As an antidote to the Trump-stoked Boris-mania try this for size:https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/boris-johnson-self-serving-incompetent/?utm_campaign=iNews%20-%20Daily%20RSS%20Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=64409041&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--clXjhdHCXSK2H7iNNKQGB7kRBv1OwtMrANdd0lEeIOLb6uSwoTCrg3RpVXZnRBVhrq2lY71ku9fLu57D6SXS5pN9nRfGj9yErec_YYMAPPZXT3wQ&_hsmi=64409041Norman Baker: I worked with Boris up close. He really is as self-serving and incompetent as he seemsThursday July 12th 2018This week we learned of the death at 99 of Peter Carington, the Old Etonian Conservative foreign secretary who resigned after the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in 1982. Not because it was his fault, but because he believed that honour demanded that the man at the top of the tree should take responsibility.What a contrast with the shabby self-serving resignation this week of that other Old Etonian Conservative foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, for whom the word honour is an alien concept.It is astonishing just how far you can get in Britain with the right background, a buffoonish appearance, a creative turn of phrase and a capacity to make people laugh. But the jokes long ago wore thin as more and more came to realise that the bumbling facade was just a clever construct to hide the moral vacuum inside.To understand Boris Johnson it is only necessary to understand one thing: he aches to be Prime Minister and doesn’t care what he has to say or do, it doesn’t matter what damage is done to his party or his country in the process, if only he can get to No 10.‘He was lazy and petulant. What worked did so in spite of Boris, not because of him’You don’t need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows, wrote Bob Dylan. No, you just have to look at Boris. In June 2016, shortly before the referendum, he wrote in the Daily Telegraph that he “would be well up for trying to make the positive case for EU membership.” But then, with the weather turning, he stabbed his old mate David Cameron in the back.Last weekend, he pronounced himself happy with the outcome of the cabinet meeting at Chequers, even raising a toast to the plans. But that was before he was, in his mind, outflanked by David Davis, and so, desperate to keep his leadership chances alive, he stabbed Theresa May in the back.In 2016, he stated that Donald Trump was “frankly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States.” Now that he has been elected, Boris says: “I am increasingly admiring of Donald Trump.”Far from mourning the loss of a foreign secretary, the Prime Minister ought to be celebrating the clearing out of the Augean stables. The mystery is why she appointed him in the first place.‘As foreign secretary, he has been a disaster at a time when more than ever, Britain needs friends abroad’As a government minister at the time, I saw close up what he did as mayor of London. He spent time and money on a white elephant Boris Island airport that was never going to fly. He promoted a garden bridge that has been torn to shreds by the Public Accounts Committee. He introduced at vast cost a huge fleet of new Routemasters with open platforms and conductors, only to withdraw all the conductors and keep the doors shut. He gave us a cable car crossing at Greenwich that is a huge drain on the public finances. And he bought water cannon vehicles from Germany in an attempt to bounce the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, into allowing them on London’s streets, and when she resisted, he went behind her back to David Cameron. Quite rightly, she told him where to get off.He had a habit of running straight to the Prime Minister of the Chancellor to get his way, ignoring successive Transport Secretaries. He was politically highly partisan in a way that was out of line with the coalition, refusing to engage with Lib Dem ministers even where we could be helpful to him. And behind that bonhomie, he was lazy and petulant. That a lot went right was down to his inheritance from Ken Livingstone, and the highly competent Peter Hendy at his right-hand side. What worked did so in spite of Boris, not because of him.As foreign secretary, he has been a disaster at a time when more than ever, Britain needs friends abroad. In the past, he had described Africans as “piccaninnies with watermelon smiles”, a phrase that could happily have tripped off the tongue of Enoch Powell. In office, he claimed the Libyan city of Sirte could become the new Dubai. “All they have to do is clear the bodies away”.The public may have loved him, but those in the know saw a different Boris. Back in 2013, he was eviscerated by the brilliant Eddie Mair on the BBC, who reminded Boris he had agreed to supply an address of a third party to a friend who wanted to fix up a physical assault on that person.“You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” he challenged. He was, and he is. A long way from Peter Carington. For while Lord Carrington put his country and the dignity of office first, Boris is only interested in Boris.
Jonathan Callaway ● 2568d