Boris Johnson: "They Were Looking at Engineering the Virus” & “The Government Tried To Bribe Me!"

TL;DR

Boris Johnson discusses his childhood (mother’s OCD, divorce, frequent moves), his political rise, and his leadership through Brexit, COVID-19, and Partygate. He defends Brexit as delivering regulatory freedom (e.g.

Key insights

• Johnson speculates his childhood glue ear (deafness) may have been a “cunning means to avoid my mother’s questions” and that he might not have been as deaf as he seemed.
• He believes the emotional shock of his parents’ divorce (age 14) led him to use work as a therapy to rebuild self‑esteem: “the best therapy for every type of emotional pain is to try to lose yourself
• He asserts that the EU is “a project to create a United States of Europe with a single currency with a single parliament” and that staying would mean becoming “less and less democratic.”