Page ^ Daily Mail, Friday, September 6, 2019
BATTLE FOR BREXIT
ET TU, JO?
What really
sparked the
Johnsons’
psychodrama
Decades of fierce sibling rivalry.
Incendiary feuds over Brexit. And a
dangerous taste for the theatrical...
by Andrew Pierce
and Richard Kay
hardening anti-EU rhetoric from
almost the moment he accepted
the offer to serve in his brother’s
administration.
He felt increasingly uncomforta-
ble with the divisive rhetoric used
in Tuesday’s House of Commons
debate, where MPs voted to wrest
control of the Brexit agenda from
the Government. But the final
straw came when he learned that
21 MPs, including the veteran
Father of the House – and mentor
to Jo – Ken Clarke, had been
expelled from the party.
A
T a drinks party the
same night Jo was
sombre.
‘Jo’s political blood is
much more like Ken Clarke’s
than his brother’s,’ said a friend.
‘He was telling people that if
there is going to be an election it
is clear the Tory leadership – ie.
Boris – only want dyed-in-the-
wool Leavers. It means there is
never going to be any room in the
party for him.
‘It has been incredibly difficult
for Jo because he loved the job and
he loves his brother.’
But Jo’s torment wasn’t just con-
fined to the polar opposite views
he has on Europe with Boris. There
are strains much closer to home
too. Jo, 47, is married to prize-win-
ning Guardian journalist Amelia
Gentleman, 41.
She is the daughter of Left-lean-
ing artist David Gentleman, best-
known for designing scores of post-
age stamps. Her family are at the
nexus of a north London liberal-
Left establishment tribe.
Indeed, no paper campaigned
more viciously against Boris dur-
ing his leadership bid than The
Guardian. A Johnson source told
us: ‘The Guardian have a Boris-
bashing unit which obviously hasmade life much more uncomforta-
ble for Jo.’
For her part Amelia – known as
Milly – has been put in a ‘protec-
tive cocoon’ by her employers to
spare her any embarrassment over
Boris-baiting during editorial
conferences.
This was particularly apparent
when news broke about Boris’s
drink-fuelled dispute with his girl-
friend Carrie Symonds in July. It
was The Guardian, which normally
loftily ignores domestic tittle-tat-
tle, that revealed the story and
published the account of the cou-
ple’s row which had been cynically
recorded by a neighbour.
The couple have struggled to
stop the ‘Boris effect’ from disrupt-
ing their domestic social lives.According to a close friend, Jo was
harangued at a friend’s recent 50th
birthday party while his wife was
by his side. ‘It was a social occa-
sion and while some people delib-
erately snubbed him, one person
came up to him and was rude to
his face, denouncing him for being
a Tory and calling him evil. The
person was so angry he sprayed
Johnson with spittle.’
Domestic tensions over Jo’s poli-
tics are hardly new. When he told
his wife of 14 years that he was
abandoning his career on the
Financial Times to stand in the safe
Tory seat of Orpington at the 2010
election, she burst into tears. ‘She
spent the whole afternoon crying
on the sofa,’ said a family friend.
Just over nine years later, Jo’s
decision to resign has triggered
sympathy from his party’s
Remainers.
Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston’s
Churchill’s grandson and one of
the 21 MPs to lose the party whip
this week, said: ‘I have been deeply
and abidingly shocked by what’s
happened in the Tory Party in thelast few days. But Jo Johnson
resigning like this is the most
shocking thing I have experienced
in 36 years at Westminster.F
OR Jo, who is one of the
cleverest men at Westmin-
ster and one of the most
thoughtful, to feel he has
to do this to his brother, and in
public, has all the elements of a
Shakespearian tragedy.’
It’s true that no family has so the-
atrically dominated the modern
political scene quite like the John-
sons. But while Boris is outgoing,
flamboyant and openly ambitious,
Jo, seven years his junior, has fol-
lowed a less publicity-prone trajec-
tory. Yet while he is quieter and
less charismatic, many say he is
cleverer and considerably more
thoughtful.
The youngest of former MEP
Stanley Johnson’s four children by
his first wife – there are another
two children by his second – Jo was
perhaps the most competitive.E
VER since he returned to
high office by taking a seat in
his brother’s Government, Jo
Johnson’s friends have been
wondering how he wouldsquare his personal/political circle.
Would the deep bonds of family loyalty pre-
vail or would he stick to his moderate princi-
ples and resign his ministerial position?
Yesterday he gave the answer – he could
not stomach Boris’s hardline stance on
Brexit and quit the Government, straining
not just its tenuous control on power but
also triggering an existential psycho-drama
within the Johnson family.
His 40 days in charge of the universities
brief – the second time he held the role – may
go down as one of the shortest ministerial
careers in modern history.
Unlike Boris, Jo is a staunch Remainer. But
while his reasons for quitting are not unex-
pected, his timing has caused a mixture of
consternation and fury.
Jo broke the news to his brother in a pri-
vate meeting in 10 Downing Street on
Wednesday evening, just hours after Boris’s
attempt to call an election was stymied in
the Commons. His resignation was only
made public yesterday after he issued a
statement in the afternoon.
’What on Earth was he thinking of? He
could have quietly soldiered on knowing an
election was looming and made his
announcement then when it would barely
have made a ripple,’ said one Whitehall
source. ‘By choosing to do it immediately
after the worst few hours in his brother’s
premiership seems almost gratuitous.’
Even seasoned observers were yesterday
left astounded by the self-serving tone of the
younger Johnson’s stage-stealing interven-
tion, which has echoes of the poisonous feud
of the Miliband brothers, who fought each
other for the Labour leadership in 2010.
Nine years after younger brother Ed tri-
umphed over David, who had been Foreign
Secretary, the scars of that Miliband fratri-
cide have not healed.
But last night friends of the Johnson family
maintained that while the Prime Minister is
devastated by the very public nature of his
brother’s abrupt exit, the blood ties between
them will not be broken.
‘The sibling bonds of loyalty in the Johnson
family are indestructible,’ said a family mem-
ber. ‘With the Johnsons, family is family and
politics is politics. The problem is the family
became too interwoven with the politics.’
Outsiders will continue to question Jo’s
judgment, however.
After all, it is less than a year since he last
resigned as Universities Minister. That, too,
was over Europe when he walked out on
Theresa May, describing her withdrawal deal
as a choice between ‘vassalage and chaos’.
The wounding choice of words by Jo, who
like his brother is a former journalist,
inflicted huge damage on an already weak-
ened Mrs May.
But will his latest resignation have a
similar effect on his older brother? We
understand that Jo had been wrestling
with his conscience over Downing Street’s