Battle of Hastings

Sir Max Hastings, whom I engaged as editor of the Daily Telegraph in 1986 and who stayed in that role for about nine years, seems to have installed himself at the head of the rabid mob of journalistic haters of Boris Johnson.

In recent pieces in The Spectator and the Guardian he has described Boris as ‘a tasteless joke’ interested only in ‘fame and gratification… a scoundrel or a mere rogue’ (a subtle distinction), and in any case a man afflicted by ‘moral bankruptcy’.

Max concedes that Boris is likely to be the next prime minister and preemptively accuses him of conducting a ‘celebrity government as in Ukraine and the US’. His government will ‘reveal contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability’, yet ‘his graver vice is cowardice… and a weak character’.

There is certainly room for debate about Boris Johnson as prime minister. But he possesses a number of remarkable qualities considerably beyond the talents Hastings accords him as an entertainer and a clown. He was such an effective correspondent for us in Brussels that he greatly influenced British opinion on this country’s relations with Europe. He was an undoubtedly effective editor of The Spectator even though he was simultaneously a member of parliament. He liberated London from the onerous leftist government of Ken Livingstone, contributed importantly to the success of the Olympic Games, and his administration must stand as the most successful London has had in a very long time. All sane Londoners would take him back tomorrow in place of the unrelievedly obnoxious Sadiq Khan.

It will not do to dismiss so flippantly the accomplishments of someone who has moved so surefootedly from Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in less than 20 years to potential prime minister.

As the former employer of both of them, and although their positions were of un-equal importance and challenges, on balance I must declare Boris to be more reliable and trustworthy than Max.