Your daily reminder that Boris Johnson is unfit for office
Of all the low points in Boris Johnson's glittering political career, to compare Ukraine's fight for freedom from Russian occupation with "the British people voting for Brexit" is so low that it’s lost somewhere in the Mariana Trench.
It gnaws at you, what he said. It lingers in its ability to disgust and provoke.
It's telling that even Julia Hartley-Brewer would agree with me, which just goes to show how unfit he is for office across a broad church of public opinion and how low the man has actually sunk.
It was disgusting, actually - but when has language ever mattered with Boris Johnson?
To some degree, making comments like this is one of the reasons why the man was elected in the first place - he’s ‘not afraid to go there’; it was ‘all in good humour’ and therefore all of his comments can be absolved on what is subject to taste.
Except, this wasn’t a joke typical of Boris Johnson.
This wasn’t some frivolous line about the Mayor in Jaws being a hero because he left the beaches open [even though “as a result some small children were eaten by a shark”] - which later resurfaced and was comparable to UK’s disastrous approach to coronavirus.
It wasn’t some gag about turning the Libyan city of Sirte into “the next Dubai” but only after they have “cleared the dead bodies away.”
The emergency project for building ventilators? “We could call it Operation Last Gasp,” says Johnson.
Abuse received by MPs, particularly female ones who highlighted the murder of Jo Cox at the hands of a far-right extremist? Johnson responded by calling it “humbug.”
Language matters.
Actually, Johnson was serious in his comparison - and in the process, and in spite of the overwhelming public support against usual Government rhetoric vilifying refugees, he managed to offend just about everybody and gave a solid reminder to Tory MPs - none of whom actively went out of their way to support him - why they should have deposed of him months ago.
If not years ago.