The smoking gun in Boris Johnson’s book

Many parts of Boris Johnson’s memoirs are just what you would expect. It is buffoonish, stupid, arrogant, egotistical and packed with a string of out-and-out lies.

But the most eye-popping of its many tall tales has almost got lost among the ones designed to grab headlines and boost book sales. Not his claim to have tried to talk sense to Prince Harry (who on earth would ever ask Boris Johnson for relationship advice?) and not even the one about invading the Netherlands.

No, it is his claim that the real villain of Brexit was not him, his Leave campaign mate Michael Gove or the dogwhistler-in-chief Nigel Farage. In fact, he says, his former friend David Cameron was at fault for not having a post-Brexit plan and for waltzing off the stage humming to himself.

As the now increasingly elderly looking blob told ITV’s Tom Bradby: “What we expected… was that the Cameron government having called a referendum a ‘yes’, ‘no’ choice for the people – a leave, remain choice for the people – would bring forward a white paper.”

When asked the obvious question – why on earth would Cameron do such a thing when he was totally opposed to the very idea of Brexit? – Johnson continued: “Because every other European leader when their whole referendum decides, you know, once the people have voted, decides what to do and stays in office. So, it’s not normal for the prime minister, having asked for a referendum vote, suddenly to evacuate the stage.”

This is the real smoking gun in this book, and it is not what Johnson thinks. By castigating Cameron – who he lied to and then stabbed in the back over what side he would support – for not having a plan, he is really admitting that he did not have one either. That is a shameful admission.

We have confirmation from another source that this was the case. We have Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s biography of the Johnson era, which describes how as the results came in, an “ashen-faced and distraught” Johnson announced, “Oh shit, we’ve got no plan. We haven’t thought about it. I didn’t think it would happen.”

Thus tells you all you need to know about Johnson – that he not only campaigned with all his might for something he didn’t want to happen, but also instead of reflecting on the damage he had done, the pathetic pile of incompetent egotism decided to immediately stand for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

That was, after all, the plan all along, Brexit existed solely to get Boris Johnson into No.10. It was supposed to do that by him losing the referendum but so damaging his friend Cameron in the process that Johnson would be carried on the shoulders of the ERG down Downing Street, where he would be crowned as prime minister by a grateful nation. And if it meant shafting his country as well, that was fine with him.

One of the strangest aspects of this tale is that Johnson still boasts that Brexit has been a triumph. Yet for some reason he also says it is all Cameron’s fault. Both can’t be true, but both can be lies.

There is an obvious problem with being so inadequate that you have to lie through your teeth all the time and also blame everyone but yourself when things go wrong. It is that occasionally the two clash and the truth sneaks out without you noticing.

Never mind the crap about Prince Harry. Forget the SAS taking on the Dutch. All that is all smoke and mirrors, but this bit stinks of the truth.