Boris Johnson just did the piffle-waffle shuffle in Downing Street. This dance requires two left feet; or, in his case, two right feet.
He’d just been to see the Queen, he said. Tempting to imagine the royal muttering: “Oh, God, look it’s him again, Bad Penny Boris. Last time round he conned me into giving a totally unnecessary Queen’s Speech – and it wasn’t my speech at all, but a disguised Tory party political broadcast. If he wins, he’ll be asking me to give another Queen’s Speech. Think I’ll give it to Charles – or maybe Meghan, that would be a giggle…”
Johnson boomed; Johnson waffled. Johnson pretended none of this was his fault; Johnson trundled out old gags, a comedian with thumb-smudged material.
Like the one about how you don’t want an election, he doesn’t want an election – it’s all the fault of those pesky MPs who won’t do his bidding.
Johnson wanted to eat his own tie in frustration over Brexit. Which is funny because I want to chew my own fist whenever he begins one of his choppy speeches, all booming cadences and empty-vessel rattle.
I don’t know about the state of upper-class dentistry these days, but Johnson must have lies for fillings. Every time he opens his mouth, they come flying out.
Johnson said again his Brexit deal was “oven ready”. That deal isn’t oven ready but frozen solid and slowly dripping cold blood. And it will continue to drip for about ten years. Oven ready for Christmas 2029, yummy.
Johnson bragged about his “108 or so days” in office and smuggled out a few questionable claims. The biggest investment in hospitals in a generation with 40 new ones on the cards; 20,000 more police on the streets. Ahem, those hospitals are a Tory pledge not an actual achievement – as are the 20,000 coppers; and all those ‘new’ coppers would only replace ones lost to austerity.
“So I say, come with us,” Johnson boomed.
Oh, no thank you. I don’t like the look of the company you keep.
Johnson kicked off the Tory campaign a day after the Conservatives united in looking horribly out of touch, shabby and cheaply opportunistic (other views are available, but they might not be right).
Day 107 Or So in the Posh Brother house saw Jacob Rees-Mogg say on the radio that the Grenfell Tower fire victims did not use “common sense” when they stayed put in the burning building.
Leader of the House Rees-Mogg told LBC’s Nick Ferrari that if either of them had been in a fire they would “leave the burning building” – the implication being that those who died were somehow not as smart as him.
That was certainly the implication burnished by fellow right-wing Tory Andrew Bridgen, who suggested Rees-Mogg was cleverer than those who died in the fire.
Both men later apologised; then a different sort of Tory apology bumbled out into Downing Street to deliver his stand-up act.
Day 107 Or So in the Posh Brother house also saw the Conservatives put out a party-political clip on social media apparently showing Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, unable to answer a question put to him on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Starmer had answered the question but the footage was doctored to show him unable to explain Labour’s Brexit position. A fake advert on behalf of a fake PM.
Day 108 Or So the Posh Brother house: a huge quote from Boris Johnson on the front of the Daily Telegraph compares Jeremy Corbyn to Stalin. Oh, piffle-waffle shuffle off please, mate.