(EXCLUSIVE) Boris Johnson: "They Were Looking at Engineering The Virus" And The Government Tried To Bribe Me!
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Do you really think I was deliberately partying and breaking the rules? It's all about leading by example, isn't it? But to say it was a party is a complete travesty. Seeing that photo when one of my friends can go to their grandmother's funeral is the most enraging thing. I think all gatherings should have been banned at number 10 because I think... What do you mean gatherings? Gatherings with alcohol and music and cake. You should never have allowed that to happen. Right. Absolutely.

apologize for that. The former prime minister of the UK whose reign included Brexit, COVID and the Ukraine war. He's one of the world's most famous politicians. On this point of Brexit, how did David Cameron react when you said you're going to vote leave? He said if you come out and support leave, I will

you up forever. Because if you support Remain, you can have a top five job in the cabinet. But is that not a bit corrupt? And is that how the jobs are dished out in the government at the moment? Look, I'm sad to say that it's probably been the way politics has been since the dawn of time. And then this letter you wrote about the decision to leave or stay within the EU, which was unpublished. You seemed torn. So do you regret Brexit? Well,

The next big thing was the pandemic. There was a lot of stuff we didn't know. And I think it almost certainly was a lab accident. They were looking at engineering viruses and ways that they could manipulate it. Sadly, something went wrong. When you talk about lockdowns, you refer to them as bonkers, which is strange hearing it from the guy that put the rules in place. Well, did the benefits of lockdowns

outweigh the very, very severe damage done to kids. What do you think the answer to that question is? Honestly, I think... Boris, I just wanted to ask a few more things. Trump or Kamala, who's the best for international relations? How many kids do you have? Charlotte Owen. You're not related, Terry. And then you have quite a distinct persona. People describe you as being a buffoon. When I first saw you, I thought you were a parody from Bo Selector. Oh.

Is it calculated? Well, to get people interested in politics, you've got to sugar the pill. But also, your mother said you had certain mechanisms to cope with pain because your mother is sent to a psychiatric facility when you were 10. I read there was physical violence in the house and then at 14, your parents get divorced. Yes, we were in Somerset. My father told us and I was, look, I was cross and said, you know, so why did you have us then? Boris. Boris.

Steve. What do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand the man that you are today? I think the key thing is my wonderful, happy, very kind of peregrinating childhood in the company of my siblings. The key fact was that after 18 months of existence, my sister Rachel was born. And

Ever after, it was just a constant struggle to the pretense of primacy with my siblings. But I think it is probably true to say that healthy, incessant sibling interaction, competition, whatever you want to call it, rivalry, definitely played a part in my formation. And we used to make fun of it, too. We used to think it was rather pathetic. We all knew that there was a culture of trying to

To be to say, oh, little baby wants to win. And so we were kind of, we competed, but we also deprecated the competition. At that age, say before the age of 10, how does that manifest in terms of a feeling? Because you can, in hindsight, say, okay, I was competitive, but how did it feel? It felt like fun.

But this idea that Rachel came along and then you were vying for attention and competition with her, how does that feel when you're under the age of 10? Because your father, at least, was very, very busy as a man. So I'm presuming he wasn't necessarily so present. I was reading that you moved house 32 times in 14 years. Yeah, but that, okay. I mean, he was, but really, I think I speak for all of my siblings now when I say that you really couldn't have had a more

loving, caring, you know, they both of them, I mean, they're both very busy, both my mother and father. Mother was a painter. My father, yeah, writer, did a huge number of things. But they did invest a lot of time in us. I mean, really a lot. It sounded like you had a rough sort of first 10 years of life because you also had glue ear, which made you deaf a little bit. Yes, well, I don't know. I think we need to look very carefully at the... I definitely had...

and I had tonsillitis and I spent a lot of time in St. Bart's and had my adenoids out, my tonsillitis, everything like that. And I did have gluia. But my deafness, there's no trace of it now particularly. And I kind of wonder whether it was in fact a,

a coming means to avoid my mother's questions and I think look I mean this I don't know it may be that I wasn't as deaf as as all that so I mean would you ever do that if your mother was asking you something you didn't actually want to engage and I don't think I'm that kind of eight years old your mother Charlotte um she had four children you were the oldest of those four um

She seems to be a really important character in your life. In fact, when I opened up the first couple of pages of the book, you dedicate the book in memory of Charlotte, your mother. I do. She was an artist. She had made paintings of her children, but also other things. I saw some of those paintings. I did some research on those paintings. But one of the sort of really pivotal moments in her early upbringing is that she suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder. She did, yeah. You're, what, 10 years old when your mother is...

put as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital and you're apart for eight months something like that yes what what impact does that have on you in terms of shaping shaping the Boris that we know today if any I mean I remember it all very very well and it's hard to say exactly what impact it had on me but I think what certainly happened was that all four of us all four of the children that

that my mother had. We definitely kind of coagulated as a group because it was a tough time. There were aspects that were tough because, you know, she wasn't always there. And so I think it did breed a certain kind of group solidarity. And she always kind of blamed herself for not being there for the eight months, whatever period it was. And I remember...

feeling very strongly that that was unfair and that she actually, you know, did an amazing job. And, you know, you couldn't have asked for more. Did you notice anything unusual about her behaviour before she was taken? Yes, so the OCD thing is absolutely right. She did have that. And, you know, it was very difficult. And I'm sure people who are watching this know exactly what it is. But she had lots of different...

patterns of behaviour. One of them was about cleanliness. So she would wash her hands and then she would realise in order to turn the tap off, she'd have to touch the faucet, the spigot, and she didn't want to do that because that would make her hands dirty again, she thought. But this is a very well-known symptom. And she totally got over it. She totally got over it. She got through it. Why was she...

Sent to a psychiatric facility? Well, I guess because she's... I think... That's a jolly good question. I don't really know the answer. I think she probably said that she thought she could benefit from therapy. And that's what she and my father decided was the best way forward. But I...

I honestly don't know the answer to that. And who looked after you while she was in that facility at 10 years old? Well, my father was there and we had a wonderful series of au pair girls and nannies and so on and so forth. And at 14 years old? They were all great too. But, you know, I don't want to give the impression, which would not be fair, that my mother kind of was...

absent for long periods or wasn't a presence in our lives because she really was. It was more her words. I saw her doing an interview where she was talking about her belief that you had certain mechanisms to cope with the pain of her going to the facility for eight months, but then also the divorce when you were 14. I thought those ages, that sort of puberty age where you're figuring yourself out to get such a jolt of bad news is...

I think that's, I mean, classically, yes. And look, I'm not going to, I think you're onto it. You know, there's an element of self-defense that then, you know, many kids in our position then develop. But I do insist that

They both remained remarkable parents. It wasn't like we were suddenly cut adrift by either of them. On the contrary. Self-defense. Well, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm quoting her on me, by the way. So I'm quoting you, quoting her. But you were there, so you understand. Yeah, but I mean, it didn't occur to me at the time. Yeah, I don't think it can for a 14-year-old. But in hindsight, as a man, you go, okay, that was... I don't know, but I mean, but maybe...

I've got nothing else to compare it to, right? You're growing up anyway. You're becoming more self-reliant. You've got to do things for yourself. So I think, so you go back to where it was with my brothers and sisters, I think certainly it was another thing that drove us all together. Why self-defense? And how did that self-defense manifest in terms of behavior? I'd be the worst type of...

Well, let me think. How did I... How did my self-defense manifest? I suppose I became... Yes, unquestionably, it was painful. So how did I protect myself against that? Well, one obvious thing to do, which I suppose we all do, and I think I find the best therapy for every type of pain, emotional pain, is to try to lose yourself in your work. Emotional pain is...

about a lot about it's about self-esteem so so like with when parents split up um you know you the shock is well you you can't love us that much but if you're doing this right that's the that's the what it's all about which is not true of course but that's what the children that's what children feel they feel it's their failure there's something wrong with them and that's not true but that's how kids feel i suppose to protect myself against that like

I had a natural avenue to build up my self-esteem, and that was academic work, that kind of thing. But again, I suppose another type of competition. And it is a good therapy. Work is a great reliever. Or distraction. Well, it depends on your sort of theory of psychology, but I think both. Why did they divorce? Do you know?

I think, formally speaking, what had happened was that, you know, my mother had simply decided she wanted to make another life and she, you know, she found someone wonderful and all the rest of it. But I think that my father and mother, the weird thing about their divorce was that they both continued to be very strongly affectionate towards each other. And

Again, I'm not trying to minimize the psychological importance of any of this stuff for us as kids, but that was immensely fortifying because it was so obvious that it wasn't like they were at war. I mean, they had big bust-ups, but we felt that there was a real residue of love and affection between them, even if it was... I mean, I think the way we explained it to ourselves was that

There was still a residue of love and affection, but that it was just practically impossible for them to continue. And so that was how we rationalized it. And they both found other people and were very happy. You say bust-ups, but from everything that I've read, there was physical violence in the household when you were younger.

