Poor Lord Ashcroft. Just over three weeks ago we might have got terrifically exercised about his biography of Carrie Johnson – First Lady.
We’d have got worked up about the allegations about Boris being scared of her, about her getting him to hire her friends to important political jobs, about her presiding over a shambolic establishment in Downing Street littered with food cartons and dog poo, even about the story that she was fired from Conservative HQ for putting in expenses claims for taxis in younger colleagues’ names.
That was three weeks ago. Back then we could worry about things like whether she has access to his red box papers and whether she actually likes John Lewis (she does). Since then things have changed. We’re looking on appalled as a theatre where children are sheltering is targeted. We’re focused on a former comedian who wears battle fatigues. It’s a different world.
And in this changed world, one thing we haven’t heard yet is that Mrs Johnson is running the Government’s approach to the war. Ukraine has had repercussions for every world player. But one of its less important consequences is that it has saved the PM. No one now is talking about Partygate, about him being investigated by the Met. And in this crisis, finally Boris seems to be in charge of Britain’s response. Eventually we’ll remember about his hideous curtains and the way his attention was distracted from his job by how to pay for them (the book suggests he’s strapped for cash). But not yet.
If I were Carrie Johnson, I’d be rather relieved that this is the case, because this book presents her as the prime ministerial spouse from hell.
It seems she’s controlling – did she really send texts to journalists from the PM’s phone? – and apparently ensures that he’s surrounded by a very narrow coterie of advisers, many of them her age, not his. She’s a bad person, apparently, to get on the wrong side of. She distracts the PM’s attention from what he should be thinking about – matters of policy – to her own priorities. Remember those dogs and cats that got airlifted out of Kabul? Yep, that, it would seem, owes much to Carrie. And she is, no question, the mini-break Queen.
Most of the good stuff in this book is already out there and it has already been met with counter-accusations of misogyny from Mrs J’s friends like Sajid Javid.
But you know what any sensible person thinks, reading all this? It’s that blame does not attach to Carrie Johnson if the PM was, at a critical times, distracted by her priorities rather than the country’s. British people elected Boris, not his wife. And it’s the PM, 24 years her senior, who should be running his own show. He should be able to insist that if he wants to appoint someone to an important job because they’re the best candidate, that’s what will happen. Man up, man.
And some allegations are unfair. It may indeed be that Allegra Stratton – remember her? - was appointed as the PM’s press spokesperson because Carrie wanted her, but it wasn’t Carrie who had the stupid idea of having a regular US presidential-style press conference in Downing Street. That was the genius idea of Carrie’s antagonists, Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings, at a cost to the taxpayer of £2.6 million.
The contention of this book is that Boris is a lesser prime minister because he’s dominated by his wife. Well, perhaps this crisis, which has put everything else into perspective, will change all that. Carrie’s Court? Right now, who cares?
