Johnson seems to be turning into a bit of a Wizard of Oz figure. Yesterday was the first official day of the election campaign and it was a disaster for him, news of it even reaching the Sydney Morning Herald which carried the headline: Boris Johnson stumbles out of the starting block in a gaffe-strewn day. Even for a man as monumentally disorganised as Johnson it was pretty bad.
The doctored video of Kier Starmer, at first defended by Central Office as genuine was then described as lighthearted and satirical by James Cleverly who also said it had been 'shortened'. Anybody who has ever tried to edit a video clip to put on social media will know this is rubbish. He was roasted by both mainstream and social media. It was all too much for him when invited on to Kate Burley's show on Sky News. He cowered off screen and refused to appear as you can see on the video in the tweet below:
Cleverley: can a man ever have been so spectacularly badly named?Good on @KayBurley for exposing Conservative Party chairman @JamesCleverly for pulling out of her programme in a panic, and asking every single question she was going to ask him, while the camera shows an empty chair and he cowers, apparently, fifteen feet away. Classic Dom. pic.twitter.com/CIfoSMC09h— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) November 6, 2019
On Monday Rees-Mogg had put his elegant foot in it by suggesting on LBC that the people who died in the Grenfell tower fire were somehow a bit thick for following fire brigade advice. Andrew Bridgen, never known to have made a bad situation better, went on to defend the Mogg by saying he was 'clever' and would have made a better decision than those in authority. He was forced to apologise for causing offence by none other than the party chairman - a Mr James Cleverley. It was a case of an idiot being advised by a fool.
Just before Johnson gave his campaign speech in Downing Street, Alun Cairns the Welsh Secretary resigned for personally (and deliberately it is alleged) causing the collapse of a rape trial in 2018 involving a man whom he later endorsed as a prospective Welsh Assembly member for the 2021 elections. The trial judge had asked Cairns if he was "completely stupid". Cairns served in Johnson's cabinet so we all know the answer to that one.
Johnson himself had penned a typically OTT column in The Telegraph where he compared Corby to Stalin and "launched a no-holds-barred attack on the Labour leader as he compared him to the brutal Soviet dictator. And he accused Labour of wanting to 'destroy the very basis of this country’s prosperity' with a clampdown on business."
The man who's business policy is a single word starting with 'f' accuses Corbyn of wanting to destroy the nation's prosperity - you couldn't make it up. As for Corbyn hating rich people so much he wants to persecute them as Stalin did the kulaks during his forced collectivisation programme in the 1920s and 30's - do me a favour. Corbyn is a cross between Mr Pastry and Victor Meldrew. Stalin he is not.
John Bercow, probably worried that he might not be the centre of attention any more stepped in to reveal his true remainer colours. He said Brexit was the biggest mistake of the post war period. Good on him. Whether that increases his chances of getting into the House of Lords I can't say but I assume not.
The Brexit party's former digital campaign manager is also a worried man. He thinks the Tories have underestimated Labour's social media campaigning and tweeted about it. Scram News report his comments and show a link to the Labour video made by Rebecca Long-Bailey that Steve Edgington thinks will fire up Labour's base. Take a look at it, it's surprisingly good.
Robert Peston asks if Johnson is already mucking up the election he says he didn't want - in spite of having tried umpteen times to force parliament to give him one. I assume they were all accidents?
Elections are unpredictable things at the best of times with even Margaret Thatcher having a famous wobbly Thursday in 1987 when defending a big majority. She went on to lose 21 seats but still ended up with 376. Johnson is in negative territory before he starts, a strange position for an incumbent PM, and is expected to lose even more seats - even his own (I pray every night for this, please God let it happen) in Scotland and the south.
As the nerves begin to jangle in Downing Street I think we can look for more bad days ahead.
