Boris Johnson’s last stand? Braverman on tour, Brits losing out…

 

Boris Johnson’s official portrait when he became PM

The blustering blabber monster is back, not that he’s ever gone away, more’s the pity.

Tomorrow Boris Johnson will appear before the parliamentary inquiry into his actions during the Partygate scandal. Part of the investigation is to establish whether he lied to Parliament about the rule-breaking parties in Downing Street. Odd, as everybody knows he lied then, the lied before, and he will no doubt lie again.

The parties were held, they broke the rules – and Johnson attended them at a time when the rest of the country was in lockdown (and, incidentally, it has just been revealed that his government put pressure on the BBC to avoid using the world ‘lockdown’ in its early reports on, er, the lockdown).

Johnson’s defence seems to be that he believed he gave his honest opinions at the time. Slippery semantics, morally dubious ducking and diving – the usual Johnson swerve.  He will say that he relied on “trusted advisers” and did nothing reckless, or something.

The usual excuse: it wasn’t me.

And it’s costing us. His defence is being funded by the taxpayer to a reported cost of £220,000 – yet he is said to have earned £5 million in six months for public spouting and had enough space to buy a £4 million house. So how come we are paying for his defence, stumping up for lead counsel David Pannick and his team?

Johnson is going in lawyered up to his chin, and we’re paying for it. But then someone else always pays with that man. Richer men than himself pay for his gold wallpaper, provide homes and holidays. Newspaper owners and editors line up to back this disreputable man. And all for what, exactly? So much effort wasted on one worthless man.

In theory his appearance before the parliamentary committee could mark the end of his career as a politician, ruling out any ridiculous comeback. But the Trumps and Johnsons of this world have a way of wheedling through the moral murk they stir up. So don’t hold your breath.

HOME Secretary Suella Braverman has just returned from a curious vanity trip to Rwanda to promote her plan to send migrants to that country. Only right-wing journalists from the Mail, Telegraph, GB News etc were invited along for what it would be gruesome to call a ‘jolly’.

Yet Braverman seemed extremely jolly while she was there, releasing a picture of herself apparently laughing her head off while standing before what was said to be migrant accommodation in Rwanda. A photograph so odd and weird that it went viral on social media.

In the original picture, she is between two other people, who were then cropped out in social media posts, making Braverman seem demented (an appearance she gives with little apparent effort).

The Mail, having been invited along for the trip, hit out under the headline: “Suella’s anger over cropped picture spread by the Left on social media.”

Oh, yeah.

Two points here.

One, perhaps don’t give out publicity pictures that can be so easily turned against you.

Two, the Mail itself has a long history of cropping and altering pictures to suit its low purposes, including adding more burka to a woman’s face, as shown here (and shared by the New European).

Braverman’s trip was basically a political promo funded by us – and aimed to cause just the sort of aggravation that followed. Tediously, annoying “the Left” is the only actual policy she pursues.

All part of the morally dubious politicisation of migrants. The lives of the desperate and the disadvantaged cashed in for votes.

CHANCELLOR Jeremy Hunt, whose budget axed the pension cap to benefit the wealthiest 1% of the population, told the Commons last week: “The declinists are wrong and the optimists are right. We stick to the plan because the plan is working.”

Not according to the BBC’s Panorama programme, which showed this week how Britain is falling behind.

BBC news analysis editor Ros Atkins, quoting Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation think tank, said: “This is an uneasy message to hear. A typical Brit is thousands of pounds poorer than the typical German, French, Australian and Canadian. The typical American is 60% richer than the typical Brit.”

The problems go deep, but the clip below shows how often our politicians blame global problems, Covid-19 or Putin for all our problems, all to mask our wider failures. And don’t forgot the way we shot off our own foot over Brexit.

Let’s just say that again ­– the average American is 60% richer than the average Brit. Those “declinists” are on to something.

 

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