Boris - Go Home, You’re Drunk

When London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson launched his alleged vision for Brexit a fortnight ago, Zelo Street noted “he’s only trotting out this drivel because he’s been leaned on to do so”. And when he told the Telegraph of his “red lines” a week later, I pointed out the interest of the Murdoch mafiosi in The Blond’s manoeuvres, concluding “The empire that is leaning on Bozza strikes again”.

An absolute Muppet. And Elmo from Sesame Street

Some may have wondered about the Murdoch connection: not any more. The pretence that Creepy Uncle Rupe and his pals are nothing to do with brave Bozza’s hankering for the Top Job has been abandoned, as the Super Soaraway Currant Bun has splashed an “exclusive” where readers are told “Boris Johnson reveals his four Brexit ‘red lines’ for Theresa May”. So the same red lines that were in the Tel last week, then.

Through the less than totally august offices of the paper’s non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn, we learn that these “red lines” are “The transition period post-Brexit must be a maximum of 2yrs.. & not a second more … UK must refuse to accept new EU or ECJ rulings during transition … No payments for single market access when transition ends … UK must not agree to shadow EU rules to gain access to market”.

Who might have decided upon these conditions is not told; that is not the point of the article, which is to destabilise Theresa May. She has fallen out of favour with the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker and incurred the Murdochs’ displeasure by allowing her culture secretary to refer the Sky bid on broadcasting standards grounds. Bozza is a convenient front man; his fitness for office is irrelevant to those working him.

But his angling for becoming the successor to Ms May is obvious from Newton Dunn’s article: this covers not just the EU, but kicking the “tech giants” (a favourite Press Establishment subject), student debts and public sector wage rises, the latter two being winners for Labour and losers - so far - for the Tories. Bozza is pitching for the Tory leadership, and the Murdoch mafiosi are the ones backing him.

Look who's driving this particular car

The problem is that he couldn’t supervise an act of alcoholic derangement in an EU wine lake. Bozza is not only an habitual liar, he is terminally inept, as Londoners are beginning to find out, with his eight years in City Hall gradually unravelling. Worse, revelations regarding his recent conduct merely underscore his uselessness.

Bozza is facing calls to go after being “accused of breaching the Ministerial Code by arranging a launch event on government property for the Institute for Free Trade – a new eurosceptic think tank being led by Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan”. He was caught on camera “inside the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in the capital Yangon, when he started uttering the opening verse to The Road to Mandalay”. Myanmar’s colonial past is a highly sensitive subject.

He’s acutely aware that this is his last chance to become Tory leader before the next generation of Tory pretenders elbows him aside. But that skeleton cupboard is still full, and no amount of Brexit exhortation can be convincing when a known liar is peddling it.

Bozza is only going through the motions for the Murdoch mafiosi. Sad, really.