Sunday 13 June 2021

Questions for the PM - at last!

I've had an interest in politics since the mid 60s and seen about ten prime ministers. In that time, nearly sixty years, I've never seen a British prime minister in an interview asked openly if he or she has been lying. Before Johnson, it was an article of faith that our leaders didn't lie, at least not openly and never in a way that would have a reporter asking such a question. The narrative now is that none of the leaders of the G7 think Johnson can be trusted, that he is dishonest.

Beth Rigby of Sky News asked him outright on the NIP issue if, when he said there would be no border in the Irish sea, he had been lying or didn't understand what he had signed up to:  This is worth watching and all credit to her for at last asking him the question:
Most innocent people would be outraged to be accused of lying or incompetence but it didn't seem to affect Johnson at all. I assume he's used to it and knows himself that he's both.

If you think that was bad, watch Gary Gibbon's relentless and lacerating interview - and watch right to the end where Johnson turns to an aid and asks, "Right, how much more of this?" as if having sharpened matchsticks forced under his fingernails.

Gibbon couldn't bring himself to ask the same question about being a liar but you can see below his reaction to Johnson's literally unbelievable claim that nobody warned him of the consequences of the NI protocol on the Irish sea border. Johnson's replies looks totally unconvincing.
They were the sort of penetrating questions that should have been asked at the end of 2019 but were not. Only now are the consequences of the NIP becoming clear to the prime minister who signed the agreement.  And not just for Northern Ireland but for him personally.

I don't believe he understood the details and thought he could simply bluff his way out of any problems.

He is now stuck. The EU leaders have made it clear they expect the protocol to be implemented in full. Amazingly, in the middle of a G7 summit he threatens to invoke article 16 of the same protocol, which is bound to infuriate the EU and the USA. Biden had the demarche delivered a few days warning him specifically against more unilateral action, yet this is exactly what he proposes to do.

The NYT article that I posted about yesterday said Johnson has been exposed as a "slapdash, venal, incompetent leader" and this summit has only made things worse.

Matthew Parris in The Times also had an interesting article about how Johnson has, at one time or another, with the exception of Japan, insulted each of the G7 leaders with either a joke about them or their countries.

He talks of trust in politics and says that makes a difference but that the Americans simply don’t trust our prime minister.  Parris says the White House does not "lightly instruct America’s acting ambassador to the United Kingdom to deliver the diplomatic equivalent of a publicised bollocking to Boris Johnson’s Brexit minister as her president flies in. Washington now plays down the exchange but this is all part of the ritual: give Boris a good slap then let the arriving president kiss him better."

The prime minister doesn't care. His jokes are designed to amuse his British audience but other countries who are the butt of his remarks notice what he says. 

Parris concludes Johnson is the most "in-the-moment prime minister we’ve ever had. He was in-the-moment before it even became cool to be in-the-moment; his problem is that he can’t get out of the moment. He can’t think where it leads. How a remark, a casual insult, a solemn promise — be it of a controls-free border, a vow of undying love, a promise to stay out of parliament to edit The Spectator, to leave the EU by October 31, not to prorogue parliament, to deliver 40 new hospitals and 20,000 more police officers — how these pledges will play to a wider audience, or next week, next year, or whenever the cheque has to be honoured, are for him matters of blithe disregard."

Parris rightly says, British voters don’t seem to care and that Johnson is always forgiven, but sooner or later that must end. Britain will need the trust of the G7 and others but he doesn't inspire it and one day it will matter, to Johnson and the voters.

If the media continue to question him as they did yesterday, that day may come sooner than we think.

Finally, The Guardian have a nice summary about the summit, well worth a read.
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