Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Those of us who once worked with Boris Johnson have long had to get used to the notion of underachieving. Given that I am well paid to do the job I always wanted, this is not something I feel too often, but when a chap who once shared the tea run with you becomes prime minister and a global celebrity, you have to accept that there are highs you have not reached.
In truth, I don’t remember Boris often getting the teas in when we worked cheek-by-jowl in The Daily Telegraph’s Westminster office. But, then again, there are tea-runners and tea-drinkers, and only the latter get into Number 10.
I have never felt jealous of his success. But anyone who has ever worked with someone who goes on to be truly famous knows that mixed feeling you receive when others discover you were once colleagues. On the one hand, they are suddenly interested, hoping you will drop some juicy inside bauble on them — to which end I really must think of something more interesting than the tea-run tale. On the other hand, you notice the reappraising eye of someone who concludes that they have just met the loser of that workplace.
But I am straying from the point. Until this week, I felt few, if any, pangs of jealousy. I also have friends who have been elevated to the peerage, again for political service, and this too gives me only pleasure. The House of Lords is preposterous in a dozen different ways but I can think of few better uses of taxpayers’ cash than seeing it doled out to one’s mates.
Politically there is no need to reappraise Boris Johnson. We all know what we lived through, and only the Conservative party is desperate enough to wonder if we’d like some more. I like to think that I could have loused up the country just as well as him had I put my mind to it. But the news that, at the age of 60, BoJo has sired his ninth child — well, I have to admit, it has left me in awe and feeling just a teensy bit inadequate. I could cope with a chap becoming prime minister, but fathering nine children? As the man himself would say, cripes.
It’s not so much the fecundity that dazzles, although hats off to you on that as well, old love. It’s the looking after young children in your sixties that I’ve got to respect. I’m getting tired just thinking about the scale of obligation. Admittedly, his oldest are adults now. But the youngest four are all under six. Even if you assume that Bozza is not exactly hogging the lion’s share of the household chores, four little ones have got to intrude on one’s down time somewhat.
Seriously. Nine sprogs, just two shy of a cricket team. Now that’s an alpha male and, to be fair to him, these were not his only efforts. It is true that the Whig premier Earl Grey produced 16 children and the Great Reform Act, but Johnson’s effort is still highly creditable.
My greatest achievement in the past year has been securing a 60+ travel card. Meanwhile, this fella is single-handedly battling to hold up the UK’s replacement rate. While others his age are grasping at their lost youth by purchasing Ferraris or joining Third Space, he is still out there gamely repopulating the country. Talk about a father of the nation.
Privately, there has been talk of Boris coming back to rescue the Conservative party, although his record on rescuing them is somewhat patchy. But I have to wonder: can he afford it? He is making very good money now, and a leader of the opposition’s salary will barely make a dent in four private school fees. Perhaps he is using the intervening years to build up a healthy enough bank balance to spend a few more years slumming it in Westminster. I don’t know. Those living rooms don’t decorate themselves.
Anyway, faced with the official Johnson output, my own brace (and at this point I always insist on crediting my wife for her important supporting role) is patently feeble by comparison. At least this is a man who can look Elon Musk squarely in the eye and say he has met his obligations to blond human survival.
Prime minister, bringer of Brexit and father of nine. There’s a man who has thoroughly sprayed his territory. Perhaps that’s why he never got the teas in. He was saving his energy.
Email Robert at magazineletters@ft.com
Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram