I saw huff post said it wasn’t a vintage week for Boris. I beg to differ it seems very much like vintage Boris. Right now he has probably reached the point of apex Boris, the most Boris Boris he can be.

**** off Parry/is you pompous windbag, you and your other right wing cheerleader journalist friends lied to the electorate about him, you covered up his many weaknesses, bumbling incompetence and narcissism, you glorified his character flaws as Churchillian leadership and promoted him to the highest office in the land. You can’t now hide in the crowd of victims, and pretend you were not in a privileged position of knowledge. You were front and centre in playing the con that has brought down the country, you are not one of us, you are just another Boris, blustering and conning a far too ample pay packet without talent, morals or application.

This times one million. Utterly odious how he tries to pin it on everyone.

No chuck, the is you and your evil cronies that propitiated this evilzing, vile filth , and then there is the witless stupid proportion of the electorate too stupid to think for themselves that believed you.

Don’t you dare to suggest that anyone with a brain believed the shit you vermin came out with.

To be fair, isn’t Parris a centrist old school Tory and don’t think he was ever a Boris cheerleader, although I stand to be corrected. Probably backed Hunt. Although boris’ failings have been there for all to see since year dot

Frank, your link is behind the paywall…

Nickc, thanks for letting me know; will post full text later this afternoon.

Thanks Frank, much appreciated

TBF parris has been anti Johnson for a while

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/01/ex-conservative-mp-matthew-parris-to-quit-party-and-vote-lib-dem

This Article he wrote just over a year ago was not wrong

The sadness, and it frustrates his critics tremendously, is that in writing this I’m preaching to the converted. They know he’s lazy. They know he’s untrustworthy. They know how he tries to wing things for which he ought to prepare. They look at the £700,000 he has earned since he quit government, much of it on the national and international speaking circuit, and wonder. They know he ducks. They know he makes conflicting promises. They know he skates on thin ice.

And in their hearts they have no confidence in Boris. But they’re scared. They think he may possess a kind of magic. The magic, my friends, will fade.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/let-me-assure-you-boris-johnson-will-fail-as-pm-hl7b6tkx5

Toby Young can f off into the sea though

Boris getting skewered and punted into the sea is the good news we need right now in a sea of shite. Just to see the pathetic look on his face as he is ejected into the outer darkness.

What follows will probably be even worse, but you never know, when the Conservative Eye of Sauron’s gaze switches to a leadership contest away from the pandemic, handling of that issue might actually improve.

Nickc, here you – overburdened, underpaid, misery written all over his face; boris johnson…

Overburdened, underpaid and ‘misery on his face’: Boris Johnson gets the blues
Weighed down by the pandemic and personal issues, the prime minister is appearing ever more downbeat

Boris Johnson lacked energy when he appeared in the Commons this week
Boris Johnson lacked energy when he appeared in the Commons this week
Oliver Wright
,
Francis Elliott
,
Matt Chorley
Saturday September 19 2020, 12.00am, The Times
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Shortly before lunchtime on Wednesday Boris Johnson summoned a small group of Conservative backbenchers to his wood-panelled office behind the Speaker’s chair in the Commons.

He had just come from prime minister’s questions. Later that day he was scheduled to have another downbeat assessment of the rise in Covid-19 cases from Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser.

The prime minister had come to compromise, to see off a damaging rift with all wings of his parliamentary party over Brexit that he had not intended, or indeed seen coming. Yet it was not the fact that he was prepared, so easily, to backtrack over his threatened brinkmanship with the EU that surprised those present, it was his mood.

The normally ebullient Mr Johnson, for whom joking, cajoling and backslapping (if it were allowed) is the default form of political operation, seemed unusually serious — even sombre. “He just seemed subdued. He was engaged but he certainly wasn’t as lively as you’d expect,” said one of those there. “You can speculate — does that go back to the illness? Is it the weight of responsibility or is it maybe just a recognition that he’s not always very well briefed on things? Most likely it’s some combination of all those.”

Another senior Conservative who meets regularly with the prime minister added: “This is all weighing very heavily on him. I think you can see it even in some of his public appearances — the sort of misery etched on his face. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying being at the helm in rough seas.”

