Bring Back Boris? YOU WISH

Fresh from his failure to get the Royals to buy into the idea of the Government buying them a yacht to replace HMY Britannia - Brenda passed that one to Charles, who might enjoy using the Royal Train, but isn’t interested in either the yacht, nor the political manoeuvring that goes with it - shameless client journalist Christopher “No” Hope of the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph now has another failure in his sights.

This man is an idiot

Hope has decided to promote the idea that soon-to-be-former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson should be allowed to mount a comeback. Bring back Boris! In pursuit of this fresh idiocy, he told his followers “I am not sure people are paying enough attention to what is going on in the Conservative grassroots and many members’ fury over the defenestration of Boris Johnson”. Yeah, right. But there was more.

“This could have long term (negative) consequences for the Conservative party … One Cabinet minister loyal to Mr Johnson was supportive of the campaign, telling me: ‘There is complete and utter despair and disbelief at what has happened. It is no wonder grassroots members feel their voices have been cancelled out by a minority in the Parliamentary party’”.

Who d’you reckon? Nadine Dorries? Dominic Raab? Who knows, and, indeed, who cares? There was yet more. “The Cabinet minister adds: ‘These are the same people who year after year, decade after decade, have chosen to silence the membership of the Conservative Party for their own preferment and betterment … And that is wrong.” So how has Hope proceeded?

He has first asserted “Put simply, there are two battles for the Tory leadership going on. The official one, between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, selected for the masses by Tory MPs, and the second unofficial campaign among some Tory grassroots activists to restore Boris Johnson to the throne”, before advertising an alleged Tory members’ campaign to restore Bozo.

And so it came to pass that Hope claimed an “exclusive” for what turned out to be less than totally reliable news, telling “Tory MPs starting to break over and support the ‘Bring Back Boris’ campaign if the PM wants to stay on. Some 7,600 party members now backing the petition for a confirmatory vote organised by [Peter Cruddas] and [David Campbell Bannerman]".

This looked almost impressive at first sight, until you realised that (a) 7,600 was not a particularly large percentage of the total Tory membership, and, more significantly (b), they were not all Tory members anyway.

I kid you not: David Jeffery, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, brought Hope the bad news. “There is literally no way of knowing if these signatories are party members. The form asks for a membership number but the people organising this have no way of validating it. This is like reporting the results of a Twitter poll as fact. Embarrassing fake news”. Was it that bad?

It certainly was:Will Penning responded “I’m not even a tory member and I ‘signed’”, adding screen shots. Cyrus Newman did likewise, both using very obvious fake addresses matched with joke names, although stopping short of invoking Naughtius Maximus, Sillius Soddus or Biggus Dickus.

It gets worse: as the Guardian has pointed out, “Despite having resigned as Conservative leader, Johnson still faces a parliamentary probe over whether he misled MPs when he told them repeatedly that ‘all guidance was followed’ in Downing Street during the pandemic - something subsequently proved to be untrue … could be forced to face a byelection in his Uxbridge constituency if he is found to have misled MPs over Partygate, a report from the House of Commons privileges committee has made clear”. Comeback? No chance.

Bozo is, like his pal Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, trying to cling on to power by any means he can devise. Christopher Hope is, however unwittingly, stepping in to the kind of role played Stateside by hosts at Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). Justice is slowly but surely catching up with Trump; something similar may yet happen to Bozo.

The Prime Ministerial career of Boris Johnson is dead. Morte. Our free and fearless press - not just the Tel - would like to pretend otherwise, because they were all so heavily invested in his remaining in Downing Street, as well as him being one of their own (that is, a crap journalist who talks well, but lies badly), but this is one episode of reality they cannot bend to their will.

Bozo the PM was for a time, but not for all time. Just rejoice at that news.

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