Yeah, well, this is something that has been alleged by, sadly, by one of my biographers. So it's sort of pompously to say one of my biographers. Some guy wrote a book and put that stuff in. You know, all I can tell you is I have no direct knowledge of what he said. I don't want to get into it because I don't want to be disrespectful to my mother's memory. And I certainly don't want to say anything that would cause problems

paying my embarrassment to my father. So, but I can, what I can say is I had as a child, no direct knowledge of it myself. What did their relationship teach you that marriage and love was? They, they, they, so they met at university. They clearly loved each other. And I think if you ask my siblings, they'll, they'll, they'll tell you that. So that, you know, it was upsetting when, when they split up because... Do you remember the day they told you? Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. I do. I do. It was, it was, uh,

We were in Somerset, and my father said that we all had to go up by the gate towards the engine shed. So we went and stood by the gate towards the engine shed, and we were told this, you know, sad news. What did he say? I don't remember exactly. I don't remember exactly, but I was, look, I was cross and said, you know, so why did you have us then? Because I thought, well, you know.

You know, I think it is upsetting. And kids do take, you know, kids take it upon themselves, right? And so they do think that there must be some fault or mistake in themselves. And that isn't true. I mean, you know, it's very important for kids not to blame themselves for these things. So I think that, you know, back to the point I was making earlier on with you, I think, you know, you do need to feed the...

your self-esteem and you need to get yourself back up again. And so work was my, was my way of doing it. I could see the, um, the emotion in your face when you talk about that moment as if you were teleported back to that moment for a second. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it may be, I mean, look, I mean, the, the actual, the truth is I'm, I'm now told in retrospect that that is what I said. I don't personally remember it. Do you remember how it feels? Yeah, but look, I mean,

Yes, but I really wouldn't want to over egg it because my parents were incredibly kind to each other after that.

You know, when you do this and you throw the coal in the air... I'm just stoking the furnace of my self-esteem. You have quite a distinct persona. Much of where you sort of first came to public knowledge was on the TV show Have I Got News For You. Yeah, I know. I think the BBC, they live in permanent state of horror about what they did there because I think that's one of the reasons that they... I think they have a terrible sense of corporate guilt that they unleashed this thing.

Is there a link between your persona, comedic kind of, you know, people often describe you as being a bit of a buffoon. I actually thought you were a, this is just being honest, because I feel like it's important to be honest to someone if you've said it behind their back. But when I first saw you on the screen, I was a very young man. I must have been...

I don't know, 14. And I thought you were a parody from Bo Selector. Like I thought, I thought it was a parody, but then I came to learn it. And when you did the mayor thing, et cetera, that you were a politician and who you were and where you'd come from. But the, the external persona is very atypical of a politician. Right. And your general comedic sense that shows up in the book a lot. Um, you were very comedic on how I got news, how I have a good news for you. Um,

Is that at all linked? When did that behaviour show up? Because there was two points of reference that I was mulling. One is things your sister said about where you sort of learnt that comedy was a useful device. And the second one is something Jimmy Carr actually said to me. He said to me that... He goes, if you ever meet anyone comedic or a comedian, don't ask them if they're depressed. Ask them which one of their parents they were trying to cheer up or win favour from. And I wondered if all... I don't know. I think that...

One of the things I've tried to do in politics is to get people interested. And one of the things I've tried to do in Unleashed, which is unquestionably a mixture, there's a lot of serious argument in it, but also I'm trying to tell the story in as readable a way as possible. And you have to use, you've got to sugar the pill.

So it's like a packet of digestive biscuits. So each of the chapters has some solid wheat germ pabulum, but it's covered with a little layer of chocolate. So you go down the packet compulsively, and each of those 60 chapters, I think there are 60 chapters in that book, is designed to...

give you a bit of both. So are you the pill that was sugared? You sugared yourself? No, well, it's the fact of the great things that I think that we did. We took back control of our country. We went for a type of independence that people thought was impossible. No, I'm specifically on the persona. There were complicated arguments about the Middle East. As a guide to the last...

15 years in politics. I think it's pretty useful. But I mean, I worked in marketing for about 15 years. So I find it quite fascinating that right now in the world, it seems that there's a certain type of atypical personality that's breaking through and being resonant. Is your persona a...

carefully constructed marketing strategy or is because someone someone that knows you referred to as a bit of a loner in private and a quite quiet person yeah no no i live i so i'm very i have a wonderful life um i i spend my time i i do a lot of painting um i i do a lot of reading and writing um i muck around muck around with my kids it doesn't take much to

you know, for my cup to run over with happiness. But you know all this stuff like... I know, but that's... I've always had a lot of energy. I've always had a lot of energy. You understand that that's part of your persona, right? Well, what am I supposed to do about that? But I'm trying to understand, is it calculated? Is it something that you've thought about and you understand is effective? Because they describe you as being one of the best sort of election winners ever.

of our of our time i think what people will i don't know i mean what people will also say is that um i haven't really changed i mean you know going back to your earlier earlier line of questioning i can see where you're going with this you're saying as part of the strategy for defense do we adopt comedic persona or or whatever um i don't think that was i think it was just

With my brothers and sisters in our family, there was a kind of horror of, you know, being dull or not saying anything. We had to, you know, we all had to amuse each other. Why? I was only polite, you know, because it was more fun. Your brothers and sisters are less amusing than you are. I wouldn't say that.

That's a very controversial thing to say. You would say that. No, I would not say that. You would say that. Who, I would say that? Yeah. No, I've met Leo. Have you met my brother Leo? No, I've not met him. Well, then you've got to get Leo on this show. But your sister... You've got to get my brother Joe. Yes, you're... You've met my brother Joe? Honestly, this is... Look, honestly, there's a serious risk of... We had a wonderful childhood, and they wouldn't deny this, because we all...

you know, we had a lot of fun trying to interest and amuse each other and, to your point, probably our parents as well. That's not to say that we were, you know, we didn't do kind of charades and Christmas masks and plays and God knows what. Jeremy Corbyn said, Boris is a calculated intelligent who lives in a persona which is the opposite. Is that true at all? No, I mean, I think that...

I wish you were true in some ways, but I don't. Because most of your videos on YouTube are you tackling a small child while playing rugby and things like this. By the way, I reckon he could be much older than he looked. The guy in Japan. The kid you tackled. The kid in Japan, the one I accidentally knocked over in Japan. They're all comedy videos. Yeah, but he could get it anyway. Eaton.

It's pretty crazy to me. So you went to Eton at 13 years old. The crazy thing for me is that approximately 20 of the 57 individuals who have served as prime minister went to Eton, which is roughly 35% of the UK prime ministers were educated at Eton, roughly. For me, when I read that, I go, something's broken here. Because for one school to contribute so many of the most powerful people in the land feels like a little bit of...

Like someone's got their hands on the scale or there's some kind of... That's why you need to read the book. Because the book contains... This is the whole theme of the book, right? Not the whole theme of the book. It's one of the major themes of the book. It's about levelling up. Yeah. And if you remember what I say about it, I don't know whether you got through that bit, but I... So I went there on a scholarship and it was fantastic. I was very lucky. I was paid for by Henry VI, the legacy of Henry VI. And I remember feeling...

this incredible sense of amazement that there were kids from some of the most famous, illustrious families in Britain who plainly didn't have much intellectual interest, academic spark in them. And kids who'd come from backgrounds all over the country

who were incredible. And my insight at school, very, very, very young, was that there's a fundamental problem, which is that there is ambition and energy and genius and talent, probably completely evenly distributed throughout the UK population. And opportunity is not. Yeah, I agree. And that is the problem. That is the basic problem in our country.

And this country has more potential, arguably, than any other major European economy because it's so imbalanced. And if you look at the schools like mine, the performance in London and the Southeast in the UK economy, it's actually unlike France, Germany, Italy, Holland. It's also totally unlike the United States. And so I decided very early on that...

there was massive, massive wasted potential. And so one of the things, so when I became mayor of London, one of my biggest projects was really, the biggest thing we did was really all about trying to lift the boroughs that people said were locked in a permanent cycle of disadvantage. And, you know, you know what I mean? The inner donut of London had me where, you know, all that. And it was total rubbish.

Total rubbish. And you can change people's aspirations, but you can also change the culture of achievement. And I saw it happen in London. I was only mayor for eight years. But in that period, you really did see the city change in quite a significant way. And I believe very, very strongly that that is fundamentally what needs to happen in the whole of the UK.

And I think that this is the job of politicians. I don't care whether they're Labour or Conservative or whoever. I think that that is what we need to be doing. And I think there are very simple ingredients. There's limits to what politicians can do. But there are some simple things that politicians need to be doing to make that happen. Has the Conservative government done well enough at levelling up the whole of the UK over the last decade? Obviously not.

Because it's not happening fast. I mean, it is happening. Leveling up is happening. But it's nothing like fast enough. And, you know, so I was proud of doing things like running out gigabit broadband from 70% to 69%, 70% of households in three years, which is not bad going. I was proud of all the infrastructure stuff we were doing. I think it's a mistake to stop that.

