Former cabinet minister Rory Stewart has launched a blistering attack on Boris Johnson, branding the prime minister an “amoral character” and “the most accomplished liar in public life”.
Mr Stewart, who lost the Tory leadership contest last year to Mr Johnson and was later expelled by him from the Conservative parliamentary party, said the prime minister showed a “startling” lack of the virtues traditionally valued in politicians.
And he listed a string of occasions when he served under Mr Johnson in the Foreign Office when the then foreign secretary failed to follow through on projects that he had professed to support.
Mr Stewart made the comments in a review for the Times Literary Supplement of Tom Bower’s biography of Mr Johnson, The Gambler.
Rejecting Mr Bower’s generous account of Mr Johnson’s character, Mr Stewart said that the prime minister had reached the pinnacle of political life by flaunting, rather than hiding, his “lack of moral conviction”, acting as a “carnival lord of misrule” in order to capitalise on the public’s distrust of elites.
“Johnson is … the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister,” he said.
“He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.”
Mr Johnson claimed to be inspired by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and Athenian ruler Pericles, but his “lack of so many of the … virtues listed by Aristotle – temperance, generosity (he is notoriously reluctant to reach for his wallet), realistic ambition, truthfulness or modesty – is startling”, said the former international development secretary.
Mr Stewart said that as a Foreign Office minister, he was told by Mr Johnson to do more for “charismatic megafauna”, only for him to brush aside a proposed joint project with the Germany development agency to protect elephants in Zambia with the comment, “Germans? Nein, nein.”
After telling him to “sort out Libya”, Mr Stewart said Mr Johnson “switched off” when presented with a plan to do so. And he said Mr Johnson could not be persuaded to support a fund on cultural heritage despite having said it was “literally the only thing I care about in the world”.
Unlike other politicians, Mr Johnson’s dishonesty seemed to have “no clear political intent” and his decisions often ran counter to his claimed intentions, said Mr Stewart.
“Was it allergy to detail which meant that, two-and-a-half years after the Brexit vote, he still struggled to understand the Customs Union, was blind to the issue of Irish borders, and kept saying that we could have a transition period without an agreement?” Mr Stewart asked. “Why did he fail to grasp the implications of coronavirus in February?”
The prime minister had previously claimed to be a victim of the classical vice of “akrasia” – knowing the right thing to do but acting against his better judgement because of lack of self-control – wrote Mr Stewart.
But he said: “It is hard to accept that in every case he agrees on what is good, and intends it, but somehow frustrates himself from achieving it – rather than in fact having quite different beliefs, priorities and intentions.”
And he added: “Johnson often compares himself to Pericles on the grounds that they both enjoy good speeches, democratic engagement, big infrastructure and fame.
“But Pericles built the Parthenon, not the Emirates Cable Car. And if, like Johnson, he had made and lost a £1,000 bet, he would have wanted to pay it, and be known to have paid it (rather than sending Max Hastings an envelope with a note saying ‘cheque enclosed’ with no cheque).”
Mr Johnson lacked the sense of personal and national honour shown by Pericles and by former prime ministers like William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, said Mr Stewart.
Instead, he showed the “resilience, shamelessness and cunning” of the hero of a Norse myth who seized power through trickery and by embarrassing and defeating authority figures.
Rather than a classical philosopher, Mr Johnson was “an amoral figure operating in a much bleaker and coarser culture”, said Mr Stewart.
“It is in his interest – and that of other similar politicians around the world – to make that culture ever coarser. But unless we begin to repair our political institutions and nurture a society that places more emphasis on personal and political virtue, we will have more to fear than Boris Johnson.”