Westminster is always alive with gossip — some of it accurate, some embellished and some just plain wrong. But in recent weeks a narrative has begun to form of a prime minister who is under pressure both personally and politically and it seems to have some substance.

Those in contact with the prime minister, both friends and colleagues, say he is finding aspects of the job extraordinarily tough. They are concerned that Mr Johnson’s longstanding tendency for dark moods is being exacerbated by the pressure he is under.

On the personal front, they say, Mr Johnson, 56, is worried and complaining about money. He is still supporting, to different degrees, four out of his six children, has been through an expensive divorce and had his income drop by more than half as a result of fulfilling his lifetime ambition.

As a backbench MP, with his Daily Telegraph column netting him £275,000 and lucrative speaking engagements, he was earning well in excess of £350,000 a year. His prime ministerial salary of about £150,000 might seem perfectly sufficient — but that is not what he actually receives. His use of the flat that he shares with his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, above Number 11 is taxed as a benefit in kind. Any food sent up from the Downing Street kitchen has to be paid for and if they want to have friends to stay at Chequers — Covid restrictions permitting — they receive a bill from the government.

As one friend put it: “Boris, like other prime ministers, is very, very badly served. He doesn’t have a housekeeper — he has a single cleaner and they’re worried about being able to afford a nanny. He’s stuck in the flat and Downing Street is not a nice place to live. It’s not like the Élysée or the White House where you can get away from it all because they’re so big. Even if he or Carrie want to go into the rose garden they have to go through the office.”

The prime minister is living in No 11 with his partner Carrie Symonds and their sonThe prime minister is living in No 11 with his partner Carrie Symonds and their son
The prime minister is living in No 11 with his partner Carrie Symonds and their son
LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
Another friend added: “He’s always worried about money, he has a genuine need to provide for his family, all of them, and I think that does worry him.”

Then there is Mr Johnson’s health. While Downing Street and Mr Johnson himself are adamant that he has made a “full recovery” from his bout of Covid-19 in April, others who have seen him are less convinced.

“The recovery period for him has been really hard,” said one. “At the beginning he was not allowed to go to Chequers at weekends because of the ban on moving from one place to another. The illness itself and having a baby was absolutely exhausting.”

Another person who knows him and other senior members of the government said the extent to which he was still suffering was a cause for concern.

“Ministers and other people say to me that he feels and looks unwell. He’s pin sharp one day and then he will say to somebody in his own inimitable way ‘Why have you not briefed me on that?’ and he’ll be told ‘You were told that yesterday.’ Whereas on other days he will cut straight to the quick and he knows the answer straight away. Physically I think Covid has had a huge impact, definitely.”

The couple also have a dog, DilynThe couple also have a dog, Dilyn
The couple also have a dog, Dilyn
LONDON NEWS PICTURES
Those who work directly for Mr Johnson in Downing Street deny this and point to his regular exercise regime and the fact that he has lost a stone and a half since leaving hospital.

They say the allegations are hard to counter but insist that he seems fit to them, and that he is working long hours.

Then there is the relationship with Ms Symonds, 24 years his junior, and their five-month-old son, Wilf. Long before they were in a partnership Ms Symonds, 32, was a powerful and influential figure within the Conservative Party and government. She is a former special adviser to Sajid Javid and ran the Tory press operation. But in her new role as the partner of a prime minister she cannot be seen to be too actively involved in day-to-day politics. Some say this is a cause of frustration but others insist that behind the scenes she is a key source of advice.

Nevertheless what most agree on is that they have a very different relationship from the one Mr Johnson had with his former wife Marina Wheeler, who split from him when he was foreign secretary over his repeated infidelities.

“Carrie does genuinely love him and he loves her,” said one person who knows them both. “But that’s very different from what came before and the pressures of living in Downing Street with a young baby and partner, however accommodating she might be. It’s still bloody difficult.

“What Marina gave Boris was grounding. Proper grounding in the hinterland of his political views. She was his intellectual match and in terms of his view everything was run by her or through her. She was instrumental in the organisation of his life from an intellectual standpoint. I don’t think it is quite the same relationship with Carrie.”