Infrastructure is crucial for levelling up. Transport infrastructure is a great equaliser of opportunity. So things like HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail, we should be going on with those, in my view. And, you know, whatever my defects as a politician are,

I think one thing I was good at was getting a lot of stuff done fast and driving projects. But Eton was, back to your question, that youthful experience was, because I was also at primary school in London, and I really, really decided that this was, because I think our country has this problem

worse than most comparable countries. But if you think of how strong the UK economy already is, then imagine what we could achieve if we levelled up, right? Do you know this stat around Eton, that 20 out of the 57 individuals who've served as prime minister came from there? Isn't that just the clearest example of the fact that... It is, yeah. ..the people that are coming into politics, but also generally the people that are getting to the top in society...

are starting with an unfair advantage to some degree. Well, I think what it shows is that, I mean, you could probably point to cultures like France or wherever where a lot of the country is run by the people from the great schools. But yeah, I mean, fundamentally...

Yes. So I think that the great choice for anybody who's interested in public policy is, well, okay, this is clearly a problem. It's clearly wrong. It's clearly imbalanced. What do you do? Do you set out to launch a kind of cultural assault, Pol Pot style, on the successful institutions? Or do you say, actually, what we're going to do is...

try to spread opportunity. So it's more like America. And if you look at America, the growth rates have spectacularly outperformed European growth rates. There's a different sense. People have a different sense of what they can do. And we need to have a culture in the UK that

where people don't feel prisoners of their geography, of their background. But that certainly is the case, isn't it, at the moment in the UK? It's too much the case. I mean, it's less than it was. I went undercover in a school in Liverpool that was very poorly ranked on the Ofsted rankings. And I remember being in that school and just thinking, how on earth are these kids going to have a chance at...

Well, they're not going to have a chance if their teachers tell them that they're never going to get into a Russell Group university. Well, what I observed when I was there was I observed one teacher running from one classroom

to the next classroom. This was under a Tory government trying to teach two classes at the same time. And I remember sitting down with her because I got kicked out of school then I was unexposed from school. So I had a bit of my own prejudices about school. I thought teachers were the problem. And what I came to learn from speaking to the headmaster of the school was that this is effectively run like a business. And the amount of students that choose that school every year determines how much money the school is given by the conservative government. And the amount of the parents choose schools based on the league table. And the league table is determined by grade.

So really, if you think about the structure here, the reason why they're driving kids like me to do subjects, which I absolutely hated when I was really interested in business, was because if they don't get me to get 12 A's to C's or whatever the nonsense is in certain subjects...

less they rank poorly in the league table that's right less parents choose the school they get less money from the government and it's this downward spiral and because this school so people are people are naturally skewed to doing subjects that perhaps that are no interest of them they had me pushing some plastic baby around the school in health and social care when i was running businesses in the school and i was i was spending so much time in my in exclusion unit because i was falling asleep in classrooms turns out i had adhd i wasn't interested in these things but i was obsessed in these things the system is that

is designed to just sort of spread bet you across multiple subjects. And you're a failure if you're not good at that. But going back to the economics of the school, I watched this teacher run from one classroom to the other, teaching two classrooms at the same time,

And she told me that because less students had chosen that school this year, she was having to pay for the footballs and the pencils in her classroom. This school, I observed the quality of education. With all due respect, they did the best with what they had.

But, oh my God, it doesn't compare. It doesn't compare to a lot of the other schools that I've observed. And I thought, God, these children in this school are starting out life with a significant disadvantage. And much of that is just down to the funding situation. They don't have the teachers. The teachers are dropping like flies because they're getting sick because they're understaffed. And I just thought that's such a, if we think about, you know, what's the furthest upstream thing we can do to give people access

a fair shake in life so that they can become a prime minister or a CEO or whatever they want to be. It starts there. It starts with education and just giving everyone the same sort of equality of opportunity. But right now, and especially under the sort of last 10, 15 years of government, that's certainly not been the case. I think I probably ought to resist some of that because, yeah, I mean, I think teaching is incredible. I tried to be a teacher myself. It's unbelievably difficult and demanding job.

And I hugely admire teachers. When I came in in 2019, we put a lot of money into the education budgets and made sure teachers were going to be paid. New teachers are starting to have at least £30,000 and put a lot of money into further education. And actually, if you look at that period of the Conservative government,

administration, I think most fair-minded people will say, actually, look, the UK went up the PISA rankings for literacy and numeracy. Most people actually would say that education was one of the things where things did get better. And I think the driving out of the whole academy program, I mean, not remotely denying what you say about the teacher you saw being totally run ragged. And, you know, the

they need the maximum possible support. But if you look at the data, schools did get appreciably better in this country during that period. Now, what I wanted to do was really turbocharge that and give not just school children, but also kids who'd left school at 16, the types of skills that they were going to need to compete and to make sure that

Business felt that they had in the schools, in the F.E. colleges, in wherever it was, they had the talent that they needed to invest in that area because that's ultimately what it's all about. It's about having the confidence that the state is doing enough to deliver private sector investment. That is ultimately what will transform business.

the neighborhood. And you get instead of getting the vicious cycle of decline that you talked about, you'll get a you'll get a positive feedback loop. And parents want to move that want to send their kids to the school, as cool, get a good, good reputation. And, and so things will things will turn around, as they did in London, look at London schools. You know, I can't, I can't comment on the school you mentioned in Liverpool. But London schools really, really changed a lot.

I think even with the levelling up thing, one of the easiest ways to level up without building the train line would just be to improve the quality of education in these areas. Sure, and I think if you look at what the Conservatives did, they really focused on that. And they focused on the curriculum, they focused on standards, they focused on quality. And I think that was very important because, you know, it's very, very important to fund schools properly. But, you know, you shouldn't underestimate what a great teacher can achieve.

and the difference that they can make. And, you know, if you emphasize quality and you emphasize attainment and you focus on that, I'm slightly worried about what's happening now with Ofsted. I mean, I can understand why people don't like one word, Ofsted, gradings, but parents need to know

whether a school is going to deliver. You went to Oxford University, then you had a job as a management consultant, which lasted only a week, I hear. Yeah, I wasn't really cut out for management consultancy, no. You then become a journalist. Yes. You become a journalist for the next couple of years. You then appear on Have I Got News For You. Is it now faded from the memory? It's slightly fading. It's still a great show, but it's still slightly fading. You were then editor of The Spectator. You mustn't tell Ian Hislop that it's faded. Yeah.

You were an MP at the House of Coms. Then eventually you ran for London Mayor. Were you...

Did you expect to win the London mayorship? Well, you see, this is the way I hadn't got the faintest idea. I mean, the thing was that I'd actually been quite an admirer of Ken Livingstone in the old days. And I thought that he had some bold and original ideas for London. I mean, I thought he was good on the environment. He was good on air quality. He was good on, I thought, there were some good things that he did.

But it was clear that after eight years, you know, you start to get a bit ragged. Did you think you would win? I suppose I must have done. I suppose I must have thought it was a good chance. It was a pretty exhausting campaign. If you ask me if I thought I would win something, I can tell you in hindsight whether I thought I'd win. I did soccer last year, this year, and I can tell you if I thought I was going to win. Did you think you were going to win when you ran?

I thought there was a good-ish chance, but it wasn't obvious. I mean, I think the bookies didn't really have me as the favourite for a long time. I think it then changed... I can't remember exactly, but... You know, you make your own luck, right? I mean, I had to go in there and make the arguments. I mean, I think that one of the things that Ken didn't pay enough attention to was crime. And I thought there was a real issue that needed to be addressed, and that was the...

the numbers of teenage kids being murdered. And we really, really went at that hard. And again, it was one of those things where, when I, together with a lot of other people, Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor, and Stephen Greenhalgh, Paul Stevenson, the Commissioner, Bernard Hogan Howe, who followed him, we really, really tried to fix knife crime and gang crime. I used to literally lie awake at night worrying about it because it was so on me.

You know, every single casualty, having to talk to the parents, you know, the misery of their suffering. We really felt it. And it was a good example of democracy because we'd pledged to fix it. And if we didn't, we had nowhere to go.

one of the things I'm proud of is we cut the murder rate in London during my time by 50%. In 2016, at 52 years old, you become co-leader alongside Michael Gove of the campaign to take Britain out of the EU. When I look at your premiership as Prime Minister of the UK, there's three really significant moments, isn't there, that typically don't fall all in one person's

role as Prime Minister, you had the Brexit issues, you had COVID, and you had the Ukraine war. Yeah. And before I before I talk about those particular issues, in hindsight, now, how do you feel about the fact that you had to contend with three generational crises and issues? But, you know, that's the job of being Prime Minister. But most Prime Ministers don't get sure, but but, you know, pandemic, but leaving the EU, some Prime Ministers have had

wars some prime ministers have had uh terrible crises uh sterling crises terrible do you wish no i i i think actually do you think you'd still be in politics now and as prime minister if you if you got a different hand no i think there are i think honestly i think there are other reasons for for for that i mean i'm sorry i'm proud of of the things that we did with with

The country, I think it was very, you know, people now say, Brexit war. Actually, you know, one of the points I make in Unleashed is that if you look at it, the model of national independence that we got was crucial. So full freedom to do what we wanted in legislation and regulation. That was actually crucial when it came to that pandemic, because we were able to vaccinate faster than any other European country, much faster. Did you think you were going to win the Brexit vote?

