Author: Boris Johnson
ISBN No: 9780008618209
Review date: 17/12/2025
No of pages: 784
Publisher: William Collins
Publisher URL:
https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/unleashed-boris-johnson?variant=41552640835662
Year of publication: 10/10/2024
Brief:
price
£30, hardback
Boris Johnson’s book Unleashed is largely a memoir of his years as a serious politician from his win over Ken Livingstone (remember him?) in the London mayoral election of 2008, ‘and what may lie ahead’, to quote from the former prime minister’s comments ahead of the release of this door-stopper book last month.
While his two terms as London Mayor may feel a long time ago – Brexit, covid and the death of Queen Elizabeth II do rather stand in the way of memories of this last 20 years or so – and as a position of power it doesn’t rank with the top job of PM, what Johnson did and said about crime did offer pointers to his time in Downing Street, not least because his deputy mayor of policing Kit Malthouse was still his henchman as a minister at the Home Office. On page 113 we get the line: ‘Tackling crime is fundamental for levelling up. If crime goes down, confidence goes up, investment goes up, property values go up.’ Two remarks on that. First, it’s odd then that at the end when Johnson lists ten things to fix – his manifesto, if you like, for the Conservatives and for a second tilt at power for himself – crime and criminal justice feature nowhere. The ten include the obvious ones such as ‘fix the NHS’ and the less so, such as urging us to be prouder and more expressive of how great Britain is; despite the pot-holes, the cancelled trains and the backlog of court cases, and the budget cuts of the 2010s and then the sudden recruitment of police (given a snazzy name, ‘uplift’, that the Johnson era had a knack for) which we can now see was the surest way to ruin the service. Telling us of the greatness of Britain and how our national character under-sells ourselves served Johnson well (the title refers to the country, now ‘unleashed’ thanks to Brexit) yet hardly features in pub conversation any more than exiting the European Union did before the 2016 referendum. Second, that line is one example of the style of writing in places – it doesn’t come across as writing at all, but rather that Johnson was giving a speech, and his words were transcribed. Nothing wrong with that, but you may prefer to listen to the audio book.
Knife crime
One chapter of his mayoral years covers knife crime. One page 108 he denies that it’s a public health problem. Rather, it’s a criminal problem ‘caused by criminals and criminal gangs and what was needed was a criminal justice solution. We needed to start enforcing the law.’ Johnson arrives at this after casting around for policies and answers, and feeling that he’s getting nowhere by canvassing those who want to offer their services; Johnson is disparaging about ‘lefty criminologists’. Here is an example of the curious incuriosity of Johnson, for saying that he has long made a living as a journalist, giving opinions; he doesn’t ask – where are the right-wing criminologists? A fair question, given that at least some who go into academic criminology are former cops, and while some of them may be liberal, some at least are right-wing.
Stop and search
Johnson hails his record as mayor, and deplores Theresa May who as Home Secretary in 2014 made ‘stop and search’ by police (which Johnson was all for, under Met Police commissioners Paul Stephenson and the ‘no-nonsense’ Bernard Hogan-Howe) more difficult, ‘again’, Johnson writes. Johnson calls it ‘infuriating’, ‘probably motivated not so much by a dislike of stop and search as by a general desire to clip the wings of the mayor’. Let’s pause here. Either Johnson is saying that the elected politician in charge of home affairs did something in public policy out of spite or to make a rival’s path harder; or Johnson is unfairly throwing mud over a fellow Conservative, who gave him a job as Foreign Secretary.
He ain’t Churchill
Johnson has a way with words, although one thing we learned during the early, worst, because uncharted, months of the covid pandemic, was that he was not the equal of Winston Churchill in terms of rhetoric when the country most needed rousing, or reassuring. His book including the chapter headings are peppered with phrases that he made his own, such as ‘Build back better’. One can only wonder, how did it all go wrong for him (and therefore, at the July 2024 election, which he touches on) so soon and so badly, once prime minister, once he ‘got Brexit done’ (another snazzy phrase, but hardly giving the impression life outside the European Union is smooth)?
Come-back
He evidently sees at least the possibility of a come-back, or a return to public affairs, something more substantial than journalism. That will not depend on him, entirely, but opponents, both Labour (he decries the Jeremy Corbin years as ‘semi Marxist’; the first word’s as cutting as the second) and Tory. Will the younger generation bring forth leaders that will make Johnson redundant? Johnson will have to bide his time, because he will want those who remember him as PM first time around to forget. For having won a thumping majority in the December 2019 election, by the summer of 2022 he alienated so many of his own party that he had given ministerial jobs to, that they resigned, and he had to. Why would they do that?
