the prime minister brings the same to
politics. “I think actually it is the humanity
that was missing in politics. Boris appealed
because his fallibility is what makes him
more authentic. People of all backgrounds,
in all parts of the country, like him because
he is fallible and he doesn’t pretend he isn’t.”
W
allace’s early support for
Johnson hasn’t done him
any harm, though there
have been plenty of
bumps in the road over
the past seven or eight years. The first came
in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum,
when Wallace — a passionate Remainer —
tried to persuade Johnson not to back
Brexit, a move he argued would damage his
leadership credentials. Johnson’s notorious
second (unpublished) newspaper article,
arguing for Remain, was sent to Wallace,
among others, in an attempt by Johnson
to show how weak their argument was.
When he returned home to the northwest
after the referendum — Wallace is MP for
Wyre and Preston North in Lancashire
— he later confessed he welled up. “I went
home and I was quite sad,” he recalled.
“I was just sad for my children.”
Nearly six years on I am surprised to
discover that he is one of the few Remainers
who have changed their minds on Brexit.
“I slightly feel that the way the European
Commission has behaved has shown that
I was probably wrong. Instead of saying,
‘How did our second biggest shareholder
leave? How do we make sure it doesn’t
happen again?’ — their approach is ‘Let’s
carry on with more integration’, which
I don’t think is a) democratic and b) going
to help the European Commission survive
in 40 years’ time. It has also shown itself
to be more protectionist. I think if I was
a European nation I’d worry about the
response to Britain leaving.”The second bump in the road came in
that febrile week after the referendum
when Wallace’s Team Johnson clashed with
aides to Michael Gove, who was drafted in
as the campaign chairman. The week
culminated in Gove announcing that
Johnson was not up to the job and that he
would run instead, Gove’s aides dismissing
what Wallace had put in place as a
shambles. I remember my call to Wallace
that morning — an imaginative exercise
from him in constructing a sentence with
words of no more than four letters.
“Look, I don’t think it was that much
of a shambles,” he says now. “There was
a certain stakeholder who chose to
detonate!” What sort of terms is Wallace
on with him now? “Who, the detonator?”
It must gall him to see Gove sharing the
cabinet table. “It doesn’t gall me. Michael is
actually an incredibly capable minister, I will
always admire what he did as education
secretary. I think he is consummate and
articulate.” But has he ever said sorry? “No!”
Having been in the eye of the storm
once, Wallace is wryly amused at the antics
of some of his colleagues — Liz Truss
and Rishi Sunak among them — who are
clearly positioning themselves for the
leadership. I stand with Wallace as we
watch 2 Para raid a mock-up interior in
a warehouse, practising “hug and pin”,
a technique to wrestle unarmed
combatants (special forces soldiers on
a day off ) to the floor. There is lots ofRiding in a Puma helicopter en route to
Stanford for training exercises with 3 Para