Cripes. Yours truly is in a bit of bother. Or perhaps I should say a bit of Bozzer! You know how it is. You have a few glasses of wine too many at lunchtime and you wake up six months later to find your publisher is wondering how your book is coming along. So you start writing in a panic, only to remember that a few keys on the laptop don’t walk. Dammit, I meant work. Still, I’m sure everything will be OK in the end. As Sappho once said – I think it was her – nothing can beat a stream of unconsciousness.
Where shall I start? How about September 2019? I’m in New York and the phone rings at 5.30am. And I don’t mind telling you that I’m not at my best that early in the morning. It’s Party Marty on the line. Surely he wasn’t ringing just to let me know that the booze fridge at No 10 was nearly empty.
“You should switch on the TV,” he said. “Lady Hale is giving her verdict on the prorogation.”
Sod that, I thought. What does Spiderwoman know anyway? She’s only the head of the supreme court. No one understands the complexities of the law better than me. Just another whingey remainer trying to block me. I turned off the TV. I considered my position and concluded it was pretty good. Nothing was going to stop me not building those 40 imaginary hospitals.
So how had I become prime minister, you may ask? How did the Bozzmeister get the keys to No 10? Why do I keep repeating myself? The simple answer is that Theresa May was hopeless and I was the Tory party’s last hope. I mean, best hope. My time had come.
The first thing I did was appoint some of the most clueless people I could find to continue the Brexit negotiations. Frosty was the perfect man, someone so out of his depth that he would then rubbish the deal he had concluded with the EU. I then threw every intelligent MP out of the party and promoted Thérèse Coffey, the idiot’s idiot. Finally, I hid in a fridge and won an election against an opposition leader that not even Labour members could vote for.
Where am I? Ah. Time to waste 100 pages on my time as London mayor. As Dante, who was a great admirer of mine, once said: “Nel mezzo del cammin di something or other.” So how did I become to London what Edward Gibbon was to Rome? I had been minding my own business as the editor of the Spectator and the MP for Henley when I rode my bicycle past a diplodocus bus and came to believe I could transform this great city.
POW! BIFF! SOCKO! THUDEROO! I gave it to Red Ken. Here, my levelling up agenda was born. From now on, anyone with a spare £1.5m would be able to buy a two-bedroom flat in Battersea power station. Then there was the 2012 Olympics, in which I won the 10,000 metres and had my gold medal presented to me by the queen. Not to mention the glistening otters in the beach volleyball. Reminded me of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Nose Ring.
“So are you going to mention your services to pole dancing?” asked Dilyn the dog. “I’m sure we’d all like to hear about the talents of Jennifer Arcuri.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that. So what do you think of it so far? Another masterpiece from the Great Sperminator?”
“Er … well, it’s just as self-serving as I expected. After all, you don’t do introspection. And it’s riddled with errors. But what’s most unforgivable is that it’s really boring. Just the same old stories and excuses wheeled out yet again in leaden prose.”
Where was I? Ah yes, Europe. I had always been a Eurosceptic. Apart from the times I wasn’t, when I was London mayor. Back in the day – after a stint on the Times, from which I had been sacked for lying – I got a job on the Telegraph, where I just made stories up. So much easier than telling the truth. Over in Brussels, I came to realise the EU was a Freudian wish-fulfilment dream. If only I had the same insight into my own narcissism. But I’ve never been curious about my behaviour; the way I invariably let down all those close to me.
February 2016. I was choked. Blocked. Stuck. Unsure of which way to jump in the referendum. Some have said that I chose to back leave only because that was the best career move. But I can categorically say this is untrue. Never in my life have I taken the selfish path. My life has been one long pilgrimage of self-restraint and uxorious self-denial. The queen once told me that I was a role model for the country.
What convinced me that Britain would be best out of the EU was the economics. Who in their right mind would not want the UK to take a 4% hit in GDP? “Alea iacta est,” as Caesar said. There was no going back, even when that girly swot David Cameron had threatened to fuck me up. I have never forgiven Dave for becoming prime minister before me.
Some have observed that I appeared shocked when the country voted for the Bozztastic Brexit. All I can say is: you try giving a press conference when you’ve been drinking the night before and Michael Gove is off his face on ketamine and magic mushrooms. And why would anyone expect us to have a plan to implement Brexit? That had been Dave’s job and he had just flounced out. So now I was being asked to take responsibility for my own actions. How unfair was that?
“This is getting even worse than I imagined,’ groaned Dilyn. ‘God knows what the editor will make of this.”
