The full scale of Boris Johnson’s contempt for former prime minister Theresa May is revealed in detail today by one of his closest former aides.
Mr Johnson, who succeeded Ms May as prime minister in 2019, compared her to a “giant yucca tree under whose shade everything dies”. And on hearing Ms May had decided to call a snap general election in 2017, he said: “What the f*** happens when the public sees her?”
The accounts are by Mr Johnson’s ex-adviser, former Conservative MP Sir Conor Burns, in Sir Anthony Seldon’s book, The Brexit Effect, which is being serialised over the coming week in The Independent.
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As parliamentary private secretary to Mr Johnson when he was foreign secretary, Sir Conor was a key member of his inner circle.
He claims Ms May’s decision to appoint Mr Johnson as foreign secretary – widely seen as a promotion – after she narrowly won the 2017 election was in fact a bid to “shaft” him.
”It was seen as a plum job,” Sir Conor writes. “However, it was a brilliant shafting of a rival. How could Boris complain? He was now representing the UK on the global stage.”
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Sir Conor calls Ms May a “stunningly stupid blank canvas” and says Mr Johnson accurately predicted in private that her decision to call an early election in 2017 would lead to “disaster”.
He writes: “I remember him saying, ‘What the f*** happens when the public sees her?’ [Her reputation as] ‘strong and stable’ had long since given way to reality behind the Cabinet curtain. As in Alice in Wonderland, they discovered there was nothing there. Soon the public would see that too.”
Sir Conor states: “He (Johnson) described May as being like some giant Ukka (Yucca) tree in the Brazilian rainforest under whose shade everything dies.”
Sir Conor, a close friend of former PM Margaret Thatcher, says Ms May was the “political ‘Peter Principle’ – promoted to her level of incompetence.” (The “Peter Principle” is from a 1969 Laurence Peter book, which says employees rise to their level of incompetence).
Despite his fierce loyalty to Mr Johnson, Sir Conor is not uncritical of him.
He says Mr Johnson relied on ruthless No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings because he “lacked the gumption” to force through Brexit without him.
“Boris hates conflict… There is no way he would have had the gumption to prorogue parliament or withdraw the whip from so many MPs without Cummings at his side. Probably no other prime minister would have allowed Cummings near Downing Street.”
In the end, the relationship with Mr Cummings “became cancerous”, says Sir Conor.
Sir Conor questions Mr Johnson’s “flawed” appointments as PM, including appointing ex-royal aide Sir Simon Case as cabinet secretary.
”The flaws in so many of the people he appointed were stark. Simon Case was lightweight. That’s why he was chosen. Picking frocks for the Duchess of Cambridge was in a different league from heading the civil service.”
Sir Conor says “bovine” Tory grandee Sir Mark Spencer, a farmer by profession, was the wrong choice as Mr Johnson’s chief whip and claims a senior No 10 figure observed “one of his cows would have done better”.
He says Mr Johnson never won the trust of many Tory MPs, and he reveals bitter personal and political tensions among the former prime minister’s Brexit supporters, fellow ministers and officials.
The rival camps of Brexit campaign leader Mr Johnson and Michael Gove “hated each other”, says Sir Conor.
Mr Johnson’s Foreign Office deputy, Sir Alan Duncan, “could not conceal his loathing” for Mr Johnson, Sir Conor claims, and Foreign Office mandarins “thought Boris an affront to their civilised values”.
Sir Conor says senior Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin led the “knucklehead Brexiteers” and was a ”supreme bore” who “resented Johnson as a Johnny-come-lately (to the anti-EU campaign)”.
Other Brexiteer MPs were close to “losing their marbles” as attempts to finalise Britain’s exit from the EU stalled, he states.
Sir Conor recounts Mr Johnson’s four-letter response when another prominent Eurosceptic Tory MP, Steve Baker, called Sir Conor “close to tears”, saying he was ready to take over as prime minister to “save Brexit”.
Mr Johnson replied with an “FFS!” text reply the next morning.
According to Sir Conor, Mr Johnson was “very close to sacking” Liz Truss (a member of his cabinet and who succeeded him as PM in 2022).
He says she was “constantly on manoeuvres”, adding: “When Liz Truss arrives uninvited, displaying an off-the-spectrum lack of awareness to offer support, you can start measuring curtains in No. 10.”
Sir Conor claims Truss was aided by Tory MP Wendy Morton, who became chief whip when Truss became PM. Burns says Morton was “known near universally as ‘Wendy Moron’” and likens her to Wallace and Gromit.
He provides withering portraits of other well-known Tories.
Matt Hancock, forced to resign as health secretary over a sex scandal, “predictably lived up to the last four letters of his name”, says Burns.
Johnson’s Brexit opponents David Cameron and George Osborne are accused of “disgraceful” behaviour and “abundant arrogance and conceit”.
Burns also claims that ex-junior minister Johnny Mercer is so “vain” that when he proposed mounting a twin leadership bid with an astonished Johnson, who gave a “characteristic ‘Come on!’” reply, Mercer mistakenly took it for the go-ahead.
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