The Boris bullet
Boris Johnson’s recent newspaper article about a “glorious” Brexit (“Backseat driver’ Johnson rebuked over Brexit outburst – but keeps job and colleagues’ support”, Scotsman, 18 September) has sparked all kinds of media speculation.
Is he deliberately undermining the Prime Minister and setting out his stall as her replacement? Does he really still believe the infamous “£350 million per week for the NHS” claim? Did he pen an alternative, more pessimistic version of the article, about an “ignominious and embarrassing” Brexit?
Amid all the predictable brouhaha, however, few people have paid attention to the article’s precise timing, which may be linked to a statement the Foreign Secretary made in April of this year.
Asked on the BBC’S Today programme how the UK would respond if presented with a US request to support airstrikes against the Syrian government, he said it would be “very difficult to say no”.
What relatively few people realise is that he spoke from direct experience. Last Sunday (17 September) saw the first anniversary of airstrikes conducted by the US, UK, Australia and Denmark which killed between 80 and 100 Syrian troops, who were holding out against Isis terrorists at Deir ez-zor.
Along with a horrifying attack on an aid convoy near Aleppo two days later, these airstrikes had the effect of sabotaging a delicately poised ceasefire, which had taken months to negotiate, but which many western political and military leaders found intolerable.
What better way for Mr Johnson to smother any commemoration of the coalition’s action at Deir ez-zor than to create a media feeding frenzy around Brexit?
In July 2016 the UK dodged a bullet when Boris Johnson failed in his bid to crash through the roof of Number 10 – but arguably we took one when Theresa May made him Foreign Secretary. JAMES BRUCE
Church Street Berwick-upon-tweed I read with some interest your story about David Mundell’s demand that the SNP must not link any future independence referendum with the Brexit vote (“SNP must ‘decouple’ Brexit from indyref2, 18 September”). Personally, I can’t see them doing so, as the linkage was explicitly stated in their manifesto.
However, I was under the impression that it had been Ruth Davidson who initially linked staying in the European Union with independence, when, in September 2014, she told Scots that the only way to stay in the European Union wastovotetostayintheuk.in fact, she said that to argue otherwise was “disingenuous”.
Another case of a political “blue-on-blue” incident, perhaps?
DAVID PATRICK Thirlestane Road, Edinburgh