Twitter had a video clip posted yesterday showing Boris Johnson at a press conference, presumably from late 2016, as our new Foreign Secretary with John Kerry the US Secretary of State. I watched it (it’s a little over two minutes long) and I think it demonstrates better than anything Johnson’s unique skill and his problem as a politician. It was posted and retweeted as an example of how the British press should behave with him.
Here it is:
This is how you ask @BorisJohnson questions. 🏴☠️ pic.twitter.com/fH3QWMd4lq
— The Churchill Project (@WinstonCProject) August 7, 2021
American journalists question his previous comments about Obama and Hilary Clinton, but then one asks him a straight question about his “long history of wild exaggerations and frankly outright lies” and how anybody could believe what he says. The fact is that nobody on the international plane does, that’s why everything has to be sewn up tight in a legally watertight treaty.
His response was to laugh it off. There is no shame or embarrassment, no apology or remorse from him at all. He says there is a "rich thesaurus now" of things he has written and said that are "taken out of context - by what alchemy I do not know" as if he is proud of his canon of work undermining truth at every opportunity.
Look at his reaction, and even the reaction of Kerry. Johnson just laughs it off as a joke. The Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom is openly told in a press conference attended by journalists from all across the world that he’s a liar and his reaction is to smirk. Even Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, who is a liar, knows that you should become slightly angry and at least look as if you’re upset to have your integrity challenged.
Johnson simply grins. I really don't know anyone who could do that.
To my mind, being caught out like that and not blush furiously with the sheer embarrassment is special. Personally, if it was me, I would have feigned a heart attack, left the podium and not stopped until I had reached a remote part of Kazakhstan, perhaps stopping only to change my name by deed poll, purchase a false beard and a bottle of jet black hair dye.
He is unusual to say the least. The old ‘my word is my bond’ thing means nothing to him. He lies, he gets confronted by the lies and he simply ploughs on as if it was nothing. And to him it is nothing. There is little or no difference between truth and lies.
Truth is a recounting of facts while lies are simply an alternative account using other ‘facts’ that he makes up to suit. If he can see the truth will not achieve the ends he wants, then a lie will serve just as well.
If he gets caught out, he simply uses more lies to deny the ones that he’s accused of. It’s all so easy isn’t it? The problem of course is that even his ministers and aids don't trust him and you must have some trust in others in every walk of life, but particularly at the top of government. One can only guess at the dysfunctionality at the heart of it all.
This is probably responsible, at least in part, for Macron refusing to meet him. What's the point of agreeing anything with a man who has shown he can't be trusted?
His old man must bear some responsibility. My Dad, a simple honest bloke who never had any privileges in his life, would never have dreamed of telling a lie. It just would not have occurred to him. Stanley Johnson on the other hand must know his son is a congenital liar who can’t help himself, but looks on with pride. My old man would have given me a clip round the ear.
