Friends, Voters, Countrymen

Friends, Voters, Countrymen: Jottings on the Stump is a 2001 book by the politician and writer (and later British prime minister) Boris Johnson. The book recounts Johnson's successful campaign for the seat of Henley in the 2001 United Kingdom general election.[1]

Friends, Voters, Countrymen: Jottings on the Stump

First edition
Author	Boris Johnson
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Memoir
Set in	London
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	June 2002
Media type	Print: Hardback octavo
Pages	288
ISBN	9780007119141
Followed by	Lend Me Your Ears (2003)

Johnson sold the serialisation rights to the book to The Times despite, according to Johnson's biographer Sonia Purnell, its being the Daily Telegraph under editor Charles Moore who had 'rescued and promoted his career'. Sarah Sands recalled that Moore was '...furious that Boris had done that. I saw Boris with his head in his hands, saying that the Telegraph had simply not made a good enough offer'.[2]

Will Buckley, reviewing the book in The Guardian, wrote that "it is yet another sign of Tory decline that Boris Johnson, brightest of the new intake, has decided to publish his political memoirs within weeks of arriving at Westminster". Buckley was pessimistic regarding Johnson's future political career, writing that "There will be no Cabinet post. There is unlikely to be even a Shadow Cabinet post. His achievement in holding Henley with a reduced majority in the 2001 election may be a highlight. The crunch decision of his political career could well be having to choose between IDS and DD in a leadership contest". Buckley concludes that "His first diary is slight, the election being no more interesting in Henley than elsewhere. But the months and years to come, as our man struggles over whether to accept a job as PPS to Bill Cash and frets over the decline of his once great party, should provide sufficient material to write further diaries which are even more amusing, and insightful, than Clark's."[3]

In the book Johnson is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman, telling him that "he is motivated 30 per cent by public service, 40 per cent by 'sheer egomania' and 30 per cent [by] disapproval of 'swankpot journalists'. Paxman snorts. Johnson writes in his diary: 'He thinks I am being satirical, but I am not entirely - at least not in the point about service.'"[3]

In a 2004 profile of Johnson for Vanity Fair, Michael Wolff described the book as concerning "the ludicrousness and exasperations and low farce of campaigning — a gentle and instructive comedy", and felt it was "surely the best campaign book ever written by a politician".[4]