Lunatic Boris Takes Over Asylum

We did not have to wait long for Theresa May to make a cabinet appointment that went beyond the radical, the controversial even: hardly had the reshuffle process begun than the announcement came that she had not only offered the post of Foreign Secretary to London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, but that Bozza had been stupid enough to take her seriously and accept.

An absolute Muppet. And Elmo from Sesame Street

Why this might not be the most subtle or cautious move, at a time when subtlety and caution might come in useful, was clear from the reaction not just in the UK, but across the world, as there was a mixture of disbelief and hilarity at the news that the Diplomatic service, and indeed MI6 and GCHQ, had been entrusted to someone whose only interest is More And Bigger Self-Advancement Opportunities For Himself Personally Now.

Why is Bozza at the FO such a bad thing? You need to ask? Let’s consider a few of the problems with the appointment (that’s as in, a few from a potentially very large sample).

He has no previous ministerial experience. The closest Bozza has been to being a minister came back in 2004 when Michael Howard appointed him as shadow Culture Secretary. He was sacked from the role in the wake of revelations of his affair with Petronella Wyatt, not for the affair, but for lying to his party leader about it.

He is an habitual liar. From the day he was sacked from his first job in journalism - for lying - Bozza has had a problem with his trousers catching alight. His Telegraph columns from Brussels were routinely filled with false statements. His first instinct was to make claims without checking first, as when he claimed the Phone Hacking scandal was something cooked up by the Labour Party. He carried on lying when Mayor of London.

He was a useless Mayor Of London. The litany of failure in his only significant elective office included the vanity projects, the broken promises, the caving-in to interest groups, the appalling housing record, the lousy industrial relations, the lack of vision, and above all the lack of attention to actually doing the job he had been elected to do.

He has spoken warmly … of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Not exactly the two characters to favour over all others.

He has insulted the current President of the USA, calling Barack Obama a “part Kenyan” who harboured an “ancestral dislike” of Britain.

He has insulted the probable next President of the USA. Bozza described Hillary Clinton, way ahead in the polls going into the convention season, as “like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”.

He has insulted the President of Turkey, writing a poem about Recep Tayyip Erdogan having sex with a goat (Bozza has Turkish heritage). That’s Turkey, as in the country we and the rest of Europe needs to keep on-side during the refugee crisis.

He has insulted black people. Bozza’s description of “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles” was bad enough, but as editor of the Spectator he also allowed the repulsive Taki Theodoracopulos to claim that black people had lower IQs.

He claimed that colonialism had been A Good Thing, advocating it for Africa, telling that we in Britain had nothing to be ashamed about.

He patronised and insulted the Chinese. Yes, here we are talking about trade deals with countries like China, and Bozza has insulted them as well.

Diplomats and commentators in the USA and Germany have laughed openly at news of Bozza’s appointment.

The only credible reasoning behind his being given his new role is that Theresa May has worked on the basis of “You broke it, you can own it”. There is no other way to justify appointing someone devoid of credibility to one of the great offices of state, someone devoid of diplomatic ability expected to indulge in the nuances of diplomacy.

Expect less than a year of gaffes and toe-curling embarrassment before Bozza realises the game is up - or is caused to realise thus.