Boris Johnson will be able to earn millions of pounds from his brief but turbulent tenure as British prime minister but will need to look overseas for his biggest paydays, according to talent industry executives.
Senior figures in publishing and the after-dinner speaking circuit said Johnson will command a seven-figure advance for any Downing Street memoir and as much as $250,000 for a single speaking engagement in Asia or US.
This week Johnson was forced to step down as Conservative party leader but drew comparisons with former US president Donald Trump as he tried to cling to office despite the mass resignation of more than 50 members of his government.
The publishing insiders added that his political celebrity did not appear sufficiently tainted to stop him commanding massive fees in the US, where Johnson is known among Trump supporters for delivering Brexit and loved for his quintessentially English style of delivery.
“I don’t think he’ll do well in the UK for the foreseeable future, but in the US he’ll go out for six figures for sure,” said Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne, managing director of Kruger Cowne, a speaking agency whose clients include entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and model Elle Macpherson.
But the events this week were unlikely to dent his price, she added. “The US is closed off to the rest of the world in so many ways. All they will see is that he’s the ex-prime minister of the UK, he’ll be a big name and he speaks well, of course.”
The status that comes with being an ex-prime minister will mean a significant bump up to the fees that Johnson earned as an international speaker in 2019 after he quit as foreign secretary, according to Jeremy Lee, founder of JLA, the agency which represented Johnson at that time.
Then, Johnson typically received between £25,000 and £40,000 for around two-hours work speaking to a range of banks, insurance companies and industry trade associations, but was paid £122,000 for an exceptional one-off speaking engagement with the India Today media group in 2019.
By comparison, Theresa May, another shortlived British prime minister who is viewed as less charismatic than Johnson, has earned £80,000-£100,000 for speeches in the US, EU and Asia since quitting Downing Street.
May, who like several former world leaders is represented by the Washington Speakers Bureau, pays herself £85,000 a year from the fees, with the rest going to maintain charitable activities and her “ongoing involvement in public” life, according to the register of MPs interests.
“The market for Johnson is going to be almost entirely overseas and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was entirely,” said Lee, adding that former PMs being unloved at home was in no way unique.
“From Churchill onward, former British PMs have been pretty much unbookable in their own country. Thatcher made a fortune in the US and no one was interested over here,” he said.
Less immediately lucrative than public speaking, but still potentially worth millions of pounds, will be Johnson’s career as an author and newspaper columnist which he will be free to resume once out of office.
In 2019 The Daily Telegraph, the conservative newspaper that Johnson later referred to as “my real boss”, according to his former aide Dominic Cummings, was paying him over £22,000 a month for a weekly opinion piece.
A media industry insider with long experience in Fleet Street said that rival titles would be interested in commissioning him. “He’s a former prime minister, world famous, turns convention on its head with everything he does, someone will take him,” they added.
Johnson can also expect a hefty advance for both his memoir and, potentially, other books, including a long-planned volume on Shakespeare for which Johnson was paid an £88,000 advance in 2015.
Benedicte Page, deputy editor of The Bookseller, a trade publication, said that even though the majority of political memoirs only sold moderately, publishers still liked to bag “big beast” memoirs.
But, she added, that appetite for Johnson’s memoir might be tempered by the plunge in his personal popularity in the UK which could create reputational risk to the publisher.
Ultimately, Johnson could expect to comfortably exceed the £800,000 advance that was reportedly paid to David Cameron for his memoir For the Record, said Andrew Franklin, managing director of Profile Books, an independent publisher.
“It’s not unlikely that he’ll get a super-ton of money. It will be an entertaining book, even if it probably won’t tell you anything close to the truth, but it will have a value will buy it,” he added.
