Interview: Boris Johnson (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

NOT surprisingly, Boris Johnson is late. Having partied until 2am, the Tories' frenetic multi-tasker arrives somewhat dishevelled at the Bournemouth Waterstone's where he was expected 40 minutes ago.

Before he dashes back for Michael Howard's conference speech in an hour, he has a pile of novels to sign, The Spectator's cover to commission, a conference dinner to arrange and an appointment to keep with the Evening Standard. "I really could use a coffee," he tells a shop manager while nursing his trademark blond mop. "Ugh, conference can be awful, awful..."

There cannot be many magazine editors permitted Johnson's extraordinary range of distractions. But for how long can the Tory rising star combine running Britain's leading political weekly with his roles as constituency MP, shadow arts minister Telegraph columnist, TV personality, novelist and now blogger? In yesterday's Times, Andrew Pierce suggested mischievously that under The Spectator's new proprietors, time is running out for "'six jobs' Johnson". Will the Barclay brothers not want an editor who is fully committed?

"I haven't the faintest idea," Johnson says. "Journalism is a wonderful, charmed thing but you live from minute to minute. There may come an evening call or a morning call when I get the bullet."

His sales figures, he believes, are his best defence. "Subscriptions are at an all-time high, newsstand sales are up even on last year's. [Circulation is 64,000, some 40,000 ahead of the New Statesman.] Obviously, if I become a minister, as opposed to a shadow minister, which would be wonderful, then that will be time to stop doing journalism."

Johnson, tipped by some as a future party leader, is under no illusions that his wish will be fulfilled any time soon. In the meantime, he has ambitious plans for the 176-year-old weekly. "We're now ready to move up a gear," he reveals. "I think the way to go is upmarket, braining it up, wising it up, and expanding it. I'm not saying it will be like Prospect, or The New Yorker, but I want to big it up a bit."

He hopes to reinvest much of the magazine's £1.3 million annual profit in its journalism - especially longer essays and heavily researched exclusives. "Particularly in the summer months, The Spectator can be quite low on features," he says. "It's a quick cocaine rush, then that's it."

Has he told the new proprietors how he intends to spend their money? "We've had some preliminary conversations, yes, but they haven't heard the detail. We're talking. We make a lot of money. And there's a case with any successful media product for putting the money back in."

He cannot say whether his new bosses will be as tolerant of his lifestyle as Conrad Black was. He does, however, deny any embarrassment at failing to spot Black's financial indiscretions. "How could I possibly have known? Even if I'd been suspicious, which I wasn't, I don't see how I could have informed myself of these things in Doughty Street."

Johnson also intends to nurture a new generation of "engaged political voices". "I don't see the twentysomething wannabe political writers - the people who want to be Charles Moore when they grow up, or Simon Heffer." What, Heffer as the new role model? He laughs. "Yes, I admit it's a curious ambition. Or indeed Polly Toynbee, I'm a huge admirer. But the people born after 1969, after the Moon shot, just don't seem to be intellectually and ideologically engaged in politics like we were."

Are there also too few women writers in the Spectator? "God, I'm yearning to get more female voices in the magazine," he says. "We do have some very good ones ... I don't think anybody could conceivably say the magazine is an unfriendly environment for women writers."

Taki's columns, indulging his own racial prejudices, have repeatedly caused Johnson trouble. Is it finally time to lose him? "God, I'm always being asked about Taki," he says. "The more I'm asked, the more invulnerable he becomes. You must never capitulate to terror..." Though, yes, he adds, sometimes he goes over the top and has to be censored.

One topic of recent controversy has been Johnson's support, and the magazine's, for Tony Blair's impeachment over his selling of the Iraqi war. With the chances of success slim, does he have any regrets?

"None," he says. "Of course Blair is not going to be impeached - his lobotomised Labour backbenchers will be whipped into line. But I do think it's worth keeping in the public consciousness the discrepancy between what the Joint Intelligence Committee told us about WMD, and the information Blair laid before the Commons. Michael Howard is right to say it was tantamount to a lie. It's a function of our magazine to hold Blair to account."

Johnson rejects assertions that The Spectator's strident anti-war stance is simply a posture. "The truth is that the magazine is very divided. It was the most difficult moral issue I've faced. I did vote for the war, not because I believed in WMD, but because I thought there were very good humanitarian grounds. I now feel we were right about WMDs throughout - but what I, and everybody, got wrong was the assumption that the Pentagon knew how to run the country.

"I don't think my own internal divisions have necessarily been a drawback for the magazine. If we published an unremitting neo-con tubthumping Bush-and-Blair-ogram every week, we wouldn't be doing justice to The Spectator's traditions."

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson - to give him his full name - is 40, and has four children by his second wife, Marina Wheeler, a barrister. With all his achievements, why write the novel, Seventy Two Virgins? "Pure vanity," he replies. "Just to see that I could. I wrote it because it was difficult to do and I'd never done one. If you've been writing for ages, you want to try something hard and new."

Isn't he spreading himself too thinly? He pauses. "Well, I don't really know. Provided I have people to help me, it can all be done. People say how do you do all these jobs, you can't do them all properly. In a way, that's true - no one could do all these jobs on their own. I don't - I do each as part of a team."

The Spectator team has lately been troubled by publicity over the relationship between Kimberly Fortier, its publisher, and David Blunkett. Fortier recently returned to work. Does Johnson believe that she will stay? "I hope so," he says. "Kimberly has done a great job of getting advertising revenue in - she's £150,000 over budget for this quarter." Was he troubled by the coverage? "I don't want to talk about all that business," he says a little uncomfortably. "In the ghastly phrase, we have moved on. I don't actually know the truth about that stuff. I think there could have been a lot less to it than met the eye."

As for Boris's future, what would he prefer - party leader or Telegraph editor? "Neither of these things," he says. "I'm a mere toenail, a footsoldier." It is the well-rehearsed patter of a man with too many choices.

(Evening Standard, October 6 2004)