Channel 4's four-part excoriation of the life and times, to date, of Conservative ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, pretty much lets the facts speak for themselves allowing the viewers to make their own judgment of this highly individual and eccentric man who we are told wanted the top job in the country even as a child.
Johnson came from a relatively privileged if chaotic childhood, his father Stanley, himself no stranger to self-publicity, left his wife and four children when they were at a young age while his wife, Boris's mother, was a bohemian artist who it seems never got over the break up of her marriage although she nevertheless remained highly protective of her children and Boris in particular.
We are taken through Johnson's childhood to the accompaniment of some home video footage and told by those who knew him then of his vulnerability and need for dependence, coupled with his general likeability and sky-high personal ambition. He sails through Eton, crossing paths with another future Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron, becoming Chair of the Debating Society there before gaining employment as a journalist with a reputation for filing exaggerated and even invented stories. Nevertheless, his stock continues to rise and he becomes an MP at the second attempt, with his larger-than-life personality and hail-fellow-well-met ability to communicate with people very much to the fore. Cameron, by now prime minister, we are told, although he doesn't contribute directly to the programne, sees Boris as a threat and tries to sideline him by giving him the seemingly impossible task of becoming the mayor of London against the then-popular incumbent, Labour's Ken Livingstone. Against the odds and by sheer force of personality, Johnston succeeds and in so doing attains a high profile reputation not only for some of his highly-visible policy-decisions but in particular from his unerring knack of making the news, often with publicity stunts devised to get him in the papers and on local and national TV.
We also learn of his chaotic personal life as he enters and exits a series of personal relationships with an apparent procession of women, marrying some of them and siring a number of children before arriving at his current wife Carrie, herself later to figure large in the COVID-related events which contributed to his downfall and with whom he has since had another child, has fifth in total.
It's a toss-up as to which single word will forever be associated with his premiership. On the way up it was certainly Brexit, but it was certainly COVID which brought him down. Other words however are available such as buffoonery, cronyism, hubris, charlatanism and incompetence. Along the way however it has to be admitted that he won a massive majority in the 2019 election, did indeed "Get Brexit Done" as his campaign slogan promised and was the first and most prominent Western leader to offer support to Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022.
However it was the onset of the pandemic in 2022 which precipitated his downfall, almost literally as he near-fatally contracted the virus himself, but his perceived bumbling-fumbling mishandling of the crisis coupled with his blatant disregard of his own government's rules on social distancing and gatherings, inevitably led to his own party rebelling against him and unceremoniously forcing him out barely three years after his landslide election victory.
This in-depth documentary took us through its subject's often shambolic chronicle using contemporary news footage of this most telegenic and publicity-hungry first minister with contributions from those who knew him, both in his personal and political lives, including some of his former partners as well as some key members of his cabinet and political opponents too. Unsurprisingly, there are no direct interviews with Johnson or his wife Carrie, plus nothing from David Cameron or his notoriously high-profile personal adviser, Dominic, nicknamed in the press Demonic Cummings, who when he finally got the sack, ungraciously and venomously turned on his old boss with a series of damaging internal revelations and highly critical personal opinions.
It's very unlikely that history will be kind to Johnson and his record with many commentators considering him to have traduced the dignity of his high office with the high-handed way he not only treated parliament but in the desperate methods he employed to try to hold on to the job when it was obvious that his time was up.
My criticisms of the programme would include that it focused too much on his family and personal life and rather rushed to the finish but nevertheless for me, it well captured the spirit of the momentous times over which he presided and arguably even caused.
Have we seen the last of him? Somehow I doubt it, especially if his fellow-crazy-haired
American doppelgänger across the water re-enters the White House as seems highly possible later this year.
Watch this space and be afraid...
