Boris Johnson could not have got off to a better start.

Shortly after Johnson was appointed foreign secretary, Sir Simon McDonald, the head of the diplomatic service, organised an all-staff meeting for him in the main hall at King Charles Street. This was Johnson’s chance to address the troops and set out his stall. After two years of Philip Hammond, whose ice-cool efficiency has a way of freezing hearts across Whitehall, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office needed to hear some joy. And that afternoon in July 2016, Johnson had an abundance of it.

He told his audience how brilliant they were. He agreed they were underpaid and said he would press the Treasury to look at their salaries. The climax came when he took questions and was asked if he would allow the department and UK embassies to fly the rainbow flag during gay pride events. Hammond had banned this. Would Johnson? Of course he wouldn’t.

Timeline Boris Johnson - three decades of sackings and giving offence Show Fired by the Times after landing a job at the newspaper through his family connections. In an article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace, Johnson allegedly invented a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas. Discussed plans to have a tabloid journalist beaten up with his fellow Old Etonian Darius Guppy. Johnson said he would try to obtain personal details of the News of the World journalist Stuart Collier. Guppy talked of hiring a contact from south London to assault Collier. In a Telegraph column he predicted that when Tony Blair arrived in Congo “the tribal warriors” would “all break out in watermelon smiles”. He added that the Queen loved the Commonwealth “partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies”. It was written the year after he became an MP. Compared same-sex marriage to polygamy and bestiality in his debut book, Friends, Voters, Countrymen. “If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog,” said Johnson. Four years before, Johnson described gay men as “tank-topped bumboys” in his Telegraph column. Condemned for publishing an article as editor of the Spectator in which Liverpool fans were blamed for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. While the article says the event was “undeniably” a tragedy, it added: “That is no excuse for Liverpool’s failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon.” It also claimed that people in Liverpool “wallow” in their “victim status”. Fired by the then Tory leader, Michael Howard, from positions as shadow arts minister and party vice-chairman for lying about his extramarital affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt. When it transpired that tabloid reports, which Johnson had dismissed as an “inverted pyramid of piffle”, were true, he had refused to resign. Suggested that a rise in the number of Malaysian women attending university was down to their desire to find a husband. Suggested the “part-Kenyan” US president Barack Obama had an “ancestral dislike” of the UK. Won “most offensive Erdoğan poem” competition, two months before he was appointed foreign secretary. The limerick, for which he was handed £1,000 by the Spectator, described the Turkish president having sex with a goat. Caught on camera reciting a colonial-era poem by Rudyard Kipling in front of local dignitaries while on an official trip to Myanmar. Johnson, who was accused of “incredible insensitivity”, had been inside the sacred Buddhist site the Shwedagon Pagoda when he began murmuring the first verse of Mandalay, a later verse of which includes the line: “Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud, wot they called the Great Gawd Budd”. Criticised for making incorrect statement that the jailed British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been “teaching people journalism” rather than being on holiday in Iran. The then foreign secretary condemned her conviction for spying but his comments were later cited as proof by Iran that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime”. Came under fire for describing Muslim women in burqas as looking like “bank robbers” and “letter boxes”. Making the comments in his Telegraph column, Johnson also called the garments “oppressive” but added that Britain should not follow other countries in banning them in public. Media firestorm ensued after a neighbour recorded a loud altercation at the home Johnson shared with his partner, Carrie Symonds. Johnson refused to answer questions about the circumstances of the tape, which featured screaming, shouting and banging. A picture of the couple posing happily subsequently appeared in the media, but Johnson repeatedly refused to say who had taken or released the photograph, or whether it was an old picture. The UK's Supreme court rules that the advice prime minister Boris Johnson gave to the Queen over proroguing parliament was "unlawful, void, and of no effect" as it rules that his decision to prorogue parliament was unlawful.

“Boris said the FCO would fly the flag. He got quite a rousing round of applause and cheers for that. He said all the right things,” said one source.

In part, it is a reflection on Hammond that so many at the FCO were initially relieved to have Johnson in charge, despite the widespread incredulity at his appointment in diplomatic circles, accusations about his lack of political gravitas, and concerns about his levels of genuine interest in foreign affairs.