“There is no editor,” said the editor. “Otherwise there would be almost nothing left.”
So why, you might ask, did I not still run to be prime minister after the Gover had treached on me? After all, I would still have been the frontrunner. The simple answer is that I have never asked myself that question. Although I am certain I didn’t bottle it. That wouldn’t be like me at all.
It was no more than I deserved when Theresa May invited me to be foreign secretary. “Rest assured,” I told her. “Global Britain will be safe with me. I’m the man to keep Johnny Foreigner in his place. Just wait till you see the watermelon smiles on those flag-waving piccaninnies. Not to mention the women dressed up as letterboxes. As for Russia and China, I will be taking no prisoners.”
Talking of prisoners, let me just put the record straight on Nanzanin Zagjhari-Raticliffe. No one had done more than me to get her sentence increased. Who wouldn’t want to spend a few more years in an Iranian jail? The queen later told me I was the best foreign secretary of her illustrious reign. Sadly, I had to cut my tenure short. Having praised Theresa’s Chequers deal to the heights, I found myself having to resign two days later when I realised that David Davis had walked first.
We now find ourselves in December 2019. All was going smoothly, plans were well advanced to build a bridge to the US and the whole country was celebrating my great election victory.
Then, in January, came the coronavirus. Let me get one thing straight. My problem was not that I knew too little about zoonotic diseases, but that I knew too much. So I knew Covid was not going to be a major problem. Who cared if 2% of the population carked it? And yes, I had witnessed the scenes from Italy, but those Mediterranean types are always overexcitable. I couldn’t see the point of attending five Cobra meetings when I had to help Carrie with her arrangements for the baby shower at Chequers.
To cut a long story short, I was magnificent during Covid. Even down to being the first super-spreader, when I shook hands with a whole lot of infected people. No one could have done more than me, carrying on giving the country the leadership it needed even when I was in hospital. I was determined the Moloch would be contained.
Never before in this country’s history has so much been owed by so many to me, as Cicero once said. Time and again, I came to this country’s rescue. By awarding PPE contracts to Michelle Mone. By personally developing a vaccine. If we had remained in the EU, no one in the UK would have got a vaccination and the whole country would have died.
There were no lengths to which I would not go to keep my people safe. I even asked Bear Grylls, Russell Brand and Ant Middleton to launch an attack on the Netherlands to steal a large supply of the vaccine that they didn’t have because they were in the EU. Slip unnoticed into Rotterdam harbour and then explode a nuclear device. The queen positively purred when I explained the plan to her. What could possibly go wrong with attacking a Nato ally, she said. Quite right, I said. The Dutch are practically Germans, so are not to be trusted.
I seem to have forgotten some other bits. Like how I keep being let down by people I have appointed while never once doubting my judgment. Take Dominic Cummings. When he explained how he had immediately gathered together his family after testing positive for Covid so that they could drive 250 miles to Durham, then took his family out for another drive to test his eyesight, it all made complete sense.
Amid all this, there were a few personal high points. Like my wedding to Carrie. The happiest day of my life. Largely because someone else was paying. Every prime minister needs a sucker like the Bamfords who will fork out cash on demand. I liked to call them my personal ATM.
Now to the parties. The parties that absolutely did not happen.
“You mean the Abba party,” growled Dilyn. “The one on the night you fired Dom. I didn’t get a wink.”
“Shut up,” I said. “Or you’ll be back to the dog rescue.”
As I was saying, none of the parties ever took place. All the rules were obeyed at all times, because that’s the kind of guy I am. My only regret is apologising in the first place. I should have just kept on lying about them and trying to brazen it out. But that’s me all over. If I have a fault, it’s that I’m too honest.
Anyway, you know how it is. One thing led to another: the parties, the Owen Paterson and Chris Pincher scandals. Soon, 60 ministers were resigning in protest. Caesar had fewer wounds than me. “Don’t worry,” said Charlotte Owen, an office junior in No 10. “I’m sure you will come through this crisis.” Give that woman a peerage. I did try writing to all the Tory MPs – “Dear Grunts” – whom I had never bothered to speak to in the previous three years, but they too were ungrateful for all I had done.
So that was it. I was out of office. Them’s the breaks. Still, at least I could now cash in on the speaker circuit and write a deeply reflective memoir.
“I’m still waiting,” said the publisher.
On which note, I leave you with the queen’s parting words to me. “My first prime minister was Winston Churchill. My last were you and Liz Truss. Just imagine. I think I might as well die now.”
Digested read, digested: Unreliable. Unhinged. Unreadable.
Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
