Interview: Boris Johnson, The Spectator (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

Considering this is his valedictory interview, Boris Johnson is proving unfeasibly low-key. Seeing as he departs The Spectator on Friday, after six-and-a-half extraordinarily colourful years as editor, you might expect a little end-of-term bumptiousness, some characteristically hypomanic extemporising, at least a few mischievous aperçus. Instead, the new shadow higher-education minister is hesitant, overcautious, even consciously unopinionated.

Could Andrew Neil have finally tamed Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson?

Neil, the Barclay brothers's representative on earth, has let it be known for some time that he has been unhappy with Johnson's less than singleminded commitment to the magazine. In interviews, Neil has suggested that The Spectator needs to be "dragged into the 21st century", developing "a stronger voice on the big issues" and "more intellectual rigour".

So despite Neil's tribute last week to his "wonderful and magnificent" editor, had he in fact squeezed out Johnson? "No, no, it was entirely my decision," Johnson, 41, says quietly in the Doughty Street office he is clearing. "I think Andrew Neil's got ..." Pause. "... a lot of fantastic journalistic experience. I've got every confidence he'll, erm, expand, improve, the magazine." He pauses again. "You know, it's never an easy time to leave, but over the last 18 months I've just known I had to go ... By the end you're starting to hit the ball back with exactly the same shot you used last year and the year before. It was time."

What of the claim that Johnson had been in fear of the former Sunday Times editor? "No, Andrew Neil is a pussycat," he says over-emphatically. "Tiggerish. Zestful. He's a charming fellow, got a lot of drive. I'm sure he'll do great things."

When we last met 14 months ago, amid suggestions that time was running out for "Six Jobs Johnson", he said he would abandon journalism only if he became a government rather than a shadow minister. How, then, does he explain his departure now? Ah, but he is not abandoning journalism, he says. For one, he could not afford to, with four children. "But what I have tested to destruction since we last met is the idea that you can be on the front bench and edit a national magazine, which imposes its own self-censorship. I tried to ride both horses, but I got bumped off the shadow arts thing."

He is referring to his sacking as shadow arts minister after Howard said he had falsely denied allegations about an affair with Petronella Wyatt, a Spectator columnist. In fact, Johnson suggests now, Howard was being disingenuous. The then Tory leader had sent him to Liverpool to apologise for a Spectator leader accusing the city of "wallowing" in grief over the death of hostage Ken Bigley, and Johnson had returned regretting not the leader, but going there in his Opposition role.

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