Yesterday evening, I still had no idea what this week’s blog would be about. Then, the hand of history reached out across the British Isles….
Crowds gather, waiting for Boris’s column to be posted. Make sure your children are with you. Memory to treasure pic.twitter.com/p9RVhMZTuw
— Robert Harris (@Robert___Harris) February 21, 2016
Hold on, isn’t this an episode of Threads?
Seriously. If you’re a Waitrose-shopping, Radio 4-listening, Grauniad-reading _________*, then there was no getting away from what we will all remember as the Kennedy Assassination, the moon landing, the Ascendency of Pericles, of our generation.
[*Insert epithet of choice.]
Y’see, I sometime use the blog to try to figure out what exactly I think about a knotty issue. As MC Wee Davey C ushered us towards the EU exit with a whisper of I say, it’s a bit brisk out there, I was thinking I’d have to figure out where exactly I stood on The Issue Of Yerp.
Things were getting trickier than I had expected. Studying European Institutions at the University of Edinburgh had left me with a mostly positive but somewhat sceptical [def.] view of the EU. Then, as Tiny Letter subscribers may recall, the Greek Debt Crisis left me protesting outside the Embassy of the European Commission.
Just like you, what I needed was someone to dash off a piss-poor, ill thought out few hundred words on the subject.
And who better to off piss-poor, ill thought words that The Churchill Of Our Day?
I have to admit, looking at the array of newspapers in Waitrose this morning carrying the thoughts of [Sacked as] Chairman [of the Tory party for lying] Boris, my concern with the issue of Yerp was superceded by my concern with the Boris issue. What has he done, exactly, to be considered such a sage? When a Westminster hack turned up on Good Morning Scotland this morning and described Boris (née Alex) as
Sure, Daily Telegraph, have your mandatory photo credit:
Photo by REX/Shutterstock (5585007s)
London Mayor Boris Johnson
Ministers attend a Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street, London, Britain – 09 Feb 2016
My mystification deepened.
Now. I’ve attended the University of Edinburgh for two afternoons degrees. And the shopping habits detailed above, together with my love for The Kinks and cricket basically mark me out as a Sassenach of sorts, notwithstanding my #indyref protestations to the contrary.
But I don’t understand the Boris phenomenon at all. So I called my pal Ian Wiki.
Ian told me that as well as being a serial liar, sometime sexist, and occasional homophobe, Boris is also without notable intellectual conviction (fns 82, 83, 84, 159, 160, 302, 303, 304, 109, 192.)
My favourite bit: Self-described pro-alcohol libertarian bans alcohol on public transport.
And maybe that’s why Johnson is so bafflingly popular. Where one might grudgingly admire John Redwood or Michael Gove for their intellectual consistency, the shambling oaf bestriding the shires like a Colossus doesn’t seem to believe in anything (other than the necessity of his own elevation among the elite).
And if he doesn’t believe in anything, how can one take issue with anything he says.
But if Scotland doesn’t understand Johnson, that’s nothing on Johnson’s typically lazy take on Chilly Jocko Land. And here, I must offer what Johnson would no doubt term a tip of the chapeau to James Kelly’s pro-Scottish-Indepence blog SCOT goes POP!
Kelly notes that in the Telegraph piece he handed down from the mount, Johnson writes
I also accept there is a risk that a vote to Leave the EU, as it currently stands, will cause fresh tensions in the union between England and Scotland. On the other hand, most of the evidence I have seen suggests that the Scots will vote on roughly the same lines as the English.
Kelly is then kind enough to reproduce the results of a slew of publicly and readily available polls showing that Scots respondents in fact take a materially different view to their English counterparts on the question of EU membership.
Oh Boris! He’s so ramshackle and careless and endearing! Hahaha!
Or maybe this is just another example in a long line of deliberate lies, and Johnson is a dangerous pretend-y fool. Chuckle! Guffaw!