Boris Johnson in the Foreign Office. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian

After all, this was a man who had once used a newspaper column to describe “Vlad” Putin as “looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf” – a character from the Harry Potter stories.

Setting that aside, here was a chance for Johnson to prove his mettle in one of the great offices of state, and inject some colour and energy back into British foreign policy at a time of international turbulence – and Brexit.

But over the nearly two years he was in post, all these early hopes faded, according to several sources who spoke to the Guardian. The Foreign Office remained marginalised, morale sank further – and, with some notable exceptions, Johnson reverted to type.

By the time he had gone, many of those who had seen him at work had become frustrated by his inconsistency and compared him unfavourably with every other foreign secretary from the recent era. “Nobody was sad to see him go,” said one official.

If this didn’t entirely surprise those who knew him, it did disappoint foreign ministers from other countries, and undermine Britain’s voice at the top table, according to one senior EU diplomat.

Boris’s reputation is for winging it. It’s not enough. You have to do more than that. Foreign ministers are a pretty serious bunch EU diplomat

“The club of foreign ministers is composed of experienced members. People like Sergei Lavrov [Russia] and Frank-Walter Steinmeier [Germany]. They have years of experience and competence. Not withstanding his enthusiasm, Johnson did not have competence.”

This became most evident during discussions over the situations in Libya and Syria, he said. “If you are dealing with the Libyan affair, it is very complicated; the Syrian story is very sad and dramatic. If you discuss them, you have to know what you are talking about.

“I could not say that Boris was an irrelevance at these meetings. But if you only have good words and enthusiasm, that is not what you want from a British foreign secretary. I wouldn’t say he wasn’t serious, he just wasn’t prepared. Evidently being foreign secretary was not Boris Johnson’s cup of tea.”

It’s not that Johnson made enemies. “He is a celebrity because of the way he does things. People recognise him, not just in the UK but in other countries. I think he is in love with this … He likes to be liked,” the diplomat said.

And that was part of the problem. “My impression is that he is very interested in pleasing the audience. I never saw an aggressive attitude in these multilateral meetings or in our bilateral meetings. His predecessor [Hammond] was frequently more aggressive and more demanding. He was very sharp and precise in his requests and positions, and not so interested in pleasing his interlocutors and the audience.”

Johnson at a cricket match between England and India at the Oval, London, September 2018. Photograph: Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images

In particular, EU foreign ministers had expected Johnson to speak up firmly for British interests in the foreign affairs council. Apparently, it didn’t happen. “I would say our relations were very easy. I frankly don’t remember any occasion in which he took an aggressive position. So apparently [Johnson] is not a political leader with a great and sharp position, repeating it continuously and clearly, but more a political leader with a very flexible attitude. Is this a good thing to lead a government? Well, I leave that to you draw a conclusion.”

Other sources said Johnson convened small working groups on some issues, such as the war in Yemen, but that overall, “he was limited in the briefings he was prepared to take”.

“Boris’s reputation is for winging it. It’s not enough. You have to do more than that. Foreign ministers are a pretty serious bunch. There is no margin for error. In some countries, if you make an error you are a dead man.”

Another Whitehall veteran said submissions to Johnson had to be brief and the point or risk being ignored or misunderstood.

“All foreign secretaries have different ways of working. Jack Straw was across his brief. He was there for a long time. Submissions to David Miliband had to be more detailed. He always had a ‘top six’ questions on everything. He really got into the minutiae of things.

Johnson on board a helicopter with his Peruvian counterpart Nestor Popolizio (left) during a visit to the Amazon rainforest in May 2018. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

“If anything, Hague was even more detailed. Submissions to him were mammoth tasks. But with Boris, submissions needed to be short, and they needed to clear about what he was being asked to do.”

Loud complaints about being asked to focus on a subject, or give a speech on a subject he had no interest in, happened frequently, insiders say. One official was brutal in her assessment: “He was smart, but he had the attention span of a gnat.”

It was this casual approach that led to his biggest gaffe as foreign secretary. In November 2017 he told the foreign affairs select committee that a British Iranian mother detained in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was training journalists in the country. Her family had always insisted she was on holiday visiting members of her family. Johnson apologised and corrected his statement to MPs.

