KEIR IS RIDING HIGH
SELF-FLATTERY and arrogance are two of Boris Johnson’s most unpleasant flaws.
This narcissistic Prime Minister peers admiringly into mirrors and – somehow
– sees a statesman grinning back at him instead of the Tory charlatan who’s really there.
Johnson’s declaration that he’ll build bridges is frightening when, as London mayor, he squandered £53million on an unconstructed luvvie garden walkway over the Thames.
Boris Airport, also unbuilt, and the commercially troubled Boris Buses and Boris Bikes are witnesses to his colossal conceit.
The sole success of his City Hall spell, the London 2012 Olympics, was won and delivered by others.
Pascal Lamy, former head of the World Trade Organisation, has noted that Johnson’s Brussels bendy banana ban fibs invented “fake news” way before Donald Trump.
Today’s trade negotiations speech is clear evidence that fraudster Johnson never “got Brexit done” at
Reactionary right-whingers threw their toys out of the pram on Brexit day. CBBC’s Horrible Histories kids’ programmes just weren’t patriotic enough for their tastes, they blubbed – proving once again that they are nothing but cry babies.
Labour runners face their own hazardous Becher’s Brook and Canal Turn before the winners are announced on Grand National Day, Saturday, April 4. Yet
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are way out in front.
The last time I checked, leadership nominations showed pacesetter Starmer backed by 106 constituency parties, compared with 50 for Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy’s 24 and nine for Emily Thornberry.
In the deputy race Angela Rayner’s 121 dwarfs Dawn Butler on 27, Richard Burgon and Ian Murray 17 each and Rosena Allin-Khan on eight. A dull 11pm on Friday, as he claimed. The fact that we are staying in the single market and customs union in 2020 postpones, not cancels, the potential economic carnage of Brexit.
Labour leadership hopefuls understandably wish to avoid sounding at the next election like old generals refighting the last, lost war.
Yet I’m assured that favourite Keir Starmer, in particular, won’t shy away from the issue of Brexit, as pollsters Survation discovered a majority still think the country was wrong to vote contest is sparking into life with Starmer championing fairer taxes and Thornberry housing families in empty private homes. Long-Bailey talks aspiration and Nandy wants Orders of British Excellence to replace Empire honours.
Straight-talking Nandy is coming up fast and Corbyn’s crowd is betting on Long-Bailey but it looks as if Labour will soon be led by nurse’s son Sir Keir “Call me Mister” Starmer.
A knight at the helm would be a first in Labour’s 120-year history. Another man... par for the course in a party committed to *cough* equality.
FRONT RUNNER Favourite Starmer for it in 2016 (46%-43%) and expect we’ll be worse off out of the EU than in (42%-38%). Miles Roberts, chief executive of packaging giant DS Smith, did an excellent job of exposing the Government’s vacuous spin about trade opportunities after Brexit. When Trade Secretary Liz Truss repeatedly fobbed him off over where these trade opportunities were, Roberts later did an impression of her as a brainless, gasping goldfish. Johnson could fly by the seat of his pants when he was mayor of London, playing the fool trapped on a zipwire or lying his way to election victory.
The job of Prime Minister, however, is one mercilessly punishing to the incompetent.
The £350 bottle of Chateau Margaux claret he drank on Friday night is as near as we’ll get to Johnson’s phantom £350million NHS Brexit dividend that was so pivotal to the squeaked Brexit result. Johnson’s self-love won’t mask his fatal weaknesses for long.
Johnson’s out-tolunch
» No10 posh scruff Dominic Cummings, who turns up for work in tracksuit bottoms, betrays his sense of entitlement. No working class person would go into Downing Street dressed as badly. Including the cleaners.
Labour engine driver Andy
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McDonald rightly highlights how Tory rail plans would reverse less than 50 of the 5,000 miles axed in the 1960s. But my beef is those cuts are still blamed on civil servant Richard Beeching. The real villain was Conservative transport minister Ernest Marples, who was director of a road-building company and profited from halting trains. Conflicts of interest are as old as the Tory Party.