Idea Johnson: Neil Sherlock and Grammar-School-Educated Boy

idea johnson: 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, according to The Guardian. 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. 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. I always thought at university that Nick Robinson would be the big political star and that Boris Johnson would be a journalist. In 1984-85, if you told me that Boris Johnson was going to be prime minister, I would have been very surprised. When I left Oxford, that's what I thought would happen, Sherlock said. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.