Remainers and a desperate bid to discredit Boris
AS THE summer break ends, Westminster is gripped by a new blood sport. Hounding Boris Johnson has become the favourite pastime of the political class. The Foreign Secretary is under relentless assault from all sides, including his own.
This week has seen him denounced as a clown, a liar, an incompetent and a danger to our country. According to The Times newspaper, one of his own frontbench colleagues believes that in Europe “there is not a single foreign minister who takes him seriously”. Another fellow Tory wails that “he is degrading our position abroad”.
So vehement are the attacks that Theresa May, on an official visit to Japan, has been forced to intervene. Defending him yesterday she said that she had “a good relationship with Boris and has full confidence in him. He is doing a good job.”
She is absolutely right. Boris Johnson’s performance in office does not warrant this level of hysterical criticism. It is motivated not by genuine concern for Britain but by spiteful, antiBritish politics. At its heart lies the poisonous, cynical impulse to undermine the cause of Brexit by destroying the biggest champion of British freedom in the Government. With illconcealed relish the pro-EU brigade thinks that if Boris is brought down then the whole Brexit project will collapse.
SEVERAL of his detractors are leading figures in the Remain camp. One is Lord Kerr, the former British ambassador to the EU who wrote a newspaper article last week which lambasted Boris for his handling of foreign policy. “Foreign secretaries used to cut ice abroad, particularly in Europe and America. But maybe that is not Boris’s game,” he sneered.
But Lord Kerr is hardly an impartial judge. On the contrary he is a fanatical Europhile who wants to block Brexit. His snobbish contempt for the British public and loathing for his own country were illustrated last year when he said we need mass immigration because “native Brits are so bloody stupid”.
Personal jealousy towards Boris is another key factor in this invective. He provokes envy because he is one of the brightest stars in British politics, the only minister with an easy ability to connect with voters because of his humour and charisma. The Westminster bubble constantly prattles about his “gaffes” but much of the electorate sees an original figure who avoids the robotic clichés of modern, politically correct language.
It was Boris who brought the few moments of sparkle to the dire Tory general election campaign, as when he famously described Jeremy Corbyn, in typically vivid, comic language, as not just a “mutton-headed old mugwump”.
For all his joviality Boris is far from the clownish caricature peddled by his enemies. The fashionable narrative of disastrous ineptitude is misplaced. During his remarkable career he has been distinguished by continual success, from writing best-selling books to leading the successful Brexit campaign. His critics predicted failure when he was first elected Mayor of London in 2008 yet he presided over a booming capital, an enormously successful Olympics and a triumphant reelection.
The diplomatic establishment wants to humiliate him because he does not play the Foreign Office game of politically correct meddling abroad and sucking up to Brussels.
THAT sort of questioning exposes the vanity of the pro-EU elitists. The aim of our Government should be to meet Britain’s real needs rather than win applause on the diplomatic cocktail circuit.
Mrs Thatcher once described the Foreign Office as “a limp institution dedicated to giving away Britain’s vital interests”. Its record proves the justice of that remark. In May 1940, for instance, the foreign secretary Lord Halifax, much admired in diplomatic circles, was desperate to abandon the fight against Nazi Germany and reach a deal with Hitler. Fortunately Churchill prevailed.
A more recent foreign secretary, Robin Cook, derided the very concept of Britishness, describing our people as nothing more than “a gathering of countless different races and communities, the vast majority of which are not indigenous to these islands”.
The idea that all Boris’s predecessors were paragons is equally false. In the 1960s Labour’s George Brown, notorious for his enthusiastic alcohol consumption, turned up at a diplomatic reception the worse for wear.
With the music playing, Brown asked a figure in a shimmering red dress for a dance, only to be greeted with the reply: “Certainly not, foreign secretary. First this isn’t a waltz, it’s the Peruvian national anthem. Second, I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima.”
Now that’s real buffoonery. But then Brown was a failure. If Boris helps to pull off Brexit he will be one of the great holders of his office.
‘Mrs May has been forced to intervene’