Third, Conservative politicians can avoid any awkward questions with “well, as you know Boris’s remarks are now the subject of an internal inquiry, so I can’t really comment further or add to what the prime minister has said other than that we need to be careful about our language”. At some convenient point towards the late summer the inquiry will quietly come to an end with a statement about Boris’s writings being ill-advised, tasteless and offensive, and duly censured, but that he won’t be kicked out of the party. Some nominal, token act of contrition may be required, probably delivered via his newspaper column. If not, he will play the martyr. [...]
We know, too, what Boris is up to. He has changed his views on virtually everything, from migration (liberal as London Mayor, not so much now) to LGBT rights and climate change. In recent years, he has turned from amusing Eurosceptic to hard line “f**k business” Leaver. The reason for all of these manoeuvres, and more, is that the only thing Boris Johnson really believes in is Boris Johnson, and Boris Johnson’s manifest destiny to be prime minister. If it suited his purposes, and brought him a step nearer to No 10, he would propose making the burka compulsory.
This is what makes him so dangerous – the plasticity of his beliefs. He is the greatest and most politically promiscuous opportunist to strut the British political stage since David Lloyd George. Boris is an adventurist, of a type the establishment traditionally distrusts, like Lloyd George and indeed Churchill in their day. Only desperate times – war in both those cases – can propel them to the top. We are in desperate times. [...]
Like Donald Trump, he’ll make great copy and will be a never ending source of stories – but, like Trump, he will make a once-respected nation into a pitiful laughing stock. No joke really.
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