Honestly? When I was outside London, yes. When I was inside London, no. So whenever I travelled around the country, I thought, my God, people are going to vote. But when I got back into the metropolis, it felt very different. So if you had to put your house on it, remain or leave in terms of the probability of the outcome, your predicted outcome, which one would you have voted on? Well, I suppose were basically more for remain than for vote.

But I sort of thought that our voters were more motivated. So I hoped that they would come out. I hoped that they would, that I was sure. But it did, but on a scale that no one had foreseen. I mean, because we had 17.4 million people voted Leave, which was the biggest number voted for any proposition in history. And, but, you know, there were plenty of times when I, you know, you could be in a, I was at,

St Andrews University in Scotland for my daughter's graduation day. And you really wouldn't have thought that we were going to vote Leave talking to those people there. So, you know, it depended. Do you know what's interesting? When I was reading your book, but also when I was reading some of your previous writings, you seemed really conflicted on which way to go, Leave or Remain. Right up until you wrote your sort of first announcement piece that you were supporting Leave, you seemed to be really, really conflicted.

The reasons for not leaving were, it seemed to me, to be more to do with Britain's duty to the rest of Europe, our need to be good partners, our need not to be negative, to be friendly. Those were the things that worried me. The positive reasons for leaving. People point at this letter.

which was unpublished. You know the letter I'm referring to. The unpublished letter you wrote about the decision to leave or stay within the EU. Is this, no, you mean the article? The unpublished article. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where you said, here's some of the phrases from that piece. Think of Britain, think of the rest of the EU, think of the future, think of the desire of our children and our grandchildren to live and work in other European countries, to sell things there, to make friends, perhaps to find partners there. I like the sound of freedom. I like the sound of restoring democracy. But what are the downsides?

And here we must be honest. There is the worry about Scotland, about the possibility that the English-only leave vote could lead to the breakup of the Union. There is the Putin factor. We don't want to do anything to encourage more shirtless swaggering from the Russian leader, not the Middle East, not anywhere. And then there is the whole geostrategic anxiety. Britain is a great nation, a global force for good. It is surely a boon for the world.

and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU. Lastly, this is a market on our doorstep, ready for future exploitation by British firms. The membership fee seems rather small for all that access. Why are we so determined to turn our back on it? Shouldn't our policy be like our policy on cake? Pro-having it and pro-eating it, pro-Europe and pro-rest of the world? So when I read that, but then I also, I read the...

the very vivid description you gave of that night when you were trying to make your decision in your book, Unleashed, and you seemed torn. But the guy that went out and campaigned didn't seem torn. There was a real lack of nuance in the campaign, but there's such a huge amount of nuance in both the moment you were making the decision and the articles you wrote about that decision. There are arguments both ways. And I say it in the book. And it's certainly true that, as I said just now,

The case for Steyn is, I think, one about not seeming to be hostile, not seeming to be detached. But I had to decide, because being in the EU isn't like just being in a club where the rules don't change. It's a project to create a United States of Europe with a single currency, with a single parliament, and so on. And...

I thought that we weren't ever going to get the choice again, the chance again, to have national democratic independence. And as I said, so I wrote, so that article you just quoted was a sort of pastiche of a counter argument, which I wrote for myself as an exercise after I'd already written the piece to come out. And I wanted to

set them side by side and to think. But that's nuanced, but the campaign wasn't nuanced. But if you read the other article, you'll see the points that I came down in favour of. And that was about having full national independence and be able to do things your own way. And the trouble with staying in the EU was that it meant that we were going to become less and less democratic.

And in the end, you've got to be able to, as a politician, you've got to be able to answer the question, who puts you in authority over me? And how can I remove you from office?

And the problem with the EU is there's no way they can answer that question. They're not democratically elected. Is there not a way you can reform the relationship with the EU while being in the EU? You know, it's interesting because I think I was thinking of a football analogy as you were talking there. And right now Manchester United, my team, are having a bit of struggle, right? And my friends in the group chat are saying, do you think that we should get rid of the manager? And I'm saying when you think about making a decision like that, you also have to factor in...

what you do after, i.e. who replaces the manager. So many fans would just say, sack the manager. But then the question becomes, but then what? And it was quite clear in your book that although you wanted to leave the EU, you had no idea what the plan would be thereafter. And in fact... Well, no, but what we needed to do was take back control. And so... That's like fire the manager. I'm saying, but then what? It wasn't... I was just wanting to win an argument with the public about their democracy.

and whether they should control it or not. And I thought that ultimately we had to do that. And I think that if you look at, so going back to the points that we were talking about earlier to growth rates in America and Europe, you couldn't say that the EU model has been economically successful. Not at all. It's got chronically bad growth rates, inflation,

very low innovation by comparison with the United States. Something is not working. So whatever they're doing in Brussels to provide this great body of regulation, it's not actually delivering results for the people of Europe. And if you... Sorry, I want to be clear. When compared to America? Well, so from 2008 on to 15... Take the 15 years 2008, 2020, to whatever, to 2003, 2003.

But does that mean that the EU is doing something wrong or that the Americans are doing something right? Because when I think of America, I think of insane innovation. A bit of both. A lot of both. The Americans, by the way, would never dream of trading away national sovereignty over anything. They just don't.

They never, they never, they never in any way... NATO is a bit of a pact where they've... See, Americans have complete hegemony in NATO. I mean, you know, that's the... But they joined forces to make the sum greater than the parts. Yeah, but, you know, there's no... The EU provides a body of new and a continuously evolving body of new law, which the British Parliament can't change. And so to get back to... So why, I mean...

I'm not pretending it wasn't a difficult decision. It was a difficult decision for the reasons that we've gone into. But I wanted the country, our country, to be legislatively free again. And at the heart of the book, you know, you talk about the pandemic being the most difficult thing. It was very, very difficult.

And it was very difficult to persuade the British public to find ways of stopping the spread of the disease. But one thing we did better than any other European country was vaccinate. And one reason we were able to vaccinate so fast is because we had regulatory freedom of exactly the kind...

I mean, it was a complete fluke, but it turned out to be exactly the kind that I had advocated. We'll talk about that. And so that, for me, was absolutely crucial. We'll talk about that. I just want to make sure I'm clear, because if I'm not clear moving forward, then my audience aren't going to be clear. This idea of freedom, if we take the analogy of a parachute, if I cut the cords, I'm free.

But I'm also in danger unless I have a paraglider waiting to catch me. And my point here is I understand all the big emotional words, that freedom, take back control, et cetera. It sounds compelling to me. But as I said with the football analogy, what's the plan thereafter? And I think I actually don't want it. So you're talking about the parachute, right? And cutting the cords of the parachute. Right.

Actually, it was the other way around. It was because we'd come out of the EU that we were able to equip ourselves with a parachute faster than anybody else. And we were able to get out of the burning plane faster and to get to ground safely faster because we'd taken back control of our regulatory freedom.

And that meant that by March 2021, we'd vaccinated 45% of the adult population and of the older people. I think we'd done almost over 80. We'd done almost 100%. And that was incredible. If you remember, we had... We'll talk about the vaccines in a second. In those early days, but the two things are connected. In those early days, we had thousands, up to 1,000 people dying every day. And so it was...

incredibly important that we were able to give elderly and vulnerable people in the UK a protection from a lethal disease. On this point of Brexit, though, in your book, you say you almost sort of disconnect yourself from the fact that there had to be a plan associated with the decision, because you seem almost angry that people would expect you to have the plan, even though you led the campaign. Yeah. So...

I mean, I'm trying to make the connection between Brexit and the real world and why Brexit delivers value. Was there a plan for leaving? So, but on the, in 2016, and I think what you're really saying is, what was our plan for the referendum outcomes?

So everybody who campaigned to leave, were we expecting to win? Were we expecting to form the next government? Let me quote your book. This is a good promotion for your book, so you'll like this. Never at any point in that campaign did we, Boris and Michael Gove, discuss a future leave-based government because we did not imagine that there would be, would have...

We would have to be in charge of government. The government stated policy was to implement the referendum result. It was a result. It was a referendum, not an election. We had no plans for government, no plans for negotiations because it was not our job.

And in so far as the next few days were chaotic, which they were, it is utterly infuriating that we should be blamed. It was up to the government to announce the plan to withdraw. It was up to the government to begin negotiations. So this is, I mean, this is, this is a huge issue because in the context of business. Because I think there's a fundamental misconception. When a government decides to put something to the people in a referendum,

The government is not saying, oh, you know, if it goes against our, you know, any particular position, we'll disappear. But the government said they wanted to remain. In France, for instance, Francois Mitterrand had a referendum on, I can't remember which, I think it was the Maastricht Treaty, or it was one of the treaties that he lost the vote.

