Boris Johnson returns to journalism as a columnist for the Daily Mail

Correspondent in London

The Daily Mail had made a formidable "teasing" Friday morning by announcing the arrival in its pages of a "new scholarly columnist, who will have to be read in Westminster as throughout the whole world". All-London-politics had understood, Boris Johnson was returning to journalism. Plunged into shadow on the side of the House of Commons, it came back into full light through the media window.

The news became official during the day, when the former prime minister confirmed that he was joining the influential conservative tabloid and that his first “unredacted” column would be published this Saturday. The announcement immediately sparked controversy. Acoba, the body that oversees the transition to businesses for former ministers and senior officials, said Boris Johnson had not informed him of this new position. A letter will be sent to him asking for clarification.

The press is advancing a six-figure contract, perhaps one million pounds a year for this weekly column published every Saturday. Since stepping down as prime minister last July, Boris Johnson has earned millions of pounds from his speaking tours.

Johnson already has a few feats in the press. At the end of the 1980s, the young 23-year-old reporter was fired from the venerable Times for using an invented shock quote. He rebounded the following year by becoming the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, the beloved newspaper of the Tories, in Brussels. He then delivers a vitriolic chronicle of the life of the European institutions. His sense of image and shocking words works wonders. We owe him beautiful digressions on the absurd regulatory bulimia in Brussels, even if it means exaggerating or distorting reality. Thus he writes on the condoms whose bureaucrats would like to standardize the size, as they would like to impose standards on the curvature of bananas or the shape of coffins. The homeland is in danger when treacherous Europe wants to attack double-decker buses, English chocolate or shrimp-flavored crisps...

Back in London in 1999, Boris Johnson became editor-in-chief of the conservative magazine The Spectator. His entry into politics did not prevent him later from taking up a column for the Telegraph, which he kept until his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016. He himself said that at the time, before taking a position on leaving the EU for the referendum announced by David Cameron, he had hesitated a great deal. With the sense of the image that we know him, he had confided to having "twirled in all directions like a supermarket trolley". By writing two opposing versions of the column he was to deliver to the Telegraph the next day, one for the divorce, the other in favor of remaining in the EU…

In his first column, Johnson talks about his overweight problems, already publicly mentioned when he was badly hit by the Covid. He recounts his unconvincing trial of an appetite suppressant drug with which he hoped to "stop going to the fridge at 11:30 p.m. for cheddar and chorizo." In a video message shown on Mail, he added that he would write 'whatever he wants' in his new column, but 'as little as possible' about politics. A final claim that raises some skepticism, as BoJo is expected to pound, at least indirectly, the Sunak government by recalling the great promises of Brexit and the 2019 elections. By resigning from his post as an MP last week , he had not resisted attacking Sunak, saying that the country needed a “conservative government worthy of the name”.

This platform will further fuel speculation about a possible return to politics for Johnson. On Thursday, a parliamentary inquiry found him guilty of lying to Parliament in the "partygate" affair. The report, which must be submitted to the vote of the deputies on Monday, asks that it be withdrawn the access which the former prime ministers have to the premises of the Parliament. BoJo denounces "lies" and shouts "political assassination". He had taken the lead in resigning from Parliament before being suspended, but he is said to intend to run again for a seat as an MP in the next election. According to the Financial Times, Johnson could even try to regain his former position as mayor of London by running as an independent against Labor mayor Sadiq Khan. A function where, it is true, he had left a good impression, in any case more consensual than in Downing Street.