Funny? Boris is just a laughing stock

Statesman’ Johnson is hamfisted liability

APPOINTING bungling Boris Johnson as the UK’s Foreign Secretary last year was always going to be a risky move for Theresa May.

This week at the G7 meeting in Italy he lined up with his counterparts from the US, Germany, France and elsewhere looking like an overgrown schoolboy who had been dragged through a hedge backwards, rather than the UK’s most senior diplomat.

Not only does Boris not look the part, he’s proving to be more of a liability than an asset to serving our interests abroad.

This week he was stopped from having meetings alone with the Russians about their despicable support of Assad in Syria – then later failed to get international support for sanctions against one of the world’s most unpopular leaders, Russia’s own Vladimir Putin.

No doubt he was summoned to the headmistress’s office at 10 Downing Street for another dressing down on his return. Detention for him next week!

While it’s easy to poke fun at Boris, his hapless performance is no laughing matter.

With Brexit and international security at the top of the political agenda, we need real global leadership at the Foreign Office now more than ever.

Instead we have someone whose ham- fisted approach to politics has meant that he’s not allowed out on his own without support from the Tory grown-ups. His appointment last summer seemed like a jolly jape at the time.

Fingertips

It meant the Prime Minister could keep troublesome Brexiteers like Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis where she could see them.

But the question now is: exactly how long can he last before getting the sack? The growing gossip around Westminster is that he’s only holding on by his fingertips because Theresa May needs the support of right-wing Tory backbenchers who would turn on her if she turfed him out.

It shows how weak the Prime Minister is when she feels she needs to give important jobs to people who clearly aren’t up to the task, then can’t even muster the gumption to sack him when things start to go wrong. Now the joke’s on all of us.

What an absolute disaster.