So Boris Johnson has taken up a job at The Daily Mail. He is their new “erudite” columnist whose thoughts will be “required reading in Westminster and across the world” at a salary said to be the thick end of £1 million a year. He also broke more rules in announcing his appointment without consulting ACOBA, the body which oversees new jobs for former ministers, and senior civil servants, no surprise there then. Johnson had a habit of submitting his copy late, often well past the deadline, so making any changes impossible. His first Mail column was no doubt a portent of that since it must have been an embarrassment that they were forced to print.
He writes about a “new wonder drug” which “the whole world” is talking about which apparently helps you to lose weight, although it didn't work for him. Well, that will come as a surprise on planet Earth I’m sure. He is now making The Mail even more of a laughing stock and a bigger source of misinformation than it has been in the past.
Absolutely tragic. The Mail were hyping up a witty, erudite, must-read for Westminster and the whole world, and what they got was a tale of Spanish sausages and drugs. And yet, they're still trying to hype it. pic.twitter.com/GWvF9sU8E7
— Phil (@Philmoorhouse76) June 17, 2023
All this comes after he tried while in office to get Paul Dacre, the chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers - the Mail's publisher - the job as head of OFCOM. Dacre stood down from ANL in November 2021, in expectation of getting the regulator's job but returned just three weeks later following his withdrawal from the race after it became clear he wasn't going to get it.
Like everybody else, Dacre doesn't blame Johnson for the fiasco but presumably, the mysterious blob that always prevents Johnson from doing what he wants, however outrageous it is.
The Telegraph is keeping up its role as the main organ pumping out pro-Brexit propaganda, with an article by the historian Robert Tombs, who must earn a prize for the most bizarre piece so far: Destroying Boris doesn’t alter reality: the deluded Remainers’ EU dream is over.
A quote from it:
"There is a psychological process at work when vocal Remainers accuse their political opponents of precisely what they themselves are guilty of – “doublethink” and untruthfulness. It’s an ego-defence mechanism called “projection”; or in common language, the Kettle calling the pot black. There have indeed been plenty of what Remainers love to call “lies”, but they have been almost entirely on the Remainer/Rejoiner side. On the Leave side, the example they come up with time and time again is the famous Vote Leave bus. Compare that with the torrent of false assertions that have been made over seven years by Remainers, and which are still being made."
He charges we remainers with all the wrongdoings of Brexiteers. The 'false assertions' he refers to are set out in another Telegraph article by Ross Clark, which argues that Remainers predicting economic catastrophe have been utterly humiliated. It is very thin gruel and amounts to the fact that the UK hasn't undergone an economic meltdown and the Eurozone is now officially in recession, although it's much larger than it was in 2019, while the UK is still smaller.
There is a certain irony in Tombs accusing remainers of putting out all the lies since it is Brexit's main cheerleader who has just had to resign for telling porkies to the House of Commons.
It is as if Johnson has lied about everything and to everyone in his own life from the day he first learned to speak, but somehow managed to suppress his innate mendacity to become a paragon of truth about one thing and one thing only, and that is Brexit.
Poor Robert has obviously not been reading the latest polls, where the numbers continue to show a slide in support of his favourite project with 59% now wanting to rejoin the EU against 41% who think we should stay out. And with the downsides in the Yorkshire Bylines Davis Downside Dossier growing at a faster rate than ever, it’s hard to see that trend ever going into reverse.
A majority think Brexit has added to our inflation problem and this has been confirmed by none other than the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who gets a special mention in Tombs’ diatribe for suggesting the UK economy shrank when Sterling fell after the referendum.
Our old mate John Longworth also appears in The Telegraph making one of his regular calls for EU regulations to be scrapped: Left-over EU red tape ‘penalising small firms’, government adviser warns. Longworth is now chairman of the Independent Business Network (IBN), a body said to represent family-run firms, and a member of the Regulatory Policy Committee, which advises the Government on new rules. It's a bit of a comedown for a man once Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, but beggars can't be choosers, eh?
Longworth is in fact the 'government adviser' named in the headline!
He is quoted saying, “Regulatory divergence from the European Union is essential if we are to remove burdens on family-run and family-owned businesses and give them the capacity to expand, take on new staff, and support growth.”
As far as I know, every other trade body, without exception wants to remain aligned with the EU as far as we possibly can, so he's in a minority but at least, he actually suggests a regulation that he claims is "unnecessary and very costly for British businesses". This is - wait for it - Directive 2006/25/EC - artificial optical radiation, which puts an onus on employers to ensure that workers are not exposed to levels of artificial light beyond a specific threshold.
I had a look at this directive since I wasn't aware of it and again, as far as I know, it's the first time this has been mentioned by Longworth or anyone else. There is some non-technical guidance for the directive, one which has been in force since 2010 and has caused no great outcry.
On page 8 of the guidance, I find this:
"If the only sources of exposure to artificial optical radiation are trivial, no further action is required. Some employers may wish to record that they have reviewed the sources and reached this conclusion."
In other words, for the vast majority of workers, their exposure to AOR is so minimal that no employer needs to do anything at all. But for those employed in specific industries and jobs where welding or lasers are used for example, employers must carry out an assessment of risk and provide appropriate safety measures. As the guidance points out, "the Directive should place no greater burden on employers than is already required by other directives."
In other words, it simply tells employers what they should be doing anyway to ensure the health and well-being of staff.
This seems to be the best that Longworth can manage since it’s the only EU regulation he actually names.
Finally, Jonathan Freedland has a great article in The Guardian about Johnson, Trump, and Berlusconi, who died this week. He calls them the "three tenors of showman populism."
He says the three have casually, trashed the institutions on which we all depend, "destroying the trust without which society cannot exist. They do it to get themselves through a news cycle, to keep alive the hope that, once more, they might wear the crown that they tarnished so badly. For them, it’s just a tactic, a move from a playbook. But for us, the consequences are lasting. Even out of office, these men have taken a collective reservoir of trust built up over many centuries – and filled it with poison."
But they are aided by an army of acolytes like Tombs, Longworth, and dozens of others in the press.
On Brexit, the writing on the wall is becoming so massive, I have no doubt it's all over bar the shouting and we will sooner or later rejoin the EU because this is what the great majority want and expect.
Unless we are seeing the end of democracy itself, that must be Britain's future. It is inevitable.