And he didn't resign. He didn't disappear. Plenty of European leaders have had referendums on the EU and they've gone against them, but they haven't vanished from the scene. And so, you know, let me put this the other way around. Imagine that Gove and I, or the whole of the Leave team, had been specifically campaigning in the Leave vote

to form the next government and to install ourselves as the rulers of the country. People would have said, this is not about...

You're talking... All your arguments are designed to advance your political careers. You're not talking about the issue of leave or remain. You're talking about a plan to take over the government. I'm not a politician. I'm just a member of the public. I'm trying to explain why that was not possible. I get it, but as a member of the public, I think if you're leading the charge for an outcome, you must have looked a couple of steps further to think about the implications and the reality of...

of this outcome like you must have had okay we can do it like this i assume that the government would have bring would have a white paper that said that brought they they were going to bring forward the options for the country and the plan to negotiate and a plan to and a plan to would to do what they said they were going to do but the government including your friend david cameron said this is a really bad idea he so one would one would take from that that the plan is not a good one

that they've looked at all the available options post-leaving and there's no good options here. So if the people in charge were saying we should not leave, there is no good plan, shouldn't we have listened to them?

Well, no, because I think they were wrong. The way that I see it as a member of public is I see two people stood at a cliff edge and you've got one guy called David, one guy called Boris. And David has said, listen, I'm taking you to the cliff edge because it's your right to make this decision, but do not jump. And this other guy called Boris is going, jump. I would assume that Boris knows something about how we survive once we start falling. But to find out that Boris had no plan and thought David was going to pull out the parachute for me is like...

David Cameron didn't have a plan. The problem was that we then had to find ourselves... Because David, Prime Minister Cameron, then disappeared from the scene immediately, as I describe in the book. We then had a chaotic period where we had to work out what the hell we were going to do because it was clear that...

we were going to, somebody was going to have to take over and lead us through it. Did David Cameron react badly when you told him, when he thought that you might be voting to leave? Because you talk about in the book he swore at you. Yes, I did. But I mean, I describe it in the book. What did he say to you? He said, he said, he said...

I, well, I said, look, I have, I was really struggling with this because I didn't see how I could consistently, because he'd offered me, he said, if you come out and support Remain, you can have a top five job in the cabinet. I couldn't work out what a top five job was. And then he, and then he said,

And then I said, well, look, I was finding it very difficult because I'd written lots and lots of articles pointing out the democratic problems of the EU. And, you know, finally we had a chance to resolve this. And I was thinking of coming out for leave. And I, you know, didn't know how to put it to him, but that was the truth. And he said, this isn't about articles. This is about the future of the country. I said, well, I agree with you about the future of the country, but I was still thinking about the leave. And he said, well...

If you come out for leave, he said, and I apologise for using this language, he said, I will fuck you up forever. Which I thought was quite a big promise to make. He said he was going to fuck you up forever? Forever. And so I immediately went back home after that evening and cycled back from my office in City Hall and talked to my family, my kids. And one of my kids...

said immediately, well, you know, he bought no choice and you'll have to come out for leave. So, I mean, I put that in, I put all that in really just to show you that there were very good arguments for having a quiet life. Do you know what's interesting in that is when I read that part in your book, there was two things that I thought. The first was him offering you a top five job if you followed his opinion. Is that not bribery? Yeah.

And is that how the jobs are dished out in the government at the moment? If you do what I say, I'll give you a top... Like, if you do what I say, I'll make you health secretary or defence secretary. But it seems like, as someone who's not in government, it seems like a really corrupt way to dish out jobs. Like, if you go in with... It wasn't clear. You've got to be fair to Dave. It wasn't clear what job he was offering.

But top five is what? Defence Secretary, Health Secretary? I don't know. PMs were top five jobs, so there's really four remaining. You thought in the book you talk about potentially Defence Secretary? I don't know, but yes. But is that not a bit corrupt? Is that not like the definition of corruption? Because if I was to my employees... I think it's a huge mistake to do that kind of thing because there are always far more people that you end up thinking...

that you should be making a promise to, then there are jobs you can possibly give. So the best thing in those circumstances is to say nothing.

I've always wondered this about government and I've never understood it, is how does someone become the head of a department when they have no prior experience in it? Like you made Matt Hancock health secretary. How did Margaret Thatcher become prime minister or secretary for education when she had no previous experience? How did Tony Blair become prime minister? No, the prime minister thing I understand. But how did Tony Blair become, you know, a shadow minister when he had...

no experience. You tell me, do you think this is a good system? Well, because this is a really, really important point because I think that there is a, I do worry that it's quite hard to persuade, you know, really good administrative types to go into politics. And, you know, you see it the whole time. It's called Diary of a CEO, right? And you see it the whole time. You see loads and loads of

I think there are plenty of examples of top business people who have tried to become politicians, and it just doesn't seem to work. And I don't know. Can I have a guess?

Well, if I look at the data, I go, if 35% of them come from one school, Eton, and then there's jobs being dished out based on, if you take my opinion, I'll give you a top five job. I go, I understand why I could never get in, even if I was the best candidate, because it's not being done based on who's the best candidate. It's being done based on the old boys club. I'll do you a favor. Not under the Labour Party.

or any other party. Most Conservative cabinets... So just under the Tory party? No, under any party. I think that business people do, for reasons I find hard to put my finger on, they don't necessarily flourish in that environment. Who flourishes? What I worry about is that the only people who are really going to start doing it are people who are willing to go through a lot of

you know, public attack. I think I say sociopaths. Well, I mean, well, the fact, so look, one of the interesting things that's happened recently is that social media has become very, very virulent. And I mean, I don't read it myself, but I think it becomes very oppressive for politicians and also for journalists. And I think journalists, you know, they get a lot of shellacking

And a lot of abuse if they're not thought to be taking one line or the other or, you know, going easy on someone. I mean, there's somebody who's going to interview me for this book. Laura. Yeah. And she's a very, very good journalist. But you look at the stuff that she gets online about, you know, her being an inquisitor of mine or whatever. It's appalling. It's really appalling. And I think... So I think that...

And I think that it's also the same for MPs. I think that they get very, they think that if it's a choice between having a life where I can, you know, avoid this sort of stuff and, you know, having a,

wonderful existence doing something else or putting myself through this on the point of that i said thinking that it's related to the fact that people have got their hands on the scales they're pulling their friends up it's a bit of a boys club is there any truth in that i think but i think i mean look i'm sad to say steve i think that has probably been the way politics has been since the dawn of time i think that politicians i think politics has tended to be um factional

since the dawn of time, I think it's tended to be just sad, but I think true. The good thing is that in the end, the people who are really successful are the people who get things done that the people want done. Do you think it's a magnet? And so it's a magnet for very determined characters who are willing to put themselves through a lot. Sociopaths and narcissists? Well, I mean...

Have I used those words before? No, no, but that's the kind of person... You're making me worry. It sounds like you're quoting me. No, no. Maybe you are. But yeah, but... The kind of person I think would be compelled and succeed in such an environment... I think you have to have a pretty thick skin. Okay. But because of the way it works, the people who actually succeed are the people who really can...

try something forward and deliver it. Closing off on Brexit, 62% of British people view Brexit as more of a failure, according to YouGov, and 9% consider it more of a success. According to YouGov as well, 46% of British people say there should be a second EU referendum in 10 years compared to just 36% that say it shouldn't be.

According to the UK's Real Gross Added Value, the GVA, a measure of the size of the economy, they say there was approximately 140 billion less in 2023 in the UK economy compared to if the UK had stayed in the single EU market before.

According to the same thing, they say that 300 billion has been wiped off the value of the UK's economy by 2035. And my last stat here is a report from the Centre of European Reform in 2023 estimates that UK GDP was 5.5% smaller by mid-2023 compared to a scenario where the UK had remained in the EU. This equates to an economic loss of about 40 billion annually. And just as a business owner myself...

I was looking at some stats around what business owners think. About 33% of small businesses reported that Brexit has made it harder for them to trade with the EU due to increased paperwork and things like this. And the London School of Economics said that Brexit added 6% to food prices between 2020 and 2023. With all of this in mind, do you regret Brexit? Not at all.

Not at all. I mean, honestly. So we've outgrown Germany, France, from 2016 onwards. Sorry, certainly outgrown Italy since 2016 onwards. Last time I looked, Germany and Italy were both members of the EU. And the statistics that you give, I mean, they are dwarfed, for instance, by COVID. Even if you accept that

which I don't necessarily, that Brexit has caused problems. It's also caused massive opportunities. Because we were able to come out of the lockdown earlier than any other country. Remember, we came out of lockdown in July 2021. We ended all restrictions. And that meant that

that we had the fastest economic rebound of any G7 country. And that would not have happened, in my view, without the assistance of Brexit freedoms. Do you know the OECD?

Do you know what that body is? Yes, yes. They say the UK is the only major rich economy that remains smaller, poorer than prior to the pandemic. And Brexit may be a factor in that. And the government's independent watchdog, which I know you know, the Office for Budget Responsibility, thinks the UK will ultimately be 4% worse off than it would have been had it not voted for Brexit.

