HEWITT on Friday
Boris Johnson is seen as a bit of a laugh. But he’s really a dangerous man who could bring Britain to its knees, says SEAN HEWITT
What do you think? Is there an issue you feel strongly about?: Share your views with us at the address on the opposite page or e-mail us at opinion@nottinghampost.com HE’S back, like the cough you can’t shift. Yes, the inexplicably popular Boris Johnson is back on course with his prime directive: making himself prime minister no matter what the cost to everyone else.
Boris’s incompetence is proven beyond doubt. Yet here he is again, cosying up to white supremacist Trump-enabler Steve Bannon and making “jokey” racist remarks to get himself on the news.
The latest burqa row is beneath us all and should be ignored. You’d be better off examining Boris’s so-called “serious” notions.
Two years ago, he called for the building of a 22-mile road bridge over the Channel, but nobody paid much attention, thank goodness, or else we could have been staring into yet another gaping black hole dug by Johnson to swallow our money.
His sponsored “Boris bikes” scheme has so far cost London taxpayers more than £225 million and loses £11m every year (the very similar scheme in Paris returns an annual profit of £12m).
Still, at least you can borrow a bike. His “garden bridge” scheme cost us £52m even though work never started. Then there’s the £60m cable car across the Thames – a littleused disaster which charges £7 for a return journey – or the £323,000 water cannon, bought to cope with rioters, immediately banned by then-home Secretary Theresa May and never used. And all that is as nothing compared to the billions the Brexit shambles will cost us.
His spell as Foreign Secretary was another fiasco. Whether it was accidentally lengthening the jail terms for innocent British women locked up abroad or ignoring the deaths of people the Russians had poisoned on UK soil so he could pose for photographs while squatting in his free house, disgrace chased disgrace.
Of course, Boris only backed Brexit so he could lose by a slim margin and then become prime minister on the shoulders of David Cameron’s folly, But then Leave won and Boris, like everyone else, had no idea what to do next.
Now he’s backing Steve Bannon (who’s previously supported the British National Party and the English Defence League) and hoping he’ll sweep to power in the chaos of an unruly hard Brexit.
Strangely enough, that’s evidently Jeremy Corbyn’s plan as well. Both of them would cause hardship and suffering for millions of Britons to achieve personal power. If we have any standards left, we should consign both of them to the obscurity they so richly deserve.