Bettel bashes absent Boris

They say the current state of British politics is beyond satire but can I have been the only person, of a certain vintage, it must be admitted, to get a bit of a blast from the past when viewing our dear leader’s empty podium in Brussels last weekend?

Not only was it redolent of the relatively recent lack of Theresa May in TV debates during the last general election campaign (can it only have been 2017?) but it fair took me back to the halcyon days of Roy Hattersley’s replacement by a tub of lard on the panel of Have I Got News For You in the early ’90s.

It’s also worth noting one B Johnson chaired HIGNFY at one point, cheerfully noting on a particularly memorable occasion: “I’m way out of my depth here!” No change there then…

It has to be said that the last time he stood at such a podium under the gaze of the press and the public at large, only a few short weeks ago, he was well and truly given what in the parlance of these parts is usually called a “richt ridder” by Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadker.

Perhaps he didn’t want to risk it again but he was still given more than a bit of a doing in absentia by the hitherto mild-mannered Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. One gets the impression that the 25 leaders of the other EU nations might be forming an orderly queue…

With all this scorn and contempt for the European set-up, it’s still rather ironic to see Boris dotting around with all the misplaced confidence of someone putting together a piece of that great Swedish institution, an IKEA self-assembly kit.

He’s got all the relevant bits but he doesn’t know what to do with them or where they go and resolutely refuses to read the instructions.

And when he thinks he’s got somewhere, there’s a pile of leftover washers and widgets that should be holding the thing together but patently obviously aren’t.

Theoretically he’s following a series of detailed if obscure instructions when in reality, he’s making it up as he goes along and what he ends up with bears little or no relation to the picture on the box or the diagram on the instruction leaflet, otherwise known as “the will of the people”.

Mind you, when you don’t even trust a public vote to choose the Eurovision song these days, that just about says it all. Great Golden Cludgie heist

Just when you thought life couldn’t get any more surreal, you read in the news that the piece of “art” formerly known as The Golden Cludgie of Blenheim has been nicked from its nest in what passes for the palace’s smallest room, not a stone’s throw, so to speak, from the birthplace of the currently trending Sir Winston Churchill. This is somehow deeply appropriate at a time when his name is being taken in vain by the current incumbent of No 10 at the same moment as said PM is flushing his grandson’s political career down the toilet.

It’s all like a kind of stately home version of Clochemerle, that great French literary classic that revolves, if I can put it that way, around the creation of a public loo. This particular game of thrones has come in the wake of this installation’s presentation as a usable public convenience by its – I hesitate to use the description “tonguein-cheek”, but there you go – creator, artist Maurizio Cattelan. More Bogsy than Banksy, I fear, especially as Signor Cattelan has proclaimed the perpetrators of this daring heist as more creative than he is.

This thing would, it must be said, be murder to fence. It might be a bit difficult to ignore such an individual item falling off the back of a lorry so it is obviously much more likely, I submit, that the choried cludgie will not remain in its present form for long. Melting it down into manageable ingots is an obvious choice for those wishing to bring a more contemporary resonance to that good old saying: “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.”

After all, who would be in the market for it? The Pope, perhaps, one of whose predecessors bemoaned the fact that the flushing handle of His Holiness’s lav was crafted from precious metal encrusted with jewels.

It would obviously be too nouveau riche for such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who thinks Downton Abbey is a reality show. Although the luxuryloving Prince Charles might feel a bit wistful contemplating such an embarrass de richesse, when the help hands him his royal Oral B Cross Action festooned with nothing more sparkly than Colgate Whitening (other oral hygiene brands are available).

But there may be a ready-made market for it in its practical form further afield. If I were a member of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit, I’d be taking a close look at the hallmarks on the ones in Trump Tower. You don’t know where it’s been…

One gets the impression 25 leaders of the other EU nations might be forming a queue…

Picture: Getty. Boris Johnson was given a bit of a doing in absentia by Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel.