Boris Johnson today reveals he will use his sensational new memoir to set out what he ‘really thinks’ about Rishi Sunak – and ‘how and why I learned to keep my old friend Michael Gove firmly in the wing mirror’.
The former Prime Minister’s new book, Unleashed, will be serialised on MailOnline from tomorrow and in the Daily Mail from Saturday, and is already tipped to become the political memoir of the century.
In a short video to promote it – and in typically colourful style – Mr Johnson promises to spill the beans on ‘which senior politician looks like a bullock having a thermometer shoved unexpectedly up his rectum’ and ‘how I became obsessed with the weirdly shaped nostrils of a certain prime minister’.
The publication of Mr Johnson’s memoir threatens to overshadow the Conservative Party conference which gets underway in Birmingham on Sunday.
It will set out his view of the Tory machinations that forced him out in the summer of 2022. And the former PM will deliver his verdict on the record of his successors, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – and ponder whether the Tories’ crushing election defeat this year could have been avoided.
He will also reflect on his political future after being cast out by his own MPs and a vengeful Labour Party. In his video clip today he poses the tantalising question: ‘Will I be coming back?’ adding: ‘Read the Daily Mail and find out.’
Boris Johnson today reveals he will use his sensational new memoir to set out what he ‘really thinks’ about Rishi Sunak
The book, which covers his years in politics, will detail the run up to the Brexit referendum, the furious campaign and the fallout from the biggest political earthquake in a generation.
Mr Johnson will set out his reaction to David Cameron’s shock decision to resign in the wake of the Leave vote – and how his battle to succeed him collapsed when he was betrayed by his Vote Leave colleague Mr Gove.
The former PM will also describe the fights with Parliament, the courts and his own MPs as he battled to deliver on the vote to leave the EU.
And he will reveal details of the tempestuous negotiations with EU leaders who feared that allowing Brexit to become a success could trigger the collapse of the whole bloc. In his promotional clip today, Mr Johnson says that French President Emmanuel Macron was ‘always personally charming’, but adds: ‘He really meant it when he said that Brexit Britain must be punished.’
Mr Johnson will also detail how his government grappled with a once-in-a-century pandemic – and tell for the first time the full story of how the Covid virus almost killed him.
The book will provide candid insights into his relationship with the late Queen, including his final meeting with the monarch when he travelled to Balmoral to tender his resignation just days before she died in September 2022.
In his video clip he says readers will also ‘discover what the Queen said to me after her incredible performance with James Bond at the 2012 opening ceremony of the Olympic Games’.