Johnson: Truss Budget like badly played piano

Former PM recalls classic 1971 Morecambe and Wise sketch to poke fun at Liz Truss’s tax-cutting fiasco

Boris Johnson has compared Liz Truss’s mini-budget to a badly played piano in a reference to a Morecambe and Wise sketch. Asked by CNN Portugal what he thought of his successor’s tax-cutting plans, the ex-prime minister tried to sidestep the issue, saying it was rude to criticise a British government abroad, but then said: “It’s kind of like when I play the piano. The notes individually sound perfectly OK, but they’re not in the right order, or occurring at the right time.”

BORIS JOHNSON has compared Liz Truss’s mini-budget to a badly played piano in a reference to a Morecambe and Wise comedy sketch.

Asked by CNN Portugal what he thought of his successor’s disastrous tax-cutting plans, the former Prime Minister initially tried to sidestep the issue, saying it was rude to criticise a British government abroad.

Then, in his first comments on the mini-budget, he said: “It’s kind of like when I play the piano. The notes individually sound perfectly OK, but they’re not in the right order, or occurring at the right time.”

This evoked the 1971 sketch in which the conductor André Previn criticised Eric Morecambe over his bad playing of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, prompting him to reply: “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.”

Mr Johnson also rejected suggestions that he could return as prime minister, saying the chances were “impossibilia cubed or squared”. He said: “I’ve always said for about 20 years that my chances of becoming PM were about as good as my chances of becoming decapitated by a Frisbee, or blinded by a champagne cork or locked in a disused fridge. I then did become PM so my chances of becoming PM again are those impossibilia cubed or squared.”

Mr Johnson also rejected claims that Brexit had damaged the UK economy as “complete and utter nonsense” and “confirmation bias”.

Asked for one thing he would have done differently as prime minister, Mr Johnson said: “Covid was a bummer. Covid was really very difficult. I think the thing that I should have done more of is I should have spent more time talking to my troops rather than just trying to get on and manage the pandemic, and that’s an honest answer.

“It was very, very difficult trying to run the country while we were going through this thing and we had a huge number of MPS who’d never been elected before, who didn’t think they’d be elected and who hardly knew me at all. And I’ve got to put my hands up, I didn’t spend enough time with them. That was my fault.”

Meanwhile, Berlin described Mr Johnson’s claim that Germany had wanted Ukraine to quickly “fold” after Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb 24 as “utter nonsense”.

Mr Johnson, who was in office when Vladimir Putin’s troops invaded, told CNN that Germany had wanted Ukraine to quickly lose, rather than have a lengthy war, for “all sorts of sound economic reasons”.

Steffen Hebestreit, the German government spokesman, rebutted his remark. “We know that the very entertaining former prime minister always has a unique relationship with the truth; this case is no exception,” he said.

Berlin swiftly decided to send arms to Ukraine after Moscow launched its invasion, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s spokesman said, adding that the “facts speak against his claims”.

Switching to English, Mr Hebestreit added: “This is utter nonsense.”

Mr Johnson had told CNN: “The Germans, for all sorts of sound economic reasons, really didn’t want it to ... I’ll tell you a terrible thing: the German view was at one stage that if it were going to happen, which would be a disaster, then it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly and for Ukraine to fold.

“I couldn’t support that. I thought that was a disastrous way of looking at it, but I could understand why they thought and felt as they did.”

Mr Johnson also said France had been in denial “right up until the last moment” when Russian forces crossed the border. “This thing was a huge shock. We could see the Russian battalion tactical groups amassing but different countries had very different perspectives,” he said.