No. 220 - Bottler Boris Bottles It Again!

Dear James, 

"Where's Boris?" shouted the Opposition in June 2018 when Mr Johnson, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, failed to turn up for a vote on the expansion of Heathrow’s third runway, something he had once said he would lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent from happening.  The answer was that he was on a last minute yet ‘unavoidable' trip to Afghanistan. Boris had bottled it. And now he’s done it again.

Yesterday in the Commons, our self-proclaimed ‘Churchillian' leader, failed to find the courage to face his accusers. In the debate to discuss Boris’s catastrophic decision to save Owen Paterson’s skin last week, the man himself was absent. As were many of the seats on his side of the House. A dark cloud hung over the heads of those who did attend while the Opposition parties hammered away at their absent leader’s crass attempt to protect his own last Friday. Boris was nowhere to be seen. In fact he was on a long arranged and ‘unavoidable’ visit to a hospital in Hexham where he was seen maskless, amongst a gaggle of fully masked medical staff. A few hundred miles to the south, in the House of Commons, his place was taken by the hapless Stephen Barclay, the latest fall guy sent to fill the leadership vacuum with lame excuses and a sort of an apology for last week’s ‘mistake’.  

Rarely have I seen such a depressed bunch of Tories as those who sat glumly through yesterday’s proceedings. Even the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg - the Minister for the Eighteenth Century - looked subdued and cowed as if sent to the detention room by some eighteenth century Housemaster. Looking sheepish, Mr Barclay read from a script, like a naughty schoolboy made to recant some minor misdemeanour behind the bicycle sheds.

Is this what you call leadership, James? A man who can’t bear the fight because all he would have to offer would be more empty bluster. Indeed when confronted by a journalist in Hexham yesterday - who asked whether he would apologize or not - the absent PM went on one of his long rambling content avoidance exercises out of which came the plea to focus on ‘his’ success with the vaccine rather than the tittle-tattle of the Commons. He twisted and turned before the unrelenting questioner like a weasel in a trap.  With that silly, artful dodger. ‘life’s one endless, spiffing prank’, smile, flickering across his face, he ducked and dived and refused to apologize. He was the untouchable bounder refusing responsibility for everything. Like Nick Robinson of the BBC a month ago, I just wanted, to shout, ‘Stop speaking Prime Minister!’ Shut up Boris! You’re verbiage is pure porridge. You’re way out of your depth. I’m sure I was not alone in this sentiment.

Meanwhile in the Commons, the questions to the absconder’s meagre front bench ‘heat shield’ of Rees-Mogg and Barclay were relentless. How had Randox, one of Paterson’s cllents won a contract worth £500m when it had performed so poorly earlier in the pandemic, including spending tax payers’ money on hundreds of thousands of pieces of defective, unusable PPE? Why had Boris and co tried to ‘take down’ the Commissioner of Standards, Kathryn Stone? Could it be that Boris was trying to deflect a possible investigation into his acceptance of gifts of foreign holidays and the £200,000 upgrading of his 10 Downing Street Home?  All the kinds of questions you’d want to ask someone with a reputation for shady dealing, shiftiness and an almost total lack of grip of the situation facing our country.

But perhaps it was a good job that the PM was not there yesterday. His presence would have soured an otherwise very good debate with balanced and sober contributions from both sides of the House. Chris Bryant in particular gave a calm, reasoned analysis of what needs to be done next, for instance, that there should be a vote to approve the suspension of Mr Paterson.

Today an Ipsos MORI poll puts Labour on 36% and the Tories on 35%. Satisfaction in the PM’s job performance has fallen five points since September (39% to 34%), while 61% are dissatisfied. The writing’s on the wall James. Your leader’s not up to the job. Never was. With every gaffe and every wriggle he becomes more of a liability. And the voters are at last beginning to notice!  

Kind regards, 

BH – Your Concerned Constituent 

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