Lifting the words from his hero, Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson has joked often that “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” The prime minister better get writing quickly, as his conduct in these strange, surreal final days in office suggests he has learnt nothing from history.
Instead, he follows the pattern of his career in intending to commit one final act of provocative, convention-defying recklessness. Johnson plans to take a prime ministerial bow with an explosive resignation honours list, packing the Lords with more of his friends and media and political supporters. Get ready for Lord Dacre as the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday become more stridently frenzied in their portrayal of Johnson, the martyred titan. There is speculation he will be joined, among many others, by Michael Hintze, a billionaire Tory donor and climate sceptic, and the pro-Brexit historian Andrew Roberts. They will sit with the already ennobled Charles Moore, Johnson’s friend and former Telegraph editor, and Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Evening Standard that enthusiastically backed Johnson to be London mayor and then prime minister. Not for the first time the House of Lords Appointments Commission, the body responsible for vetting peerages, is holding up his list. Apparently he is unyielding, determined to press ahead.
If he does so, recent history suggests his honours list will come to define him. Harold Wilson was seen in a much darker light after he unveiled his resignation honours list in 1976, a ragingly controversial set of awards that became known as the “lavender list.” His confidant and adviser, Marcia Williams, had supposedly written the names on lavender notepaper. The bizarre list included business figures including Joseph Kagan, subsequently convicted of false accounting, and Eric Miller, who committed suicide while under investigation for fraud. Another beneficiary (not on the initial list) was James Goldsmith, a maverick business leader on the right. The showbiz entrepreneurs Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont received peerages. So did Wilson’s publisher, George Weidenfeld.
Unusually Wilson became fleetingly Johnson-like in his indifference to consequences. He did not anticipate that all hell would break loose. The newspapers erupted, along with a significant section of Wilson’s Labour Party. The questions lingered for years: “What was he doing awarding these crooks?” “Was he pathetically obeying Marcia Williams’s demands?”
Quite quickly afterwards Wilson became a ghostly figure, having dominated politics in the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. There were several reasons for the speedy airbrushing from history, but one of the biggest was the list. It played into one view of Wilson, a crude stereotype that was far from the full picture. Those who saw him as devious, untrustworthy and self-interested had all their prejudices confirmed. As ever with Wilson, the reality was more complicated and mysterious. He was a much bigger figure than Johnson, a cabinet minister in the 1940s and a winner of four elections. He became a performer, but for Wilson politics was much more than a stage. He was up for the hard grind of policy. Unlike Johnson, Wilson resigned at a moment of his choosing, but was damaged deeply by that honours list, a media obsession for decades to come.
If that happened to Wilson, imagine what a further reckless act will do to Johnson. All those who decided long ago that he is a rogue will have their views confirmed once again. Some of those in the Conservative Party currently fantasising that he might return as prime minister will wonder about their judgment. If retrospective verdicts on Wilson’s long and impressive party leadership of 13 years were framed by his final act, Johnson’s three years of self-absorbed chaos will be even more clearly defined by his.
Why do they do it, prime ministers at the end of their reign taking risks with already battered reputations? The final days of a prime minister in office are strange. They have all the trappings of power. They are cocooned in No 10 with their courtiers telling them they are indispensable. Yet they know the end is in sight. By 1976 Wilson was exhausted and yet wilful. For a lot of prime ministers there is a sense of angry defiance at the end. Wilson had already made Marcia Williams a peer, to the fury of her many critics in politics and the media. At the end he was not going to let the usual noisy dissenters stop him from doling out awards to those who he considered to have been loyal to him and her.
Johnson’s final days are set to be far more fantastical. He contemplates a comeback and is in denial about his own behaviour bringing about his doom. In the meantime he is enjoying power without responsibility—a dream for him. He is having a great time at Chequers. He plans a farewell visit to President Zelensky. He continues to dress up in various costumes, most recently as a pilot. As a public figure he is only at ease when acting out a role. As part of this joyful power without responsibility he submits an honours’ list that sticks two fingers up to those who disapprove of him.
But as with Partygate and other misdemeanours, there will be consequences. Johnson has tried to to establish the myth that he “got the big calls right.” His attempt risks being submerged by a list of honours that acts as a neat summary of his leadership. Wilson’s reputation suffered gravely—and his list was much closer to an aberration than Johnson’s looks like being.
