'Brexit meltdown' possible, but don't panic, says UK's Boris Johnson

[T_i_B]

1. Theresa May really ought to replace Boris Johnson

Last edited Sat Jun 9, 2018, 03:48 AM - Edit history (1)

But then if she really cared about the national interest would she ever have made him foreign secretary in the first place?

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/04/05/no-responsible-government-would-keep-johnson-in-post

It's not as if we didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for. When Boris Johnson was announced as foreign secretary back in 2016, the State Department spokesman in Washington could barely keep a straight face. We knew this would be a hard appointment to live down, as a country. But, on balance, the bumbling former London Mayor has proved worse than expected.

He cannot control his mouth. He has always benefitted from shooting it off, so he continues to do so, even where it is demonstrably counter-productive for him to do so. In a job defined by the requirement that one speak cautiously and precisely, he has blathered away and made up a bunch of nonsense, to the detriment of the country he is ostensibly meant to represent.

Each time, the same mistake: the mouth moves, but the brain is not in control of what it is saying. This is because it has never really mattered before. When he was a journalist, he invented the literary semi-fictional journalistic sub-genre in Brussels, where all events were about bendy bananas and European bureaucracy killing British ingenuity, regardless of their veracity. When he was a journalist at the Times he was sacked for falsifying a quotation. Johnson is a pundit pretending to be a politician. He is a talking head, a Have I Got News For You guest. He is there to blather away, without specificity or consistency.

If Theresa May gave a damn about the national interest Johnson would never have been allowed anywhere near the Foreign Office. His presence there indicates that Britain has become a joke nation, a country so embroiled in its own nonsense machinations that people totally unsuited to the task of foreign affairs are installed in positions of enormous influence.

Johnson is irritating in the extreme, but he is ultimately like a puppy which has dirtied the living room. It doesn't know better. May is the adult in the room. She must take responsibility for the embarrassment Johnson causes the country, the danger he has placed its citizens in, and the succour he has given to its enemies.