Boris, just the man for the job

THAT appointing Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary was a fruity political wheeze by Theresa May cannot be doubted. Nor, indeed, that he is a national embarrassment in the job.

It is difficult to think of a single action or utterance of the Foreign Secretary that hasn’t backfired or damaged the country’s reputation. The man who has made a career out of playing the buffoon is, in fact, the real deal. A complete buffoon.

Mr Johnson, pictured, is extremely fond of showing off his very expensive classical education at Eton and Oxford, quoting the likes of Cicero, Aristotle and Virgil. He might have been better served by studying more recent times and quoting some of his more modern predecessors. Like Harold Macmillan, who described being Foreign Secretary thus: ‘Nothing he can say can do very much good and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliché and the indiscretion.’ That kind of sums up Mr Johnson’s time in the Foreign Office – although he never seems poised and his indiscretions are becoming a cliché.