Things have been quiet for a few days but seems to be hotting up this weekend. The story of Johnson's dalliance with Jennifer Arcuri is in The Sunday Mirror. She has now admitted she had a four year long affair up to 2016 with the then Mayor of London, although we are thankfully spared the full details. It probably won't damage him since everybody knows he's an unfaithful liar anyway. The spending of £126,000 of public money may come back to haunt him though.
The Mirror claims the GLA are investigating him but I thought that had all blown over. Arcuri says Johnson is a "cowardly, wet noodle" because he wouldn't admit it when news of the affair first leaked our and that "A great leader is charismatic, courageous and brave. None of these words I would use to describe Boris Johnson.” Welcome to the club.
Next, according to a tweet from Denis MacShane, the disgraced former Europe minister, Bruno Waterfield has claimed the joint communique issued on Wednesday about vaccine cooperation, was actually negotiated not by Lord Frost but by experience diplomat Sir Tim Barrow.
Is this a @BrunoBrussels scoop or more widely known? That Johnson sidelined Lord Frost and got an experienced non ideological dip Sir Tim Barrow to negotiate the “win-win” joint EU-UK communiqué to calm down vax war. It’s quite a big story, showing common sense compromise IMO
— Denis MacShane (@DenisMacShane) March 27, 2021
Waterfield is the Brussels correspondent for The Times. I haven't seen the report that MacShane refers to but I assume it's correct, and suggests Johnson is already sidelining Frost who's abrasive style is hardly going to help matters. I assume Johnson is slowly realising that Brexit is a disaster for British influence in Europe.
The communique is pretty bland but talks of cooperation and "what more we can do to ensure a reciprocally beneficial relationship between the UK and EU on COVID-19." I don't think Frost could have put his name to it without hollow laughter in Brussels.
On this topic I listened to Lord Heseltine on a European Movement webinar yesterday and he made an important point about how much better the EU's efforts on vaccine procurement would have been had Britain still been a member. There would have been the "reciprocally beneficial relationship" that the communique now calls for.
Next, British ex-pats who live in the EU, particularly Spain, are being forced to return to Britain as the 90 day limit approaches. This applies to people who failed to apply for permanent residency rights in time. Some of them voted for Britain to come out of the EU and seemed to think they wouldn't be affected. I think it must be confirmation to Europeans just how stupid many British people are.
The Daily Express, right in the vanguard and leading the stupidity report that many of them were "in tears" and saying their "dream was over." The article, which claims that apart from those coming back voluntarily, another 500 are being rounded up and deported, says, "returning expat Shaun Cromber voted Leave but said he did not believe Brexit would end his Spanish lifestyle. He said: "Yes I voted out, but I didn’t realise it would come to this." Amazing,
Haggis UK, tweeted a clip of the slippery Gove (the haunted ventriloquist's dummy) in 2016 assuring the nation that none of this would happen:
You were saying @michaelgove? https://t.co/avrkjK4JyJ pic.twitter.com/aMPxLxz52A
— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) March 27, 2021
No doubt Mr Cromber might like to have a word with Gove, or several for that matter. Gove spoke carefully about people who were "normally and legally resident" in an EU country, knowing that many of them were in Spain simply as EU citizens under rights he planned to take away.
Finally, in Yorkshire Bylines, Helen Johnson covers some polling by Ipsos MORI about current attitudes which seems to point to people starting to accept Brexit with the divisions in identity not quite so marked. The poll claims 60 per cent of respondents say their lives haven't been negatively affected by Brexit. I suggest that figure might be much lower this time next year, but we'll see.
What really caught my eye was this:
The top two issues on which there is the greatest divide is on attitudes to hanging and citizenship. On the death penalty, a massive balance of +42% of leave voters want it returned "for some crimes" - perhaps stealing a loaf of bread? But with remain voters it was - 18%. Quite a difference, eh?
And - 33% of leavers thought of themselves as citizens of the world compared to +20% of remainers.
This for me, represents everything I have encountered over the last five years. Remainers tend to be more open to other cultures, more tolerant, kinder and friendlier. Leave voters are often (not always of course) angry people but seemingly unable to identify what or who they are angry with - the world in general it seems.
Often, their anger should be with themselves or with the politicians and newspapers who misled them - stand up Gove and The Daily Express - but instead is directed at anonymous and innocent people in Brussels and the EU. Meanwhile, Johnson rides high in the polls. All very dangerous stuff as far as Britain's future is concerned.
