour's show so i'm not you've been heroic in putting up we're wrapping up now but i just wanted to ask a few more things these are personal questions that i have please so um um one of the things that no one knows about you is how many kids you have why is this such a widely debated subject? I've never sat with a guest on my show where they were unwilling. I don't know why they should say widely debated. It's a matter of public record.

I have eight children. You have eight children? It's a matter of public record. Okay. I don't know why people, why is everyone so obsessed with the amount of kids you have? Search me, go. Charlotte Owen. You're not related to her, are you?

No. She's not a former lover? No. Okay. I asked my friends some of the things they wanted to know about you. No, but it's in the book. Read up all about it in the book. She is a very capable advisor.

And what happens next for Boris Johnson? Are you going back into politics? I live a life of blameless, rustic obscurity. Do you want to get back into politics? I think that... The chance of the Frisbee to come to... Yeah, I get it. As I say in Unleashed, you chance of the Frisbee to come to... Yeah, I get it. As I say in Unleashed, you should only do things

if you genuinely think you can be useful. At the moment, I think the most... I'm loving... I do a lot of painting. I'm having a great time living in, you know, in the countryside. I got my hands full doing all sorts of things. Next question, quick fire. Yeah. Trump or Kamala and you can't sit on the fence?

All British prime ministers, including ex-prime ministers, Next question, quick fire Trump or Kamala and you can't sit on the fence All British Prime Ministers, including ex-Prime Ministers, are constitutionally obliged to be friendly with whoever Who's the best for international relations? Whoever the American people decide That is the right thing

You're our dwindling audience We'd not expect Who's best for stopping the wars? Who's better for stopping the wars, Kamala or Trump? I mean, you know, if you read Unleashed. I did read it. And I saw your interview on GB News, and you seem to think that Trump would be a better...

Well, I think what I'm saying is that you should beware of some of the kind of anti-Trump prejudice about his having a foreign policy. And there are very good, you know, when he was president, he took some tough decisions and, you know, projected a sense of American strength and purpose. And that's, you know, but I make no further comment than that. And we have a closing tradition on this podcast

where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to leave it for. Oh, right. Okay. And the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for. Right, okay. And the question that's been left for you is success often comes at a price. And one of those is the relationships we lose along the way. Which relationship or person did you lose in the pursuit of your success? Let me. you seem to, the longer you live,

the more you rise, you can have what seems to be a complete, terrible sundering, and then lo and behold, things cheer up and you're friends again. And

so, I mean, look at look at look at michael gove you've got to answer the question which relationship or person the answer michael answer your question is i don't i don't i don't regard any of the termination any any rupture i don't regard any rupture as no one's ever swerved this question so you're not going to be the first i don't regard any rupture as final which relationship or person did you lose in the pursuit of your success they are not lost i didn't i don't give me a person give me a name we've never had it this is a long-standing tradition no one's ever swerved this question i had a clearly i had a rupture with michael go but then um in 2016 but

then with um heroic optimism i i i put him back in the cabinet. And, you know, there you go. Boris, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I'm going to link this book below so anyone that wants to read it can get the book. It'll be linked below.

It was, your writing style is exceptionally engaging. I think everyone that's interviewed you from the ITV to gb news has said the same thing um the book is linked below if you're interested in the subject matters we've talked about but many more it's an exceptionally long book some 700 and i don't know i got it right i think it's over several 771 pages with the with the index and the and the thanks an incredibly detailed um book into all of the key issues that have happened over the last five, six, seven years

and some touches of what happened in your life before. Link down below. Boris Johnson, Unleashed. Thank you so much, Boris. Thank you very much, Steve. It's been an honour. Do I get a prize for it? I think that must be...

How long was that interview supposed to be? I don't know. They're always two, usually they're four hours. Sometimes they're four hours. Oh, I see. Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the Diary of a CEO,

at the very end of it, you'll know, I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So you've got every guest we've ever had, their question, and on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version two updated conversation cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com.

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