Tuesday 23 November 2021

Is Johnson having some sort of breakdown?

Has this country ever elected such a stupid, bone headed idiot as the current prime minister? I used to think Gordon Brown was a bit odd, but alongside Johnson he now looks perfectly normal, even well balanced. The prime minister’s speech at the CBI yesterday in South Shields was surreal. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 1960s satire. If he had worn a latex mask we might have thought it was an episode of Spitting Image.

The newspapers had a field day and his deranged performance was all over the television and social media. I assume the speech was ‘crafted’ by Johnson himself, it looked and sounded like the work of a man who doesn’t care about what it looks or sounds like. Afterwards, a reporter asked him if “everything was OK” as if he’d suffered some sort of mental breakdown.

And who knows perhaps he had?

Note how he keeps up the smirk all the way through the post speech interview as if it's all just a bit of fun. This moment was perhaps the worst, if you can bear to watch it:

I confess I don’t count any old Etonians among my friends but I once worked for a French Count and he too had the kind of superiority that only members of the aristocracy can carry off.

He would keep a meeting waiting for ages, as if we were all his personal slaves and had the table manners of a hungry Doberman, but brimful of confidence. I imagine Johnson is just the same.

In September Johnson gave a speech to the UN with bizarre references to Kermit the frog. The one yesterday spent a long time talking about Peppa Pig - whoever she is - so it’s not as if he doesn’t have form. 

It’s not that he doesn’t do serious, he can’t do serious. He is a fundamentally unserious man. 

A Downing Street source later described his performance as ‘shambolic’ and Laura Kuenssberg tweeted:

The problem is that he doesn't see anything wrong with himself. It's as if he had any self-doubt surgically removed at birth. There's no introspection with Johnson. He thinks he's always right and we are like children that he can easily bamboozle.  After his speech he thought it had "gone very well."

The Times put out an editorial last night which was excoriating, and praised Kier Starmer for giving the CBI the serious speech they deserved.  Here are some extracts:

"After a bruising few weeks dominated by allegations of sleaze, Boris Johnson’s appearance at the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference today was an opportunity for the prime minister to regain the political initiative.

"Anxious business leaders deserved a serious speech for serious times.

"They certainly got such a speech today but it was not delivered by Mr Johnson. The prime minister’s dismal effort had all the hallmarks of something cobbled together on the train to Tyneside. Parts of it appeared to be made up as he went along. 

"In contrast Sir Keir Starmer gave an impressive speech that addressed directly many of the issues facing British business. The Labour leader rightly identified Britain’s long-standing productivity problem as the core economic challenge for the country and called for a post-pandemic, post-Brexit “national reset” to address it, focusing on infrastructure and digital skills. 

"Sir Keir did enough today to suggest that he at least is serious about winning the backing of business, even if it remains to be seen whether he can overcome the pressure from his party’s left-wing to translate that into coherent policies. On the other hand, Mr Johnson’s unconvincing boosterism, coupled with his reluctance to acknowledge the considerable economic challenges facing Britain, brought about in part by his policies, or provide a coherent economic strategy, gave every appearance of being a prime minister whose attitude remains “F*** business”

The Labour attack line is that "the joke isn't funny any more" and I think that just about sums him up.


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