At the launch of the final part of his magisterial Brexit quartet, author Tim Shipman offered three reasons why differing political groups should read it. The first were those still reeling from the Out result. The second were those who passionately wanted to get Out and blamed everyone else for not making the EU exit after the 2016 referendum work better to the UK’s advantage. The third were the oft-ignored Liberal Democrats, “because there’s a whole chapter about them”.
On his telling — at a length akin to Boccaccio’s Decameron, an account of life under a 14th-century plague — Out covers the period from the advent of Boris Johnson as leader in 2019 to the demise of the Tory government in July 2024, a period encapsulated in the subtitle, “How Brexit got done and the Tories got undone”.
Shipman’s methodical approach as The Sunday Times’ main political chronicler hasn’t changed across his oeuvre, a lively mix of high politics, low gossip and a grab-bag of metaphors: “In a moment of surrealism, which Dali would have baulked at.”
The challenge of a multi-instalment series is that they need main characters to sustain a flow of events which, while they enthralled Westminster at the time, can feel so-whattish afterwards. So the first part of the account focuses heavily on two of these: Johnson himself as he inherits the Tory crown after Theresa May failed to effect a “soft Brexit”, and the influence of erratic sidekick-cum-Svengali Dominic Cummings.
Point of difference
It feels like a well-worn “bro” saga, but fresh detail is found in the small crevices, missed in the rush of events. Cummings’s run-ins with the flinty civil servant Helen MacNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary, after the Supreme Court ruled against the legality of Johnson’s exit plan in late 2019, ends in him threatening to push out the government’s lawyers over their objections to proroguing Parliament. “Let them (f*****g) quit,” he thunders. “Let’s just (f*****g) fire them. Get some new lawyers in.”
Commonalities between Donald Trump and Brexit have often been overstated. But the amping-up of high emotion and mixture of determination and counter-productive posturing do have echoes. As MacNamara reportedly told a friend of Cummings: “Ideas, nine out of 10. Execution, minus 10... ability to manage other humans: less than zero.”
The December election of 2019 was the smash-glass road to a resolution of the parliamentary and legal logjam; a gamble for Johnson that paid off with a solid majority.
So in January 2020, Brexit finally happened. Johnson’s political dominance looked assured. But the damage to the Tories was subliminal. Relationships between MPs and No 10 remained fraught, even in the afterglow of election success and fate had an unexpected blow in store. In 2020, the arrival of coronavirus heralded “the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu after the Great War” and Johnson himself was stricken and became gravely ill. Even after he recovered, a situation which would have tested any government was worsened by the propensity towards schisms and lack of cohesion among the Cabinet.
Amid the thunder of many egos, it is hard not to conclude with Shipman that Johnson himself was often the weakest link. “By making himself a firewall between opposing camps, there was no way for one side or the other to be seen to win or lose. Inevitably, Johnson got burned.”
A lot to pack in
We are still at this point only halfway through. A lot is rammed into the second half of this tome, from the sullen downfall of the flawed hero, and frantic contest to replace him, to the beginnings of the Ukraine crisis.
In fairness to a patchy prime minister, his instincts were sound here. Johnson stood with Ukraine when it mattered and set a course for his successors, telling Putin on a testy call, “If you do this, it will mean more Nato, not less Nato, on your borders”. How true that turned out to be.
The damage of exhaustion after Covid, frustration with the second lockdown (which Johnson regrets), misjudgments of Partygate and years of debilitating infighting take their toll. Fittingly, it is Michael Gove, the professional assassin of the Cabinet, who sticks the knife in — quickly followed by a stream of frustrated and demoralised colleagues.
Subsequent chapters deal briskly with Liz Truss’s brief lettuce era. It is sometimes hard to separate her sheer clumsiness from a tinge of sexism. “Her IQ was as low as her chutzpah was high” is a line which could have applied here to scores of men in this saga. There’s an awkward hint that Truss may be on the autism spectrum, which feels poorly argued.
Undoubtedly, she messes up at speed. Shipman gives a fair assessment of the Bank of England’s failings in the Truss era — the weaknesses of the pensions industry were magnified when “Trussonomics” piled pressure on the system. As a source tells the author: “She was temperamentally unsuited to be prime minister.” Happily, that was a matter which was concluded within 49 days.
On we roll to Rishi Sunak and the final chapters which understandably feel a bit rushed — a lot of reliance on a few characters from Sunak’s inner court as sources and an overall sense of the defeated Tory PM as a decent, insightful, finance-orientated chap who did not, in the end, relish the top job he aspired to.
The decision to call the election early looks especially odd in this telling, since Sunak’s campaign strategist opposed it. The beneficiary was Sir Keir Starmer, who understood how to surf the waves of disillusion — all the way to No 10.
In some ways, Johnson did prevail: he got Brexit “done”, which many forces hoped that the “grown-ups” would undo. He could not, however, control what followed and that whirlwind saw off prime ministers thereafter. It’s a durable reminder that Out does not mean Done — and a wild ride through the rapids of Britain’s unforgettable, disturbing Brexit years.
Anne McElvoy is a London Standard writer