And then there is the politics, both of the coronavirus and Brexit. This week’s Spectator — a magazine of which Mr Johnson was previously editor and which has always been a reliable media “friend” — turned on the prime minister. Under the headline “Where’s Boris?”. Fraser Nelson, the editor, accused Mr Johnson of presiding over “disorder, debacle, rebellion, U-turn and confusion”.

In a separate article Toby Young, long a cheerleader for Mr Johnson’s, wrote that he had “given up” on the prime minister, adding brutally: “He’s no longer fit to be prime minister and should step down as soon as he’s got Brexit done.”

In Westminster MPs are privately despairing about an administration that appears to be lurching from one crisis to another. On Brexit things are not quite as straightforward as they seem.

Despite the election rhetoric of an “oven-ready deal” with the EU, senior government figures said that Mr Johnson always knew there were contradictions in the withdrawal agreement that he signed last year that had the potential to cause him serious difficulties.

Back then Covid-19 was merely a Department of Health war-gaming exercise and everyone expected Brexit to be the dominant political issue for both Britain and the EU throughout the year. But the lockdown and shutdown of normal government — with Brexit in effect parked for three months — has meant the disputes that should have happened in the summer have been delayed with much less time to resolve them. Not only that but the crunch point of Brexit has coincided with a resurgence of the virus that is demanding the prime minister’s full attention.

Several sources said that while Mr Johnson was fully aware of the “madman” strategy of threatening the EU with reneging on aspects of the withdrawal agreement, he had not appreciated the consequences.

While Downing Street and Mr Johnson himself are adamant he has made a “full recovery” others who have seen him are less convincedWhile Downing Street and Mr Johnson himself are adamant he has made a “full recovery” others who have seen him are less convinced
While Downing Street and Mr Johnson himself are adamant he has made a “full recovery” others who have seen him are less convinced
GETTY IMAGES
The plan had been to demonstrate to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, and leaders within the bloc that, unlike Theresa May, Mr Johnson was in command of parliament and could push through legislation that could make life difficult for the EU. “I think David [Frost, the British negotiator] was desperate for his own revolver to take into the negotiations with Barnier,” one usually loyal MP said.

A key Downing Street aide, Oliver Lewis — nicknamed Sonic — fatefully briefed Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, to tell MPs that, yes, the plan might be in breach of the UK’s international legal obligations, but the government was still prepared to do it. Yet there had been no consultation — or indeed pitch rolling — with MPs in advance. And Mr Johnson at least, two sources said, had been taken aback by the extent of the hostility to his plan from not just from the traditional left of the party but Brexiteers as well.

“It was Oliver Lewis who gave Brandon the words to say,” one senior Tory said. “Boris may have known about it but he certainly wasn’t aware of the full magnitude of it. It was a classic case where he had not thought through the issue in detail and was taken aback.

“When they realised this was a significant rebellion was when it became clear that this was not just all the usual suspects. Once Michael [Howard] and Norman Lamont started coming out and then Geoffrey [Cox] and Willie Hague. They were firm Brexiteers. It was only at that point it dawned on them — shit we’ve got a problem. After that they were not unreasonable. It was much less tense than some of the negotiations that some of us have been involved with around this topic in the past.”

Yet it still cost him the resignation of Lord Keen of Elie, one of the government’s most senior law officers. The advocate-general for Scotland, who resigned shortly before the compromise meeting on Wednesday, made clear to friends that he blamed Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, for having advertised the government’s willingness to break international law. “It’s a cunning plan with two ‘M’s,” he said privately.

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The grimness of Covid continues to be a more pressing issue than what happens when the Brexit transition period ends on January 1. Replying to critics who say Mr Johnson has lost buoyancy, allies point to a relentless round of “grim” economic and coronavirus forecasts. The prime minister’s Wednesday started with a downbeat economic review with Alok Sharma, the business secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and ended with an update on coronavirus from Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance.

