Let Sleeping Polecats Lie

There was clearly an agreement, probably unwritten, between alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and former Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings: Bozo wouldn’t sound off about Dom, and in return Dom wouldn’t sound off about Bozo. Thus an uneasy peace was maintained. Until yesterday.

Bozo, or someone on his behalf, had briefed the Murdoch press, and indeed the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, that Cummings was the one who had been leaking against the PM, thus demonstrating that the Mail on Sunday’s “Redthroat” story was, as I said at the time, a complete heap of steaming bullpucky.

The Polecat did not merely claim that he had not been leaking, but that he couldn’t have leaked the texts (between Bozo and James Dyson) because he didn’t have them. Worse still, he told the world that Bozo was lying (no change there, then) and raised the PM by claiming Bozo had toyed with shutting down a leak inquiry as it might have confirmed that the real leaker was Henry Newman - a best pal of Bozo’s fiancée Carrie Symonds.

And yet worse was Cummings’ claim that Bozo may have considered using Tory Party donations to pay for refurbishing the 11 Downing Street flat - which also leads back to Ms Symonds, who, it seems, was so in favour of it being refurbished. So why did Bozo pick the scrap he did not need to pick, and which will now not go away easily?

Sam Coates at Sky News shed some light on that for us yesterday evening. “Boris Johnson [is] ten points ahead of Labour in the polls. He’s likely to do quite well in the May elections. There’s no single crisis at the top of the Government’s agenda. That was before Boris Johnson personally picked up the phone to newspaper editors yesterday to blame Dominic Cummings for leaking against his Government”. There was more.

“Clearly the subject of his former advisor niggles away at the Prime Minister, gets under his skin, and Dominic Cummings responded in kind”. Now, Bozo has opened the Polecat version of Pandora’s Boz, and although his personal popularity, and his ability to lie through his teeth as a matter of routine, will initially be unaffected, he’s picked an opponent who is more than prepared to turn this into a long and drawn out war of attrition.

Why did he do it? It looks increasingly as if Bozo is becoming paranoid. What may be making him paranoid is a case of “you may wish to ask that - I couldn’t possibly comment”. And there is one group of people for whom this battle presents its own problems: our free and fearless press. Many right-leaning hacks and pundits are fully invested in The Adoration Of The Boris. But they are also fans of the Polecat. Now they must choose.

Do they back the presently popular, yet flagrantly dishonest, unprincipled and apparently paranoid Bozo, or the not at present popular, flagrantly dishonest and seriously wacko Polecat? Which way will the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine, where Cummings’ wife Mary Wakefield is a commissioning editor, jump? What about the Telegraph?

Will the Murdoch press try to revive the chances of their man, Michael “Oiky” Gove, securing The Top Job, with or without Sarah “Vain” Vine in tow?

Only one person can defeat Bozo. Himself. And he may just have declared war.

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