Day: 1 July 2019

Euan McColm: No lie is too low for Boris Johnson’s dark purposes

We’ll see how much of a One Nation Tory Johnson is when he shirks responsibility for the chaos of a No Deal Brexit, writes Euan McColm.

Among the many fanciful notions peddled by the grubby little men and women who’ve gone out to bat for Boris Johnson on TV and radio while he maintains the lowest possible profile during the race to become the next prime minister, perhaps the most difficult to believe is the idea that he is – and would govern as – a benevolent, One Nation conservative.

He is not a progressive liberal prepared to make concessions to the right in the name of unity, he is our very own Donald Trump

We are invited to ignore the evidence – the speeches he has given, the articles he has written – and accept that in his heart he is liberal and open. He might have led the Leave campaign, that exercise in insular Little Englander nostalgia, but once he has seen off rival Jeremy Hunt, we should look forward to a premiership that will bring the people of the United Kingdom together.

In spinning this yarn of Johnson as a One Nation Tory, his supporters attempt to make a virtue of their candidate’s dishonesty. Sure, he might have said and done things, recently, that suggest he is interested only in harnessing the support of hard Brexiteer wing-nuts but he was only saying and doing those things because he had to, you see?

All of the times Boris Johnson has broken his promises

LONDON — Boris Johnson is the overwhelming favourite to replace Theresa May as prime minister after promising Conservative Party members that he will take Britain out of the EU on October 31 “deal or no deal.”

Launching his bid for the job on Wednesday, Johnson said that his party should look at his record as mayor of London as proof that he will deliver on such pledges.

“We said we would do X, and we did X plus 10,” Johnson said.

However, analysis of Johnson’s time at City Hall, and his subsequent actions since returning to parliament, suggests that Conservative MPs have good reason to be sceptical about such pledges.

Donald Trump Too Tame for You? Meet Britain’s Boris Johnson

The front-runner to become Britain’s next prime minister is a portly white man with unkempt blond hair, an adoring base of supporters, disdain for Europe, a dodgy private life and a loose relationship with truth and principle. There are also differences between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, but the similarities have been much noted in some European circles, with no small misgivings.

The biggest difference is that Mr. Johnson, who is 55, has been around politics all his life, as a journalist, member of Parliament, mayor of London and foreign secretary. His forte has not been conservative conviction, major achievement or great vision, but one of the sharpest tongues in British politics.

Like Mr. Trump with his tweets and rants, Mr. Johnson delights his followers with outrageous statements that they take as straight talk — even when he has gone so far as to describe Africans as “piccaninnies” or to ascribe President Barack Obama’s opposition to Brexit to an “ancestral dislike” of Britain as the son of a Kenyan.

His most commonly quoted quip these days is the one summing up his position on Brexit as having one’s cake and eating it. Curiously, Mr. Johnson was initially unsure of his position on leaving or remaining in the European Union — an unpublished article he wrote days before he came out in favor of leaving made a strong argument in favor of staying. Mr. Johnson says he was simply sorting out his thoughts.

The dishonourable Boris Johnson has brought us to the brink of catastrophe

The resignation of Alexander (“Boris”) Johnson from the prestigious post of foreign secretary in Her Majesty’s government came on the very same day that his illustrious predecessor Lord Carrington died at the wonderful old age of 99.

Johnson becomes the fourth foreign secretary to have resigned since the war – all of them since the arrival of Margaret Thatcher’s revolutionary government on the British political scene in 1979, and three of them Tories – after all, Conservative foreign secretaries have had more chance to resign, since their party has been in office during 26 of those 39 years.

Unfortunately, the cat was put among the pigeons when, before becoming the worst foreign secretary in living memory, Johnson put his crazed ambition to be leader of the Conservative party and prime minister above the national interest. Taking advantage of his charismatic appeal to the nation – which has always amazed me: he is basically what we used to call a twerp – he opted, against what we are told was his better judgment (always assuming he has any), to be the most prominent leader of the Leave campaign, during which, characteristically, he lied continually.