Enough to drive you to murder...
Early in the Tory leadership contest, Boris Johnson’s baby brother Jo joked: “The only thing that can stop him being PM now is if he kills someone.”
The Orpington MP paused to revise that, adding: “Well, only if people find out he’s killed someone.”
Big bro hasn’t murdered anybody but if looks could kill, Jeremy Hunt would be dead. In the ITV debate on Tuesday night Johnson dripped contempt for his rival.
And the Foreign Secretary didn’t hide dislike for his predecessor. Can you see those two working together after this is over? Me neither.
It was Johnson’s failure to back our Washington ambassador on TV which reportedly led to Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation next day.
There may be more to this than meets the viewer’s eye. Johnson did not rule out the next ambassador being a political appointee, to appease the volatile and unpredictable Donald Trump.
The President says he’d like Nigel Farage, and that wo u ld enable Johnson to kill two
turds with one stone: Trump would be happy and, without Farage, the Brexit Party would fall apart.
Neither would it be without precedent. Labour PM Jim Callaghan made son- in- law Peter Jay US ambassador in 1977, adding nepotism to politicism.
My old chum Sir Christopher Meyer, Washington ambassador from 1997-2003, thinks career diplomats are best for the job because they are trained in the “quick mind, hard head, strong stomach, warm smile and cold eye” required.
But this politicisation of the civil service might not end on the banks of the Potomac River. It could sail up the Thames to lap against Whitehall.
I hear Labour is considering replacing permanent secretaries, the top civil servant in each government department, with political people.
This whisper was given credence when Jeremy Corbyn kicked up a stink with Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill over civil servants gossiping about his health. I wondered why Labour’s leader would want to keep the story running, but it was a nifty way of highlighting that the so-called impartial civil service may not be neutral after all.
This would be not entirely without precedent either. The job of No10 communications chief had always been done by a civil servant – Chris Meyer being one – until Tony Blair.
He appointed the party partisan Alastair Campbell. I remember querying this with Ali at the time.
He said: “The objectives of the Labour Government and the Labour Party should be one and the same.”
Good argument, I thought. But the very idea will make Whitehall mandarins turn orange with rage.
They’ll want to kill someone.
There may be more to this than meets the viewer’s eye Labour MP Phil Wilson asked defence ministers what was being done “to protect the UK from hostile states and actors”. I see what you’re getting at, Phil, but not surprised it raised a few laughs. Sounds like you’re describing a threatening international alliance of Vladimir Putin and the Royal Shakespeare Company.