With talk of melons and chicken sexers, Boris left them abuzz
BORIS Johnson did not bother to mention Sir John Major by name. No need. When Boris talked about ‘people droning and moaning about the state of the world’ we could all imagine that nasal, queen-hornet Major voice (and the speech that old Jeremiah gave on Monday night when he said Brexit could be a disaster).
Foreign Secretary Boris bounced on stage at 12.45pm yesterday at the annual conference of the British Chambers of Commerce. The crowd was relieved to see him.
The previous hour had been taken up with a speech of stultifying blandness by Business Secretary Greg Clark, plus an off-thepeg corporate snoozathon from some Facebook salesman.
My goodness, Clark is a dullard. He burbles away in a fruity tone, saying things such as ‘I’d like the Chambers model as a motif of our industrial strategy’ and ‘if something is going to be long term it has to endure’ and ‘commercial values are also civic values’. Such pearls are dispensed with round- eyed wonderment, the air of a herald imparting rare and treasurable wisdom – nuggets as though from the great Buddha himself. Only when you actually look at your notes afterwards do you realise he has managed to deliver the rhetorical equivalent of cotton wool.
I was going to say ‘how did such a fence-sitter ever become a Cabi- net minister?’ when I realised that his very ability to say nothing at great length was, of course, what won him his current eminence. Political plodders provide padding. They are the mashed-potato dam between genuine statesmanship and the populus. No doubt the Senate of Rome had its Greg Clarks and no doubt they were every bit as gripping. Boris arrived and at once the mood lifted. Delegates looked at each other with giddy, almost tearful relief.
They had survived Clark’s bombardment of platitudes. The android from Facebook had finally stopped talking.
A smell of lunchtime chicken pie was wafting from the kitchens. It was going to be all right. ‘It is absolutely fantastic to be here,’ roared Boris, ‘in front of an audience of people who are dynamic, energetic, can-do and actually get out there and sell things.’
Already the room was smiling and feeling happy. ‘Because sometimes,’ said Boris, with a crinkling of his slightly hooded eyes, ‘I get impatient when I hear people droning and moaning about the state of the world. I hear them warn that the sky is about to fall on our heads. And I feel like saying “come off it, sunshine”. Every generation hears its prognostications of gloom.’ Sunshine. Has anyone called John Major that before?
MR Johnson proceeded to make a brisk, fizzy speech in favour of post-Brexit free trade and internationalism. Along the way he inserted mention of pineapples, guava, melons (he likes them!), architectural finials, ski instructors, chicken sexers, haggis, Harry Potter, publishers’ boozy lunches and more.
Just another Boris speech, in some ways. But it had the vital ingredient of optimism and unpredictability. It cheered everyone up and ensured that they bowled off to their nosebag afterwards all abuzz. In a different part of West- minster, earlier, there was a melancholy event where Nigel Farage was meant to be speaking up for Britain’s sea-fishing fleet. Owen Paterson, former Agriculture minister, made a speech attacking the ‘Soviet system’ of European Union fishing regulations.
Its procedure of ‘fish discards’ (throwing dead fish back into the sea when catch quotas have been exceeded) showed this was ‘an area of spectacular misgovernance’. The Government should demand complete fishing independence with Brexit.
Mr Farage was so side-tracked by Ukip’s in-fighting that he did not make a formal speech at the event. He merely gave TV interviews, mostly about his row with his party’s sole MP, Douglas Carswell, who was underwhelmed about lobbying for a knighthood for Nigel. Lord knows why an outsider such as Mr Farage wants a knighthood. Equally, why don’t the idiots in Whitehall just let him have a blessed K? Plenty of lesser men have had one.