In business, everything is a trade-off. Everything is a trade-off. So you must be able to identify the trade-off that the UK has made for all of the upsides that you claim Brexit has delivered. So I think it's intellectually honest of anyone to be able to identify both sides of the argument here. So what is the trade-off? What has Brexit cost us? What's it cost us? I think that it's certainly true that the way that...

Some of it is being managed by some of our European friends. It's not necessarily bureaucratic at the moment. I think that will get better. I accept that criticism. I don't think it's the end of the world. But I do think ultimately the advantage of being free to do your own thing, free to run your own country, to control your own laws. You did tell me a trade-off.

No, I have. But the impact for us in the UK. So bureaucracy. For me as an average citizen, what's the trade-off? What's the downside? Yeah. Well, it's certainly true that some businesses are finding it harder to... There is paperwork that I don't think there needs to be, and we need to fix that. But I think that we have technological solutions to that. I don't think that we need to be part of a European empire of law

an ever denser and more detailed empire of law, controlling our freedom and stopping us... Is there an economic trade-off? I don't think... I think that ultimately we will be richer as a result. But in the near term, we're going to be poorer. Again, people were very emotional about this. Can I just remind you, before the referendum...

People said that no one ever holds these people to account. People said that there would be millions more unemployed, right? Do you remember that? People said there would have to be an emergency tax-raising budget if the people voted to leave the EU. Actually, when I ceased to be prime minister, unemployment was at a 50-year low.

And we had 620,000 more people in paid employment than before the pandemic began. My point was about the economic near-term. I'm just saying that people make all sorts of prognostications about...

The stats that I read you, do you believe them, that there's an economic struggle in the short term? People said that we would have a million people on the dole queue because of Brexit. Fine, but do you believe that there's a... They're now saying, because it's confirmation bias, right? No, but you said we will be richer.

Eventually. I hope that we will, if we do the right thing. Sure. So in the near term, do you think there's a little bit of struggle to get through economically as a result of Brexit? I think that's certainly the case if we make the mistake of staying, which is what Keir Starmer and the Labour Party want to do, is staying in alignment with the EU. They basically want us to be rules takers. I think that's a huge, huge mistake. We should go for freedom.

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and you have this pandemic begin to roll in. I was looking at the way you described that situation in late 2019, early 2020 in your book, and it appears that you had no idea of the severity of this virus that was rolling into the shores. When was the first time you heard that there was a virus that had come in from China? Whatever the date was, I think it was either end of

2019, beginning of 2020. I can't remember exactly when, but there's a day when I'm walking through the lobby of the House of Commons with the health secretary and he says, you know, I'm worried about this Chinese virus. Was that Hancock the right person to be handling that? Because that is a generational, once-in-a-lifetime health issue. Look, I think he did a very good job, yes. I think he was very energetic. Was he the best person to be handling it?

I think he did a very good job. And I think that... Was he the best person to be handling it, in hindsight? Well, I certainly think that he... Well, yes, because I think, yes, I think that he had the right mixture of energy and realism. Don't forget, we didn't know about the...

We didn't know how lethal it was. We didn't know how contagious it was. And we didn't know exactly how it was transmitted. There was a lot of stuff we didn't know. Some quotes from your book here. You said, the problem wasn't that I was ignorant to zoonotic diseases. The problem was that I felt I knew all about them.

After more than 30 years of writing about or dealing with new zoonotic diseases, I felt I knew my SARS and my Ebola, so to speak. And I concluded two things. First, that these novel zoonotic plagues tend to sort themselves out. And second, that the greater risk of destruction from attempts to stop them by politicians was their sort of attempts to contain the diseases, that the prevention would probably be worse than the cause in some respects.

So when Hancock started talking about a new coronavirus, possibly from bats and the risk that it would sweep the country, it was hardly surprising that I felt I'd heard this all before. Little did we know. Yes. I mean, so I think that's, I'm being very honest there about, as I am throughout Unleashed, about my state of mind. Because, you know, I'd covered in great detail the...

Salmonella and eggs, panic, when millions of chickens were slaughtered needlessly. I'd covered the bovine spongiform encephalopathy, panic, mad cow disease, when a vast proportion of the UK dairy cattle herd was slaughtered probably needlessly. The livelihoods of farmers were destroyed. I'd been mayor of London when we were threatened with a bird flu.

So you didn't think it was a big deal? And we'd laid on stocks of Tamiflu, which turned out not to be necessary. So I'd seen SARS come and go, Ebola and so on. And in each of these cases, what seemed to have happened was that there'd been a rational anxiety about the risk of a zoonotic disease, often from Asia or wherever,

We would get in a real, we'd do our best to get ready. And then it mysteriously would leave us almost completely unaffected. I remember the swine flu. Is that what you thought was going to happen in this case? And I didn't know. Of course I didn't know. But what I was trying to do was to give you... Context. The context and the state of mind that I think a lot of people were in when they heard about COVID. When did you call China?

February, I had it as February 2020, there was a call you made to the leader of China. To Xi Jinping? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would have called him. I mean, it'll be in the book. And you were sending supplies. Yeah, at that stage, we were still sending... Supplies to help them. We were sending... What did he say about the virus? Well, I said... Look, my memory of the conversation is hazy now, but I think I, you know...

congratulated him on what seemed to be his efforts to control the disease, but said, I was, I was anxious about the, what was happening in these wet markets, because at that stage we were given to understand that these, the disease would have occurred spontaneously in a, in a market in Wuhan. What did he say? And I can't remember what he said to that. I don't think, I, I, he,

Look, I mean, he's a president of China. I don't think he wanted to particularly the implication that China was in any way at fault. And I can't take understand that. But I now think that probably wasn't right. And I think there was certainly was a lab accident or it was as a result of something that went wrong in that lab.

Can I ask about this? Because this started as a conspiracy theory that is now widely accepted as the probable likely outcome. Why were they messing around with a virus in a lab in Wuhan? Well, you may well ask. I mean, I think they were... Why do you think they were? As someone that is so far away from why people do such a thing. I genuinely don't know, but I think that they were...

They were, you know, science... The point of science is to keep pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge everywhere and to see what they could do. Do you think it was a weapon? I don't... I didn't have any reason to think so. I didn't have any reason to think so. I think it was a terrible accident. I think the thing escaped from the lab. I think, you know, they were...

looking at engineering these viruses, assuming a function gain of the virus and ways that they could manipulate it. And sadly, something went wrong. That's my best guess. And a lot of people now seem to think that. You called Trump around this time as well to speak to him about it? I did, yes. What did he think? Well, yeah, I mean, he took the firm view that, you know,

China had a case to answer, but so did a lot of people. And in the book, you talk about the World Health Organization's response being seemingly hesitant because they wanted to keep Beijing in favor. Yes, I think a lot of scientists were anxious about cheesing off the Chinese. And I think a lot of scientists, you know, because China is very heavily involved in the support and sponsorship of a lot of academic research and research.

And so on. So there was a sort of hesitant, I felt, I mean, I might have been wrong about this. My impression was there was a sort of gingerliness about seeming to finger the Chinese too much.

On lockdowns, it's interesting that I was reading in your book that around the 8th of March, you start to see what's going on in Italy. And I think we can all vividly remember those scenes from those Italian hospitals where there was patients in the corridors being pushed around on trolleys and there was not enough beds. And I think for me as well, that was one of the big moments where I realised, watching it actually play out on Twitter, that this was an incredibly serious situation, something that I'd never seen in my lifetime before.

Was that the penny drop moment for you that this wasn't just another bird flu? I was very anxious about it because I knew the Italian healthcare system. I thought it was broadly excellent.

And I remember when one of our kids fell into a swimming pool in Italy once, when everybody was having a lie-in, the most shattering thing that could ever happen to you. And the Italian pronto soccorso came, and they were unbelievably good. They were so fast. And I thought, if the Italians are having problems with this thing, and Italy...

you know, frankly, our population is about as elderly as theirs, then this could be very, very serious. So I think that did really register with me. And so if you look at the... Obviously, I defer completely to the inquiry into all this under Dame Heather Hallett, but if you look at what happened from then on in, you see a series through March up till the 23rd of March, you see a series of intensifying steps to...

try to get people to take precautions. What I observed, I saw that in the book, and you kind of have the stages that you break down that you went through from that moment onwards. What I observed, though, and I think this is probably a fair estimation or a fair description of what happened, was there was indecision.

Because it seemed like there was facts coming from one ear, facts coming from the other ear, and there was almost a bit of paralysis. And when you look at the rest of the European numbers, which I was looking through yesterday, about when different sort of European markets made that decision, the UK appears to make the decision to lock down much slower than all the other European nations.

slower to close the schools, that the shops and events seem to be later than our European counterparts. And Matt Hancock went on to say that... They were ahead of us in the epic curve anyway. So you mentioned the Italian situation. Yeah. And they were already ahead of us. And we could see that we were going to have to bring in measures, but...

