Fleet Street's Hot Dog Suit Shortage
The British press are all trying to find the guy who backed Boris Johnson
Previously: Is Boris Johnson a liar? Yes. And much of the British media is lying to us about that fact...
When The Times leader column endorsed Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party’s 2019 leadership election, it said:
Mr Johnson’s weaknesses are well known and have been repeatedly raised during the campaign: there are legitimate questions about his honesty, loyalty and personal relationships. Although he was a successful mayor of London, where he managed to gather a strong team of deputies around him, he was not a good foreign secretary, where his lack of attention to detail and tendency to speak carelessly was problematic. Lack of discipline could be a real problem as prime minister. There is also a legitimate question as to whether the man who did more than anyone to divide Britain could ever be the person to unite the country.
But none of that mattered because Johnson had “charisma”.
Today, that same paper’s leader column says:
What has brought Mr Johnson to this position is the same character flaws that have dogged his entire career: his persistent lying and flagrant disregard for the codes and conventions that necessarily underpin public life. These two failings were on display once again in his response to the latest scandal, surrounding Chris Pincher, who was forced to resign last week following accusations of sexual assault. Not only did Mr Johnson appoint a manifestly unsuitable candidate to an inappropriate job with responsibility for party welfare and discipline, but when this became apparent, his first instinct was to dissemble and then get others to speak untruths on his behalf.
It’s like someone covered in liquid shit complaining about a man they supplied with a hose and a lifetime’s supply of laxatives.
Boris Johnson began his career in professional lying at The Times back in 1988. He was sacked from its graduate scheme after making up a quote attributed to his own godfather and the incident is commemorated on a wall in the paper’s newsroom. But just three years ago, The Times was kidding on that his “well-known weaknesses” were side issues.
Having recommended Boris Johnson as an exception, The Times is now trying to frame him as an outlier in the Conservative Party, clearing the way for a ‘good Tory’:
There is still time, if it moves fast, for the Conservative Party under honest, respected, responsible leadership to recover its reputation and win the next general election. Under Mr Johnson, there is no chance.
Political punditry is like playing darts with infinite arrows, ignoring that most of your throws end up embedded in the wall or in the head of some unfortunate bystander. It’s considered almost bad manners to compare what commentators have said in the past with their current pronouncements.
Two days ago, The Daily Mail’s leader column was headlined Boris Johnson is still the best man to lead Britain and assured its readers:
For all his recent troubles – some self-inflicted – this paper unequivocally believes Boris Johnson is the right man to lead the party and the country.
Today, the same column claims Johnson “has racked up formidable achievements in his short time as PM” and that “the party — and country — should be truly grateful.” The Prime Minister’s lying is refurbished as “[a] tendency to be cavalier with truth,” and the paper says he should “embrace discipline and propriety… a lesson he has yet to learn.”
It reads like a toddler’s report from nursery. Boris Johnson is 58 years old.
Elsewhere in the Mail, shambling comment zombie Stephen Glover tries to have it both ways — Johnson painted as both exceptional and terrible:
What a waste. A tragedy, even. For Boris Johnson is in many respects an exceptional politician who stands head and shoulders above almost all other members of the Cabinet…
But he is also a flawed man. His chief flaw has been his reluctance to tell the truth, which has marked him out even in a profession not celebrated for its veracity. Of course, his untruthfulness was to some degree baked in, since his evasions and falsehoods from adulthood were well known.
However, in office they have become intolerable. Had it not been for Covid, Mr Johnson might have prospered. Yet although he should receive credit for the rapid vaccine roll-out, Partygate exposed a lack of truthfulness that is unfortunately fundamental to his character.
It didn’t take Covid or Partygate to expose Boris Johnson, he is the Pompidou Centre of politics; the shit was always on the outside.
While The Times says it’s “game over”, its more overtly tabloid sibling The Sun is offering one last chance for the umpteenth time. Its front page says he’s in “the last chance saloon”. Presumably, that’s the same shabby drinking establishment the paper claimed the Prime Minister was slumming it in back in December 2021 and a month ago and four weeks ago.
The Daily Telegraph — Johnson’s once and future home — turned on him some time ago, sensing the opportunity for it to install a more spittle-flecked true believer in No.10. Camilla Tominey’s column today makes it clear that it’s not the lies or installation of a man accused of sexual assaults as deputy chief whip that triggered the Telegraph’s shift:
… time and time again, [Johnson] was offered sage advice on how to improve his portrayal of a Thatcherite, only to ignore it in a bid to further bathe in the spotlight of his self-appointed greatness.
And she quotes another hoary anecdote from Johnson’s youth:
When he was at Eton, a teacher despaired of Mr Johnson’s “effortless superiority”.
“I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation that binds everyone else,” wrote classics master Martin Hammond to Stanley Johnson in 1982.
Forty years on and we now have confirmation that is impossible to teach an old dog new tricks.
When papers like the Telegraph were selling Boris Johnson, the very same anecdotes were used as illustrations that he was a man of destiny. The same people cannot now slap their hands on their cheeks and purport to be shocked that the venal habitual liar they loved so much has remained true to his nature.
Tominey’s final line almost beggars belief:
As the Prime Minister faces his curtain call, a bewildered nation is left with only one conclusion to draw. That it was all an act.
The papers who pushed Boris Johnson so hard are hoping that we’re bewildered enough to forget that they colluded in that act, a chorus of columnists and commentators assuring us that the emperor was fully clothed and simply wearing an unusual novelty sporran.
In I Think You Should Leave’s now-famous Hot Dog Suit Guy sketch, a character in a hot dog suit points to a hot dog car that has crashed through the front of a store and declares with wildly false confidence: “We're all trying to find the guy who did this.” There’s been a run on hot dog suits in Fleet Street today.
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