The one respect in which Boris Johnson is cast in the same mould as Donald Trump is that they both consider truth a wearisome encumbrance. Or more plainly put, they’re both serial liars.
Since Boris is the man in the spotlight right now, let’s consider his upmarket porkies:
- He got a job with The Times because of his family influence, and shortly afterwards got himself fired, presumably on the grounds that The Times can tell its own lies without hiring someone to do it for them. Anyway, on his first big front-page story he wrote about the Rose Palace, and had Edward II frolicking in it with his same-sex lover Piers Gaveston. (No, Virginia, nothing to do with Glenn Campbell or his song ‘Galveston’). This was a very stupid lie, since Gaveston had been murdered some years earlier. Exit Boris stage left.
- Johnson then got a job writing for The Telegraph and became their Brussels correspondent. There he made up lies about how the EU was threatening, among other things, “British pink sausages”. He also claimed that the EU was imposing rules about the shape of bananas. Both were lies but it’s extraordinary how many British people swallowed the lies whole.
- This one is not so much lies as stupid racism. He wrote in his Telegraph column about “picanninies” and “water-melon smiles”. In 2016, at the Conservative Party Conference, he referred to Africa as “a country.”
- In November 2004 while he was shadow Arts minister, the British tabloids accused him of having had a years-long affair with one of the Spectator’s columnists, which involved two abortions. He publicly denied these accusations, saying they were “inverted pyramids of piffle.” He repeated this denial to his boss Michael Howard. When proof that he was lying emerged, he was fired.
- The big bus big lie during the referendum campaign. He publicly burned a huge cheque for £350 million which, as you know, the bus said was going to Europe every week and would be spent, post-Brexit, on the NHS. A massive lie, as all of Britain now knows. But for some, it doesn’t seem to matter. Certainly Boris doesn’t care.
And it’s this lying, smirking, over-privileged posh-boy that we’re going to let drag us out of the EU against our wishes. Are we mad?
Comments are closed.