How Boris Johnson’s obfuscations led to his sacking as Tory Vice-Chair in 2004
Watching Boris Johnson’s defence of Dominic Cummings on 24th May numbers clearly felt that we were some way from the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
While Johnson may not be quite in the parallel fact free universe that Trump lives in he has a long history of evading the truth, and hoping he gets away with it.
It hasn’t always worked.
One such occasion was in November 2004.
News of Johnson’s long running affair with Petronella Wyatt and the fact that she had just had an abortion of a child they conceived was about to appear in several Sunday papers. While the story was true Johnson simply denied it on the basis, according to his biographer Sonia Purnell, that he felt lying to the press was OK.
He had also managed to deceive the then leader of the Tory Party Michael Howard who promptly sacked him as a Shadow Minister and Tory Vice Chair on the Saturday evening. As Howard made clear the sacking was not about the affair or the abortion. It was because Johnson had tried to cover it up by lying about it publicly
History repeats itself…
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