Boris Johnson’s Unleashed is an important historical document, but not necessarily a valuable one. Any historian who approaches it is likely to at least partially remember the bit from GCSE history about the reliability of sources. The reason Johnson, a biographer of notoriously dubious merit, has turned to autobiography significantly earlier than he would have liked is because his party correctly calculated that the country could no longer believe a word he had to say.
Unleashed is an appropriate title. Johnson comes roaring out in chapter one like Scrappy-Doo, fists flying everywhere. He’s taking shots at the Supreme Court, at John Bercow, at everyone who stood in his way in the early months of his premiership, which was a lot of people because he had no parliamentary majority (it became a lot more people, shortly after, when he kicked Kenneth Clarke, among others, out of the Conservative Party). He also immediately starts laying the groundwork for later punches he will throw at the police and others over Partygate.
