The party of business and law and order is about to elect a new leader and the favourite, as we know, is Boris Johnson. Those of us who are, shall we say, not big fans of his, might find this somewhat surprising given his track record over many years. The party membership is starting to bear more than a passing resemblance to the board of a football club from the lower divisions, who constantly pick a succession of failed coaches.
The simpletons don't know how to manage a team themselves and are easy meat for the chancers who can't do it either, but convince the board they can.
The simpletons don't know how to manage a team themselves and are easy meat for the chancers who can't do it either, but convince the board they can.
In Bojo's case I want you to look at two articles published in the last couple of days about the man who would be king. Up first is one by Nick Cohen in The Guardian (HERE) where Johnson is described so:
"... the greatest charlatan in the history of the Conservative party: that incompetent, manipulative, lazy, overentitled, media-constructed and media-protected fatberg of dishonesty".
Next, one from Matthew Parris in The Times (HERE no £):
"... he’s a habitual liar, a cheat, a conspirator with a criminal pal to
have an offending journalist’s ribs broken, a cruel betrayer of the
women he seduces, a politician who connived in a bid for a court order
to suppress mention of a daughter he fathered".
A 'fatberg of dishonesty' - it could catch on. Cohen might be on to something here. And we mustn't forget his well-known policy on business (Clue: it begins with 'F').
We've had all sorts of prime minister's over the years but I struggle to remember any of them being described in such vitriolic personal terms during or even after their premiership. Boris gets this treatment before he is even on the official ballot paper! God alone knows what they'll call him when he steps down. He will be a gift to journalists at press conferences and interviews.
He is probably going to be anointed to one of the toughest jobs in British politics at a time of national crisis. What could possibly go wrong? It's akin to George Formby taking over from Chamberlain in 1940. We might not have won the war but Hitler would have had a good laugh.
Most of us have at least one character flaw of some sort but BoJo is an analyst's dream - he has them all! Mendacious, unfaithful, untrustworthy, bone idle, incompetent, self-centred, grasping, shabby, loose-tongued, xenophobic and I could go on - and on. Parris claims in his article that Bojo's people (Nigel Adams perhaps) are already "playing dirty, using private information to frighten colleagues into declaring themselves early for Johnson". This is blackmail isnt't it? I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't a thief into the bargain.
As Stephen Norris pointed our recently, everybody likes him except those who know him. His campaign is said to be keeping him under a kind of witness protection programme for his own good. He has very little control over what comes out of his mouth - a sort of diarrhoea in reverse - and he's quite likely to destroy his own campaign before it's started. Hence, his house arrest.
If he every does get the top job one wonders what the international community will think of us?
We thought the Americans were crazy electing a man with obvious psychological problems. At least we can absolve ourselves - we didn't get a choice. It was the Conservative party membership wot done it!
Johson's majority was slashed by a half in 2017 down to about 5,000 votes. If The Brexit Party put up a candidate at the next election he's almost certainly finished.
Among the myriad Brexit fantasies (everybody has one nowadays don't they) this one by Nick Hargrave, a former Downing Street special adviser, working under both David Cameron and May is the most far-fetched. Hargrave sees Johnson actually getting a deal through parliament!
In Hargraves future world, PM Johnson makes a grand statesmanlike speech imploring the British people to 'hold their nerve" and then toddles off to Brussels, where in mid October during a crisis meeting between Merkel, Macron, Varadkar and BoJo, some changes to the WA are agreed which anger the DUP but allow a small majority of MPs to vote in favour of the deal before the deadline.
Afterwards, he unleashes a spending spree, launches a few new initiatives and goes for a GE in spring 2020, winning a 15 seat majority. However, even Hargrave can't give it a happy ending because he then sees the trade-offs needed to reach a Canada +++ deal setting BoJo on the path to becoming the fifth Tory PM to be toppled by Europe.
Back to reality and on a slightly different topic, just a reminder how extreme the Conservative party has become can be seen in the news that the moderate David Gauke, Justice Secretary, is facing a motion of no confidence from his SW Hertfordshire constituency association on June 28th, "on account of his wilful obstruction to the implementation of the result of the 2016 referendum". Gauke voted three times in favour of May's deal. What is going on?
I'm going to end with the comment of the week from Robert Peston summing up next week's hustings for the Tory leadership:
"What Tory MPs and the rest of us will be witnessing next week are
auditions for the leading role in the drama entitled 'How Brexit
destroyed or saved the Tory Party, and Britain' - and none of us know
whether the ending will be happy or tragic".
Oh I think we do, don't we?