Again, this will be for the inquiry to comment upon, but it's pretty clear to me that we couldn't reasonably have instituted these measures in the UK, which were novel and draconian,

in advance of the scientific advice or opinion. And that's what it would have been. Them being ahead of us isn't relevant because the chart I have here shows how many days it took us to take decisive action after the third death. And it shows that for all of the European nations. And when I was reading about the information you were getting from scientists on this end and from other people in politics, it was so contradictory that

I think I was guessing that that's what caused the indecision. And also your own sort of philosophy towards shutting down society. We had this group called the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, right? Yeah. And they were... So we were going to be led by the science. And we basically had to... I decided that we had to follow what Sage advised. And for a long time, to your point, they...

hesitated about schools because of all the disbenefits. And if you remember, the argument was that if you went too early, then there was a risk that you'd have to keep doing it because the public would lose patience with the lockdown. And there was a second argument, which was there would then be bounce back. If you went too early and you kept on for too long,

take the measures off and the virus would flare up again, which indeed did happen throughout the course of the pandemic. So the scientific advice was, I mean, it wasn't, I wouldn't say it was particularly confused at that stage. I think they were struggling to assess exactly what to do. And there were different views within the scientists about certain things like

Matt Hancock said that we could have saved 30,000 lives. Masks and so on. Is that true? Matt Hancock said... If we'd locked down earlier. I can't say that for sure. I've no way of knowing that. But what I can say is that to have locked down earlier would have been to have gone beyond, to have anticipated scientific advice. It would not have been...

And I'm not an epidemiologist, I'm not a scientist. I was being asked to... What was on the agenda was imprisoning the whole UK population. It wasn't something the scientists were yet recommending. In the book, you seem to question whether those lockdowns really even worked. So I'm not saying that. What I'm saying... So it depends on what you mean by work. I think that they certainly did have a role in...

stopping spread of the disease, and they helped probably to turn down the curve of the disease. Probably, you know, almost certainly. What I find very difficult to gauge now, and, you know, again, this is for Heather Hallett, is to what extent was it the lockdowns what did it, and to what extent was this going to happen later?

naturally a result of the natural parabola. And you suspect it was going to happen anyway? What I'm saying is that to some extent, or to a large extent, it was perhaps going to happen anyway. Perhaps. And given that it was perhaps, to a large extent, perhaps going to happen anyway, the question is, did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the...

Very, very severe damage done to kids' life chances at school, which we talked about earlier. What do you think the answer to that question is? I think that we did the right thing. You think we did the right thing? I think we did the right thing. But I'm conscious that there are lots of people who disagree. And what I hope is that the COVID inquiry will say that, yes, we did do the right thing. In your book, when you talk about those measures, you refer to them as bonkers.

There's sort of different areas. Yeah, I think that's a bit less later. That's when we got to the tiering system. The tiering system, you talked about it as bonkers, and you seemed surprised that people would follow this stuff and that they wanted to follow this stuff, which is strange hearing it from the guy that put the rules in place. You think the tiering system was bonkers, and you were surprised. I'm talking about the hindsight, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the time, it seemed... So we had a situation. So coming out of the first... The first...

um lockdown so in in the summer of of 2020 and going into the into the autumn and things start to get more difficult again we have a situation where some parts of the country in i know places uh like leicester or west midlands or wherever northwest um you have the tears you've got a

haven't really seen, you know, the COVID really go down anything like as much as it went down, say, West Country, Cornwall. Was that a bad idea in hindsight? And so you had people saying, you know, why the hell should Paz be closing Cornwall when there's no COVID? And just because there's transmission in Baltimore or wherever. So was that a bad idea in hindsight? Well, no, it was a good idea in principle because after all,

It was crazy, it seemed. But the problem was that

it was very, very difficult to draw the boundaries. And as soon as you said, you know, well, this bit of Leicester's in tier whatever, or... Yeah, it was impossible. People went crazy. Because it was very invidious. On a human level, when you're leading the country during a pandemic, and you're getting these numbers every day that people are dying and that people are sick, and then, you know, I know you got sick yourself. Is there a mental toll on you throughout that period?

Well, I think it was... So, as you will discover, unleashed. I like it when I can go forward and when I have things, positive projects to do. So it was very, very difficult when I was constantly having to shut the country down, constantly trying to stop the transmission of the disease by these very, very crude methods. But once, by end of 2020, we had the prospect of a vaccination,

Then my mood totally changed. Because then I had something... My question was about you as a human being. When you're dealing with tragic news and this escalating pandemic, what's the human toll? If I'd been a fly on the wall in your hardest moments throughout that pandemic, what would I have seen? Well, I think it was certainly pretty tough. I had a bad bout of COVID. What was the hardest day outside of getting the illness yourself? What was the hardest day for you throughout that period? I think that... Ah, boy, I think it was...

There was a lot of tough times, but I think having to go back into lockdown in the end of 2020 was pretty awful. Because we really, really hoped that Turing would work. And some people still think it could have worked. But I couldn't take the risk.

The quote from your book that I pulled out, which really shocked me, was the real question, I suppose, is why on earth the public so avidly crave these rules and why they were so willing to have their doings circumscribed in such a rabbinical detail. In their complexity, they were also like a kind of religion, detailed rituals you just obeyed Leviticus-like in the hope of salvation, because science was slow to help us. On the 13th of September 2021, your mother, Charlotte,

passes away while at the same time you're dealing with all of this fallout and the recovery from the pandemic that's a tough moment yeah but that's the same for any person and any um in any walk of life you know that's always a very very tough moment um i think that um you know to your to your point about the the people why do people obey the rules so much and and my my feelings about that

I think... No, I'm asking about your mother here. Yeah, sorry. Your mother passed away in September 2021. And you don't touch on it so heavily in the book, the circumstances of that, but that must be a particularly tough moment for a person that's dealing with all of these other social issues and political issues at the same time. Yes, I know. But I mean, I think the point I make there is that is our common human lot, isn't it? And yes, it was...

tough for me and my brothers and sisters, my family. Very, very, very tough. We miss her to this day, all of us. But, you know, a lot of people were suffering a lot throughout that pandemic. And a lot of people lost loved ones. And, you know, I had to be very, very mindful of

what was happening every day in households across the country. And I had to try to, and I had a desperately difficult, because one of the interesting things about being prime minister is, is the way it works now is how much of it is just funneled upwards. And, you know, there's, you have to take those decisions. There's nobody else who can do it for you. Do you remember where you were when you found out that Charlotte was,

Had passed away? I think he was in... I was driving into London. I'd been out on a visit. And was it unexpected? Well, I mean, you know, she'd been ill for a long time with Parkinson's and she had various complications associated with Parkinson's. And she'd had a bad scare about a year previously. So, no, I couldn't say it was, you know, medically...

I could not say it was medically totally unexpected, no. Did you have a chance to grieve her passing? I certainly did grieve her passing. But if you mean, did I sort of... Process it, mourn it? To the best of my ability, yes. Are you a natural at that sort of thing, that sort of emotional, I guess, connection with yourself? Um...

I think it's probably go back to some of the earlier things we were saying. I mean, I did grieve and, you know, I do miss her. I'm like all my brothers and sisters, I do miss her today. But, you know, I also had a huge amount to think about and to get done. And we just had to, you know, we had to do it. Many members of the UK population were also mourning and grieving at the same time. And I think that's why the party gate scenario, which you talk about in the book, was so...

enraging for many people because as someone who again is not very close to politics like myself it's optics here you know and I think that's really the issue when you've got people who are unable to see their loved ones because of the situation with funerals and the pandemic even the suggestion that

that there was a rave going on in number 10 is the most enraging thing that I think anyone could say. But there wasn't a rave going on. I mean, you'll find it all there. You'll find it all unleashed. And I feel desperate about it. I really do. And I understand, you know, completely why people got so enraged. I really do understand that. And I did my best to try and, you know, I think I mishandled the whole thing, the revelations as such as they were. But also reality. Yeah.

But, you know... Because at the end of the book, you do seem to highlight that you could have done things to... Well, what I could have done was... What I could have done, I think... So I wonder why I commissioned Sue Gray to conduct an investigation into it. I mean, I was informed that she was, you know, politically impartial and a model of sort of, you know, obsessed with probity. And neither of those things now seem to me to be true. I've got a picture here.

there was 17 parties that were alleged during the sort of party gate timeframe. And one of the pictures that leaked to the public was this picture of you enjoying some cheese and some wine, I believe, at 10 Downing Street. Now, as, again, a member of the public, I look at this, I look at some of these key dates. I know you were fined for one particular date, which was your birthday, I think, where you were raising the glass of wine with some colleagues. No, I wasn't. You see, again, you see...

People say this kind of thing. Was it an AIDS leaving drink that you were fined for? No, I wasn't fined for that. What were you fined for? I was fined for going into a stand at my desk in the cabinet room between meetings. With a glass of wine? No, not with a glass of wine. And several...

members of staff were also there but they were people i saw throughout the working day anyway but this picture and and just just because people think that i had a cake yeah and that we we didn't have a i didn't have a cake i i didn't even see a cake um to say it was a party is a complete travesty it was about the most lugubrious event in the it was it consisted of people who were

part of my normal working life. That picture that you're pointing to there was the Metropolitan Police did look at that. They decided there was no offence committed because what you've got is people sitting outside as people tried to do during those times because there was much less risk of infection.

