State Papers: Boris Johnson 'naïve' on politics of the North
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Boris Johnson was regarded as a “naïve” commentator on aspects of the politics of Northern Ireland by an Irish diplomat who had lunch with the then journalist in London in 1995.
However, the future British prime minister impressed the Irish official with his contacts and access to the Conservative government led by John Major.
Johnson, who was regarded as a colourful and influential writer in British media circles, was the subject of a memo forwarded by the Irish embassy in London to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin over a lunch date to get his reading on the progress of the peace process in Northern Ireland.
The annual release of State papers from the National Archives revealed the contents of a note drafted by the embassy’s press and information officer, Colin Wrafter, and marked “confidential” after lunch with Johnson in London on April 24, 1995, in a restaurant near Westminster.
At the time Johnson was a political correspondent with The Spectator and columnist with the Daily Telegraph after being recalled from Brussels where he had worked as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. Johnson’s politics were recorded by the Irish official as “Thatcherite and Eurosceptic.”
However, Johnson pointed out that he had incurred the wrath of the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, George Moore, for a piece he had written in The Spectator a few months previously which argued that the framework document for progressing the Northern Ireland peace process was deliberately pitched by the British in the nationalist direction so as to ensure a final settlement would be much more sensitive to unionist concerns.
“He has written approvingly, if naively, of the Northern Ireland Tories in his weekly column in the Telegraph,” Wrafter observed.
The diplomat noted that the lunch had taken place just before the British government had announced that it would start ministerial talks with Sinn Féin as part of an effort to make progress on the decommissioning of IRA arms.
The Irish official was also impressed with the advance notice which Johnson and other Telegraph journalists appeared to be given about major new policy announcements by the Conservative government.
“It says something for the standing of the Daily Telegraph that he knew what the British government would announce that afternoon and that his lobby colleague, Phil Johnson, had time to travel to Belfast for Minister [Michael] Ancram’s briefing at 5pm,” Wrafter recorded.