LONDON — A few days before Donald Trump was sworn in as president in January 2017, US secretary of state John Kerry took a short farewell tour to say goodbye to some of America’s closest allies.



His penultimate stop was London. To mark the occasion, and celebrate the special relationship between their two countries, Boris Johnson hosted a private dinner for his US counterpart at Scott’s, a fine-dining seafood and fish restaurant in swanky Mayfair.

Before the meal, the British foreign secretary gifted Kerry a small box. In it, to the surprise of both diplomatic parties, was a “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign cap.

For Johnson, it was an apparent attempt at comedy. For everyone else in the room, it was disrespectful to Kerry and his colleagues after a painful and divisive US election, which, as they saw it, put the Obama administration’s legacy and worldview in jeopardy.

Johnson, 54, is the overwhelming favourite among Conservative party members in the race to succeed Theresa May as party leader, and prime minister.



He is the darling of party-friendly and controversy-hungry media that follow his every move and utterance in his lucrative £275,000-a-year Daily Telegraph column. But for all that is known about Johnson, there has been little scrutiny of his actual performance at the Foreign Office, the only senior government job he’s held.

BuzzFeed News conducted interviews with seven senior US, European, and British officials and diplomats at the highest levels of government to interrogate Johnson’s time in office, and what it tells us about how he might perform as UK prime minister. All had firsthand experience of dealing directly with him on the international stage.

They spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid when sharing their views and experiences. None of the people BuzzFeed News talked to are among Johnson’s political rivals or connected in any way to the ongoing Conservative leadership battle.

For people who worked directly with and were actually in the room with him, Johnson wasn’t just funny or prone to innocent gaffes. They said he frequently fell short of the demands of the office: being “woefully” underprepared on important briefs, not knowing basic details, and making crucial mistakes.

These shortcomings were summed up by one British diplomat, who told BuzzFeed News how they had felt embarrassed about representing the UK for the first time in their career after a trip with the then foreign secretary to Southeast Asia because of Johnson’s lack of basic knowledge on the issues discussed during the trip, and his lack of sensitivity towards the local culture and customs of his hosts.