Johnson missed meetings on COVID-19 crisis. It was deadly serious & entirely in character
Sonia Purnell’s 2012 biography of Boris Johnson which is generally sympathetic to him was no doubt not written with the reality that 7 years later he would be a Tory Prime Minister and win an Election in December 2019.
It contains some interesting extracts from his school reports at Eton which suggest that he learnt what he could get away with there and has not changed since.
His personal tutor Andrew Hobson wrote a report which says in part ‘I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else’.
In a report of 5th April 1981 his Master in College Martin Hammond raises concerns about ‘lateness, non-appearance of work and a lack of organisation’.
In 1982 Hobson noted ‘Boris seems affronted when confronted with what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility’.
In July 1982 Hammond wrote, ‘Boris has something of a tendency to assume that success and honours will drop into his lap’. He went on to note that ‘efficiency and organisation have been constant problems’.
The behaviour didn’t end when he left Eton. In fact it got worse. Here is a summary of what he was like when he was Editor of the Spectator (1999-2005):
He would habitually not answer his phone, commission articles, turn up to lunches, or meet dignitaries, important advertisers or even his own deadlines.
(Sonia Purnell, Just Boris 2012)
Perhaps it didn’t matter all that much. But it did when he missed key meetings in the run-up to the current COVID-19 crisis (Sunday Times 19.4.20).Then it was no longer a joke. It was deadly serious. Literally
Leave a Reply