The (relatively) “liberal” Tory Matthew Parris has just written a column (£) in the Times in support of Boris Johnson’s bid to become Tory leader and Prime Minister.
Admittedly, Parris’s support could be taken as fairly back-handed, arguing as he does that Johnson is so unprincipled and dishonest that “… like many rascals he’s capable of a big decision. It’s possible to imagine him telling the country that this Brexit business has got into such a poisonous muddle that we need to rip it up and start again: to revoke Article 50, or refer back to the people, or both. He might escape with his life. A Hunt, a Gove, a Hancock or a Javid wouldn’t. ”
This is, I think what’s known as the “Nixon goes to China” argument. I don’t think it holds water in the case of Johnson, who now seems irrevocably wedded to a no-deal Brexit and the racist-right constituency within the Tory Party and Farage’s Brexit Company.
But it provides a good opportunity to revisit Parris’s wonderful Times column of 26 March 2016, in which he denounced Johnson in terms rarely used in public discourse at that time and which deserves to be remembered for as long as the scum-bag Johnson continues to pollute public life – and especially (as presently seems likely) he wins the race to succeed May.
Copyright laws and Murdoch’s paywall make it impossible for me to reproduce the column, or even link to it, but the gist, and some key quotes, are below. Remember, this was written before “£350 million per week for the NHS” and Obama being “part-Kenyan with an ancestral dislike” of the “British empire” and before Johnson’s disastrous stint as foreign secretary and the Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe gaff, which, just by itself, should have ended his political career.
“Somebody has to call a halt to the gathering pretence that if only you’re sufficiently comical in politics you can laugh everything off,” wrote Parris.
“Incompetence is not funny. Policy vacuum is not funny. A careless disregard for the truth is not funny. Advising old mates planning to beat someone up is not funny. Abortions and gagging orders are not funny. Creeping ambition in a jester’s cap is not funny. Vacuity posing as merriment, cynicism posing as savviness, a wink and a smile covering for betrayal … these things are not funny.”
Parris went on to describe Johnson’s sexual adventures and broken promises, as well as his dismissal from the Times for making up quotes and “facts” about the EU.
He described the then-mayor of London as a “lacklustre” politician, and noted that Johnson had been unable to defend his dishonest claims about the European Union in front of the Treasury select committee.
Referring to that wretched performance, Parris wrote: “Watch a portrait in miniature of Johnson the politician: underprepared, jolly, sly, dishonest and unapologetic but (and this is the worrying part) horrifyingly vulnerable.”
Parris added: “But there’s a pattern to Boris’s life, and it isn’t the lust for office, or for applause, or for susceptible women, that mark out this pattern in red warning ink. It’s the casual dishonesty, the cruelty, the betrayal; and, beneath the betrayal, the emptiness of real ambition: the ambition to do anything useful with office once it is attained.”
The writer Will Black quipped (in a reference to Johnson’s equivocation over providing information that would help his friend the criminal Darius Guppy arrange to have a journalist beaten up): “Hi @MayorofLondon do you think Matthew Parris should be beaten up for this?”
JD concludes:
Yes, Boris Johnson is a lying charlatan who might just be capable of selling a “soft” Brexit or even a second referendum to the swivel-eyed faction within and around the Tory Party. But to do that would take something Johnson plainly lacks: guts.
Shiraz Socialist (Second Run) 
It’s awful isn’t it – an aspect of public school entitlement. That of winging it, laughing it off, regarding anyone demanding that serious issues should be taken seriously as being a po-faced scholarship swot. Gove would be preferable – for all his stupid remarks about having had enough of experts, he does take his duties seriously. I suppose Gove is such a charmless sod there’s no chance of him relying on his rascally charm. Rascally charm becomes very thin within a personal relationship, and it should have worn thin with both his party and the electorate years ago.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It baffles me. Been out for a drink tonight and there were plenty in the pub hailing Johnson as a plain speaker telling it like it is.
The fiasco has a lot of mileage to go yet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mick O, when the EU collapses you will no doubt wonder how you survived without this corrupt bunch of Mafia. You will no doubt need another bunch of shoite to run your life for you.
LikeLike
Andrew Rawnsley in today’s Observer (aka the Sunday Graun):
“When one experiment has gone horribly wrong, it is often a human response to try the exact opposite. Many Tories will think the best way to move on from [May’s] miserable premiership is to choose a successor who is as different as can be and you can’t get much more opposite to the vicar’s daughter than the priapic former mayor of London. She was dutiful, hard-working, church-going, self-contained and possessed some principles. She was also introverted, anti-charismatic, wooden, a constipated communicator, unimaginative and rigid. All those traites, good and bad, are reversed in him. One senior conservative remarks: ‘The Tory party is tired of a leader so dull that the worst sin she ever committed as a child was to run through a field of wheat. They now want some entertainment and wickedness. So they will probably take a punt on Boris. It will be a ride on the tiger. Boris will be a hoot. The question is whether the country wants a hoot.’ If you are shocked that this is the level of thinking that will determine who becomes Britain’s next prime minister, then you are not very well acquainted with the Conservatives.”
LikeLike
Anyone who gets us out of the EU will do fine for me. They can resign later.
LikeLike