As Boris Johnson will know from his love of Greek tragedy, hubris leads to nemesis. And it is Boris’s own hubris — in playing cricket with Lord Spencer the weekend after Brexit, and not finishing his leadership speech on time — that supposedly led to his downfall.
I well know from working with Boris at the Telegraph that prompt timekeeping is not his forte. For five years, my Wednesday nights were destroyed as Boris regularly missed the 7 p.m. deadline for delivering his column. ‘It hasn’t arrived,’ I’d say to him over the phone at 7.01 p.m.
‘Ah, Christ, sorry,’ said Boris, ‘Bloody internet! It must be pinging its way down those threadbare copper wires as we speak, old man.’
In fact, he hadn’t finished writing the column. I could hear him tapping away at his keyboard on the other end of the phone, while insisting he’d already sent it.
The lateness wasn’t because he was lazy.
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