But it was too late. His remarks were seized upon by the Iranian authorities, who had accused her of being a spy. Three days after Johnson spoke, she was summoned before an unscheduled court hearing, where the foreign secretary’s comments were cited as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime”.

A source said this typified Johnson’s lack of attention to detail. “He shouldn’t have said what he said. These things have consequences. She is still in jail.”

That wasn’t the case for everyone, or everything. The foreign secretary is in charge of the government’s eavesdropping headquarters in Cheltenham, GCHQ, and the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6. Both agencies found him initially supportive. Johnson was said to be “interested and took the time to grasp some of the technical stuff” that came to his desk from GCHQ.

Shortly after taking the helm, he did an all-staff briefing at MI6 that seemed to go down well, and the agency did not find him to be a pushover in all the requests they made of him.

Johnson was not, as has been reported, cut out of intelligence briefings. On paper, he received what he was entitled to as foreign secretary; only the prime minister and the Queen get to see everything.

Whether intelligence chiefs were entirely open with him during their one-to-one meetings is another matter. “That would be down to the instincts of the individuals involved,” said a source.

After the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March last year, Johnson impressed some in government with his willingness to push back against Russia.

Bill Browder, the anti-corruption campaigner and prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, said he had found Johnson an ally in his drive to get a “Magnitsky Act” passed in the UK. This allows the sanctioning of corrupt Russian officials and seizure of their assets – a response to the murder of Browder’s then lawyer in Moscow, Sergei Magnitsky.

Johnson stands in Red Square, Moscow, in December 2017. Photograph: Reuters

“I see everything through the prism of the Magnitsky Act,” said Browder. “Boris was one of the early supporters of the initiative when he was London mayor. He was one of the most supportive foreign secretaries. And we succeeded. Boris was convinced that Putin was up to no good. I got arrested on a Russian arrest warrant in Madrid when Boris was foreign secretary and he intervened very quickly on my behalf.” (Despite the powers now at the UK’s disposal, Browder noted that the government has not used them.)

But the occasional diligence Johnson showed during some episodes only served to highlight the myriad others in which he seemed less than keen. “Damn nice guy, but came across as ‘Tim Nice But Dim’,” is how one official described him.

Little things betrayed his self-regard and his peevishness, another official noted. At the leaving drinks for the outgoing Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, who retired in February 2017, Johnson gave a speech.

Instead of focusing on the career and feats of the veteran officer, Johnson used the event at Scotland Yard’s new headquarters overlooking the Embankment in London to attack his successor as London mayor, Sadiq Khan, according to one guest.

“It was quite an odd thing to do,” said the onlooker. “It was Bernard’s night. That’s the thing you learn about Boris ... everything is always about him.”

But could he be an effective prime minister? “If he was not expected to run anything, it could work,” said one experienced diplomat. “He could be the flag-waving ambassador for the UK. He could go around the country saying, ‘come on, we can do this’.”

Quick Guide About this series Show The real Boris Johnson Over the course of the week, the Guardian is publishing a series of news reports, features and multimedia components on the man widely expected to be the next Conservative leader – and therefore prime minister. In coverage that ranges from his early days as a journalist to his last senior job as foreign secretary, we will seek to shed light on the exploits, ambitions and values of one of the most consequential – and most divisive – politicians of the age.



But Johnson’s time as foreign secretary showed some of those he worked with, both in the UK and abroad, that he would not a leader capable of mastering briefs on all manner of subjects.

“If Boris is to become prime minister, he will need a very serious chief operating officer. Someone who will run the show,” said one. “Boris will not be able to run a government.”

The source likened Johnson to Zaphod Beeblebrox, a character in the science fiction comedy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Self-obsessed with a gargantuan ego, Beeblebrox was briefly president of the galaxy – a role said to have no power at all other than to distract attention from whoever was really in charge.

“He is a Zaphod Beeblebrox. Other people will be running the galaxy. He’d need a good chancellor, a good foreign secretary and a good home secretary. He’d have to let them get on with his job.”