Boris - Go Home, You’re Drunk

As the looming prospect of Theresa May’s so-called “Chequers Compromise” being rejected by the EU and most of her own party begins to focus minds on the mildly inconvenient fact that the date for Britain to leave the EU is fast approaching, while the chance of cutting a deal is not, one of the principal culprits has decided to get his damage limitation in first. Except he already got rumbled.

London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has used the platform given to him by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph to attack everyone else for the mess which is largely of his own making. As the BBC has reported, Bozza “said negotiations based on the Chequers plan had so far seen the EU take ‘every important trick’, adding: ‘The UK has agreed to hand over £40bn of taxpayers' money for two-thirds of diddly squat’”. And who was Foreign Secretary for most of that time?

That would have been him, before he resigned recently for the sole purpose of generating More And Bigger Self-Promotion Opportunities For Himself Personally Now. When the Tel’s headline proclaims “Scandal of Brexit is not that we’ve failed, but that we have not tried”, it fails to mention that those not trying include their star columnist.

So it was inevitable that Bozza’s fellow politicians, and those of independent mind in the press pack, would pass severely adverse comment on his piss-poor apologia. Jenni Russell was one of them. “Remember the total panic on Boris’ face when his side won. He didn’t expect, want or know how to do Brexit - it was just a tactic to become PM. That’s why he bottled the leadership contest, & why he’s had no ideas, just slogans, ever since. A rotten, vacant, lazy, dangerous fraud”. And she was not alone.

James O’Brien - Bozza never did submit himself to an interview with the LBC host, did he? - mused sceptically “If only Boris Johnson had held, say, one of the great offices of State with, say, particular influence over foreign policy for the last two years. The current chaos would surely have been prevented”. Then he let rip on others in the media.

“The fact that most of the media is treating Boris Johnson's latest fact-free bloviations as the biggest Brexit story of the day provides a pretty neat encapsulation of why so many are still surprised by the EU's long-established & frequently explained positions”. UK mainstream press reporting of matters EU is consistently crap no shock horror.

And his conclusion was damning. “If you couldn't pull off a 'successful' Brexit while Foreign Secretary or Secretary of State for Brexit, it's unlikely you will be able to do so after resigning … There has only been one question worth asking about Boris Johnson: just how far can he get on hot air, self-interest and lies?”.

Shehab Khan was also unimpressed with the Tel’s headine. “This should say: ‘I need to wipe my hands of the thing that was not only my idea but that I also had huge influence over while in one of the most senior positions in government.’” Quite.

His fellow Conservative MPs were no more forgiving, with Sarah Wollaston concluding “No surprise to see the great charlatan blaming others for a mess of his own creation”. How would Theresa May react, considering Bozza’s recent tenure of the FO?

Adam Bienkov of Business Insider had the answer. “Theresa May's spokesman asked about Boris Johnson's Telegraph column: ‘Boris Johnson resigned over Chequers. There are no new ideas in this article to respond to. What we need now is serious leadership with a serious plan.’” Whether the PM does have a serious plan, it’s all too clear that Bozza is not, never has been, and never will be in the business of providing serious leadership.

Boris Johnson was a useless Mayor of London. He was a worse Foreign Secretary. But as he’s a journalist by trade, far too many in our free and fearless press are still prepared to treat his ineptitude as great wisdom, his excuses as principled policy positions. He has neither principles, nor policy, and it is rapidly coming clear, even to those inside the Westminster media bubble, that his clown show is finished.

The Telegraph has paid Bozo The Clown £5,000 for that apologia. As they are wont to put it in God’s Own County, I wouldn’t pay the bugger in washers.

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