It’s been a tough few days for Boris, even by his standards. After his dismissal of Channel 4’s Prime Ministerial debate I was expecting Johnson’s 15 year climb in to the bed of Number 10 to culminate in a rather anticlimactic affair (something he’s had vast experience in) and with only his rather copious, yet outdated solecisms to plague his future tenure as PM.
After all, all he had to do was stick to the script, offer platitudes as answers to tough questions and the job would be his. This piece then would probably be about Boris’s persistence to follow the ‘Farage book of leadership’ in which he avoided any actual nuance and bumbled his way through the necessary media appearances before finally walking the leadership contest, trouncing Jeremy Hunt by 60,000 votes and being joyously handed the poison chalice that is the keys to Downing Street.
Instead, Boris has gone about the last few days with all the predictability, grace and decorum of…well…Boris Johnson. Doing his very best to scupper his own chances at becoming a respected PM and undoubtedly sending his advisers in a tailspin. Predictable platitudes in response to difficult questions have been more than forthcoming, it’s just the ‘appearing vaguely human’ part of the junkets that Boris has struggled with…
When a potential domestic disturbance isn’t the only story about you to dominate the headlines in a week, it’s probably best you kept your head down. Previously, having the likes of Steve Bannon namedrop you, being proven wrong by full fact, having links to a BBC cover-up and suggesting you may suspend parliament would be enough, on their own, to permanently derail your hopes of ever setting foot inside Number 10, yet Boris steamrolls forward to the highest chair in British politics – surely we can do better?
Whilst the ad hominem attacks that accompany and plague political discussion prior to a leadership change are brutal, scrutiny is necessary and Boris is all too eager to provide a constant supply of fuel for his rather enormous and long burning fire – even when much easier and simpler answers would suffice. For example, when asked what he did to relax and unwind, the known womaniser, former London mayor, successful author and unsuccessful journalist answered, rather apprehensively, that he enjoyed making buses from shoe boxes – as if that was the first partially relatable hobby that popped in to his head.
Oh gosh, I can’t say totty and cocaine! What do I say…. What do I say?
“I….make……buses”
He could have been honest, god forbid, and said he likes the odd pint or even that he likes to write – the world and British politics would have been better for it. Instead, the man’s first instinct was to pull a rabbit out of one of his numerous top hats and conjure up a subjectively better story, which probably lead to his team spending their evening making cardboard buses for the daunting prospect that he may need to show one to the press.
It’s almost too easy to dismantle the political lies that Boris has told throughout his career. Even critiquing the entirety of his speeches this week would take several articles and other, more accredited sites have done so. I’m more interested in the Boris that is seldom revealed – the untruthful manipulator whose first instinct is to protect any semblance of his real self from ever being exposed. If only he’d kept the façade going for longer. Only his previous misdemeanours would be played off against each other by the press to find out which of his morally bankrupt decisions is the worst – Like a much less PC version of Top Trumps. Instead, he couldn’t even pretend to be somewhat normal.
Prepare for more alien antics once he’s entered number 10…
Matt Adkin 