Monday 12 June 2017

Dead and Walking.

One of the newspapers I was reading this morning re-stated George Osborne’s assertion that Theresa May is ‘a dead woman walking’ and should resign before she’s pushed. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, says that Tories should unite behind their leader.

Boris would say that, of course, because Boris was one of the candidates in the leadership contest who conveniently dropped out so that Mrs Ratty could become Prime Minister without needing to be elected, and who were subsequently rewarded with cabinet posts. Boris got the highly prestigious Foreign Secretary’s job, at which point the politicians of Europe were struck down with a serious case of the ague.

‘Boris Johnson? We have to deal with Boris Johnson?!!!

And it caused a great deal of confusion as well as disbelief:

‘Sacre bleu!’ snorted the Germans. ‘Gott im Himmel!’ wailed the French…

… because, you see, Boris had never been thought of as a proper politician. He was the clown on the political fringes who kept us all amused with his antics and played the fall guy in TV panel games.

So what of George Osborne? He was Chancellor of the Exchequer under his friend, David Cameron, so he has a bit of an axe to grind, too. And he’s a Tory, which makes him a bit of a bad lot in my book. But he does at least have a sharp brain between his ears, whereas the space between Boris’s ears seems to be filled with the mouldering remnants of all that sticky toffee pudding he no doubt filled the rest of himself with at Eton. (Or was it roly-poly pudding, or maybe spotted dick? I’m told that such stodgy fare is a great favourite among the privileged denizens of British public schools.) So I think I’ll side with good old George in the civil war that is currently rending Tory ranks (and long may it continue until both sides are exhausted and they all fall over frothing at the mouth even more than usual.)

The best, however, is yet to come. One tabloid expressed the wish that if there is to be a leadership contest, Boris should throw his hat into the ring again and attempt the feat of becoming Prime Minister. Heaven forbid that such an eventuality could ever come to fruition. If it did, I think we’d all become dead people walking.

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