Let me just read some of this stuff. So 15th of May, 2020, cheese and wine at Downing Street. Approximately 349 people had died from COVID that day in the UK. Mr. Johnson was photographed sitting with his wife, Carrie, and some staff at a table with wine and cheese in the number 10 garden. At this time, COVID restrictions said that people could not leave their home without a reasonable excuse. Let me just read this. That is my home. That's the garden I was supposed to be using. May 20th, there was a bring your own booze party.

on the same day that 308 people died from the pandemic. And you attended for about 30 minutes. You say it was 25 minutes. And then the 19th of June was your birthday. Sorry, can I just go back over there? I mean, you know, none of this washes with the public because they all think that we were, you know, dancing around and getting drunk. And the last one was 12th of April. Johnson announces that he's been fined £50 by the police. Do you know what it is, though? It's like...

It's all about leading by example, isn't it? And you know this, yeah?

I think my opinion is that whatever's going on at number 10 needs to be the extreme demonstration of the perfect example, the extreme demonstration, because you're, of course, you're going to be attacked. You know that. Yeah. Of course, if you sneeze, you'll be attacked. And I say that. And I say that in the book. That's what I'm saying. So what we should have done, and I say is we should have, I should have said to everybody, look, people...

People are going to say, you know, because it was, in fact, as I tried to explain, impossible to maintain perfect social distancing in the office environment that we were in. People were working around the clock. And I think that I should have said something to the staff, like people are going to be out to get us. For God's sake, you know.

not only obey the rules, but be seen to obey the rules. Now we had, you know, all the signs in the corridors and stuff like that. I think that there were a lot of people by that stage who were,

perhaps not altogether friendly to me, who wanted to stitch me up. That's fine. But honestly, I can't help but believe, because I try and remain pretty impartial on these things. So I try and apply common sense as like a business person. Do you really think I was deliberately partying and breaking the rules? For me, seeing that photo, when one of my friends can go to their grandmother's funeral,

And seeing that there's people drinking and appearing to have a whale of a time, just in this photo, but also the other photos where you're cheersing with wine. I go, you should never have allowed that to happen. Do you know? And I think you agree with me. You agree with me. Because you said at the end of the book, you said, I should have said to my whole team, don't even let them appear to be breaking the rules. In the course of almost two years of people working around the clock in number 10 in England,

conditions of great proximity to each other. There were going to be moments when, of course, when colleagues are saying, are going away,

when you raise a glass to them, unless you're going to ban that. I think you should have. Well, that's the point of view. Because I just think... If you banned alcohol in 1940, we wouldn't have won the Second World War. I think Prime Minister during a pandemic, I think you just have to be the most extreme example. But what's... Sorry, but have we got a ban on alcohol in this country? No, I think genuinely... Sorry, if we banned alcohol in number 10 in 1940... I think all gatherings should have been banned at number 10, because I think... Sorry, but we were gathering... That means banning meetings.

What do you mean gatherings? Gatherings with alcohol and music and cake, I think should have been bad. I've tried to explain to you there was no cake or I saw no cake. I was at no event where there was music or dancing, that's total nonsense. Now, maybe those things took place, but they certainly didn't take place when I was there. I think one of the mistakes I made was beginning the whole thing by issuing this general apology statement

And so what happened was, so the people think that there was vomiting. Do you still apologize? I don't apologize for allegations of vomiting or fistfights because they turned out to not be true. And well, insofar as people broke the rules on my watch, as far as I'm responsible, of course I apologize for that. But what I'm saying in Unleashed is that the problem with leading with a blanket apology is,

was that it then meant that absolutely any allegation that was, you know, you've said, you've just said, made a couple of yourself, you know, any allegation that was then made about in Sue Gray's initial report that she had to,

She said there was a violent altercation and vomiting. Both of those things turned out not to be true. You said you made the mistake... In your book, you say you made the mistake of issuing pathetic and grovelling apologies over the scandal, which made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were. Which is just the point I've just made. Because it looked as though, but by issuing a sort of universal apology, it meant that any subsequent...

people assume, well, that must be what happened. And to be fair, I kind of get the feeling that's what you think. No, no, no. And that was largely my fault because I seem to be invalidating... The apology is not the issue. I seem to be validating everything that people said about what was going on. And what was actually going on was that people were working unbelievably hard

round the clock to get a lot of very difficult things done. And actually, the things that they were successful in

are very creditable and i and so for me it's not a bad apology badly about them on page 705 of your book you say in retrospect i should have done more to protect myself and the rest of whitehall against party allegations i should have said to the entire staff perhaps in the letter about the vital importance of not only obeying the rules but also to be seen to be obeying them and reminding um and i think that that is actually my point which is

Apologies, I think, are good things. I think people should apologise. No, but I'm trying to explain. If you apologise in advance, the problem was that a lot of things were said about staff in number 10 that weren't true and weren't fair to them. And my blanket apology looked as though I was validating and accepting all those criticisms. Okay. Which I think was, in retrospect, I think I should have waited to see exactly what

you know, said and what was established to be true. And then I should have apologized for what actually happened. Do you see what I'm saying? I understand. And also, I want to stick up again for those officials who were working around the clock to...

sought out the government's and the country's response to covid and when it came to it did an absolutely outstanding job and i don't know i don't understand i just want to you've been very patient with me you you know you've you've allowed me to talk for almost two and a half hours and uh what i thought was going to be an hour's show so i'm not you've been heroic in putting up with wrapping up now but i just wanted wanted to ask a few more things these are personal questions that i have please so um

One of the things that no one knows about you is how many kids you have. Why is this such a widely debated subject? I've never sat with a guest on my show where they were unwilling. I don't know why they should say widely debated. It's a matter of public record. I have eight children. You have eight children? It's a matter of public record. Okay. I don't know why people, why is everyone so obsessed with the amount of kids you have? Such me go. Charlotte Owen. You're not related to her, are you? No. She's not a former lover? No. Okay. I asked my friends some of the things they wanted to know about you. But it's in the book.

book. Read up all about it in the book. She is a very capable advisor. And what happens next for Boris Johnson? Are you going back into politics? I live a life of blameless, rustic obscurity. Do you want to get back into politics? I don't know.

think that um the chance of the frisbee you should only do things if you genuinely think you can be useful at the moment i think the most i'm loving i do a lot of painting i'm having a great time living in uh you know in the countryside um i i got my hands full doing all sorts of things and next question quick fire yeah trump or kamala and you can't sit on the fence

All British prime ministers, including ex-prime ministers, are constitutionally obliged to be friendly with whoever... Who's the best for international relations. Whoever the American people decide. And that is the right thing. And you're...

dwindling audience would not expect. Who's best for stopping the wars? Who's better for stopping the wars, Kamala or Trump? I mean, you know, if you read Unleashed... I did read it. And I saw your interview on GB News and you seem to think that Trump would be a better... Well, I think what I'm saying is that you should beware of some of the kind of anti-Trump prejudice about his having a foreign policy. And there are very good... When he was president, he took some tough decisions and...

and, you know, projected a sense of American strength and purpose. But I make no further comment than that. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for. Oh, right, okay. And the question that's been left for you is success often comes at a price, and one of those is the relationships we lose along the way. Which relationship or person did you lose in the pursuit of your success? I mean...

The longer you live, the more you rise. You can have what seems to be a complete, terrible sundering, and then lo and behold, things cheer up and you're friends again. And so, I mean, look at Michael Gove. You've got to answer the question. Which relationship or person did you use? The answer to your question is I don't regard any relationship

of the termination, any rupture. I don't regard any rupture as final. No one's ever swerved this question, so you're not going to be the first. I don't regard any rupture as final. Which relationship or person did you lose in the pursuit of your success? They are not lost. I don't. Give me a person. Give me a name. We've never had it. This is a longstanding tradition. No one's ever swerved this question. Clearly, I had a rupture with Michael Gove in 2016, but then with heroic optimism,

I put him back in the cabinet and, you know, there you go.

Boris, thank you. Thank you for your time. And I'm going to link this book below so anyone that wants to read it can get the book. It'll be linked below. Your writing style is exceptionally engaging. I think everyone that's interviewed you from the ITV to GB News has said the same thing. The book is linked below. If you're interested in the subject matters we've talked about, but many more, it's an exceptionally long book, some 700 and...

I don't know. I got it right. It's over 771 pages. 772 pages. With the index and the thanks. An incredibly detailed book into all of the key issues that have happened over the last five, six, seven years and some touches of what happened in your life before.

Link down below. Boris Johnson, Unleashed. Thank you so much, Boris. Thank you very much, Steve. It's been an honour. Do I get a prize for it? I think that must be... How long was that interview supposed to be? I don't know. Usually they're four hours. Sometimes they're four hours. Oh, I see.

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You get to watch the person who answered that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version two updated conversation cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com. They've sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly.

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