Boris Johnson seemed convinced his charm alone would be enough to secure him the prize, but ultimately he was thwarted by a rival who sought to portray him as a charlatan – only to eventually triumph by changing his political colours completely.

This is not the story of the Conservative leadership candidate’s recent political career, his humbling at the hands of Michael Gove in 2016, or his sudden devotion to the Brexit cause – but of his first forays into student politics about 35 years ago, according to the man who beat him.

Neil Sherlock, who went on to be an adviser to Nick Clegg when he was deputy prime minister, beat the young Johnson by more than 100 votes during a hard-fought campaign to become Oxford Union president in 1984, which framed him as a grammar-school-educated boy pitted against an Old Etonian establishment candidate.

Sherlock said the idea Johnson would eventually reach the pinnacle of politics was implausible and if anyone were going to become prime minister, it was a rival who went on to take a different path.

“I always thought at university that Nick Robinson would be the big political star and that Boris Johnson would be a journalist. When I left Oxford, that’s what I thought would happen,” Sherlock said.

“In 1984-85, if you told me that Boris Johnson was going to be prime minister, I would have been very surprised. If you’d asked me then, I would have said Nick Robinson.”

A 1980s photo showing Robinson, front left, Sherlock, front middle, and Boris Johnson, back right. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Johnson later broadened his appeal by playing to the more liberal-leaning student audience in what Sherlock called a “Boris two” persona, which led to him being elected president at the second attempt.

Robinson, who was a president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, turned his back on politics and became one of the country’s most prominent Westminster TV journalists.

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.



Sherlock, who has been a partner at two leading accountancy firms and helped prepare Clegg for the 2010 TV debates by playing David Cameron in practice run-throughs, was the first in his family to attend university and arrived at Oxford without any experience of debating.

But he gradually rose through the ranks at the Oxford Union society, which holds weekly debates and attracts famous guest speakers from the political world, eventually becoming treasurer at the same time Johnson was secretary.

When it became clear the two were pitted against each other for the presidency, Johnson’s camp apparently tried to kill the contest before it had begun. “I don’t think he ever thought people like me would stand in the way,” Sherlock said.

Sherlock, who achieved a first in PPE, said: “I remember when I was asked to go to tea with Allegra Mostyn-Owen, who was then his girlfriend, and Allegra, in a very elegant way, sought to persuade me not to stand against the person she called ‘my Boris’.

“I knew there was something a bit odd when Boris then arrived, perchance, at the end of the discussion. It was clearly an effort to persuade me. I remember saying: ‘Why should someone [Boris] who hasn’t really been involved go from secretary to president?’

“She implied he was so obviously better than me, it was almost an entitlement. She didn’t use those words, but there was a sense of it.”

Rather than put him off, Sherlock said, the episode only “reinforced my view that I was absolutely not only going to stand, but win”.

Johnson became president of the Oxford Union at the second attempt. Photograph: Brian Smith/Reuters

Tim Hames, who was to become a journalist, helped run Sherlock’s election campaign which, he later wrote in the Times, amounted to an “unremitting campaign of class warfare”. One biography of Johnson, who studied classics at Balliol College, said that some of Oxford’s privately educated elite referred to state-school educated peers as “stains”.

Sherlock, who had been defeated once before, explained: “We ran a very clear sort of message that, in an accrued sense, [it was] meritocrat v toff. It wasn’t that difficult [to get the message out] when one could see the two candidates. It was about getting out and about, raising one’s profile and speaking well.

“I remember Boris had heard word that I was out and about everywhere, and I said: ‘That’s because I am.’ He said: ‘How do you manage it?’ From recollection, I said: ‘How long do you sleep for Boris?’ He said: ‘Eight, nine hours.’ ‘There you go,’ I said. ‘I get four hours extra [to campaign] every day. Across a week, that’s a day a week I’ve got an advantage over you.’

“I slightly exaggerated to make my point. He sort of ruffled his hair, said: ‘My God.’ It was that sort of moment.”

Sherlock, having showcased his oratory skills in a debate against William Hague, who came back to the campus after being president of the society in 1981, said he was confident of victory in the campaign. He won by 661 votes to Johnson’s 558.

Asked whether Johnson was gracious in defeat, Sherlock replied: “He didn’t turn up to the count. It was a very packed bar and the returning officer gets on to the bar early in the morning to announce it, and the winning president gets on to the bar to say a few words, but he wasn’t there. So I assume he concluded he was going to lose.”

Johnson had to wait until the following academic year to taste victory. He secured 809 votes against the 466 of his Australian opponent, Mark Carnegie, now a venture capitalist whose firm runs several investment funds worth nearly £500m.

The journalist Toby Young, also an Oxford contemporary, said Johnson had successfully courted the backing of the leftwing Limehouse Group to secure victory. Though he did not formally join the group, Johnson attended one of its parties, Young wrote in the Spectator, adding: “More importantly, he stopped describing himself as a Conservative and rebranded himself an ‘environmentalist’.” The purpose, Young wrote, was “to detoxify himself”.

Johnson’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.