He, alone, has to chart a course that avoids a disastrous second national lockdown and exponential growth in infections. Insiders say projections presented to Mr Johnson suggest the UK is on almost the same path as France and Spain, just a few weeks behind. The additional difficulties of managing winter pressures on the NHS, plus a backlog of treatments created by the diversion of resources to cope with the first wave, is bound to increase non-Covid deaths just as the daily fatality rate from the disease starts to climb back into the hundreds.

What Downing Street is very keen to dispel is any notion that the prime minister can’t cope or that, as is sometimes whispered in Westminster, that he doesn’t intend to do a full term in office. “He is constantly talking about the next election and what we need to do now to make sure we are in the right place in 2024. He is totally focused. He feels a real sense of public duty and public responsibility.” Mr Johnson may feel down — but in the circumstances that is pretty understandable.

Boris Johnson
Conservative Party

I could be wrong but I can’t remember Mathew Parris ever being a cheerleader for Boris. I heard a podcast on the Spectator he did about the Edward Coulston toppling and it was probably the best piece of joirnalism I heard on the topic, the complete antithesis of his fellow Spectatorists.

He may be a pompous ass at times bùt he’s a good writer and one of the few independent conservative voices, a bit like Rory Stewart. He hasn’t served as an MP for a long while and I see him as a Tory centrist, I don’t associate him with doing the bidding of the current Tory Party.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Matthew Paris has never been a Boris Cheerleader.

Toby Young is just an even lower rent Boris mini-me.

I don’t think for a minute that Johnson will still be there in February. The question at the moment is will he last until Christmas, given how everything is panning out for him.

The next question then is obviously which of the vacuous incompetent half-wits will inherent the poisoned chalice

I don’t think for a minute that Johnson will still be there in February. The question at the moment is will he last until Christmas, given how everything is panning out for him.

If Johnson goes which awful person takes his place Rishi, Hancock… or ANOTHER election.

I think the one thing we can be absolutely certain of, given the polling, is that there’s no way on earth there will be an election

Once again the PM will be decided by a few thousand senile, Home-Counties-dwelling, Daily-Mail-reading old racists

Expect the worst. Probably Raab.

If Johnson goes which awful person takes his place Rishi, Hancock… or ANOTHER election.

Gove. He’s the only other one close enough to Cummings and arch-Brexit-y enough to fit the bill.

The problem when you’ve shoved your Cabinet full of vacuous, incompetent Yes Men instead of ministers who actually know what they’re doing is that it’s not going to make the situation any better it just puts a different arse in charge of it all.

When johnson goes – in the next few months – others in the clown circus, except govey-gove, will be thinking…FFFF he couldn’t handle it, do I really want this?
gove and cummings have been on manoeuvres for months; co-dependent.
Briefing against Sunak started weeks ago.
Would anyone on here care to out themselves as a tory voter in 2019 and share with us how they now feel about how they voted?

Once again the PM will be decided by a few thousand senile, Home-Counties-dwelling, Daily-Mail-reading old racists

Suddenly, a second wave doesn’t seem so bad….🤔

Give doesn’t want it. He’s not that daft. He just wants to keep running the show from behind the scenes with Cummings.

Whoever’s next will be just another sock-puppet in the same mould as Boris, but even worse.

Raab’s a shoe in. The right colour. Thick as mince. Nasty as ****, with not a single shred of empathy, compassion or human decency

Would anyone on here care to out themselves as a tory voter in 2019 and share with us how they now feel about how they voted?

This I would love to know. Promised he was gonna “get brexit done” and his deal was “oven ready” wouldnt sell off the nhs and believed the whole Comrade Corbyn rubbish. If i voted Tory (that make me a little sick in the mouth) I would feel well and truly mugged off.

General answer from the tory voters I know is that ‘Corbyn would have been worse’.
ffs.

To be fair to them, they’ve got a point. I doubt having the endless fence-sitting procrastinator Jeremy Corbyn at the helm at this precise moment would have been much better. Just a different type of awful.

There can’t be many people looking at the present cabinet and the state we’re in and thinking “do you know what a time of crisis like this requires? … Dianne Abbott and Richard Burgan. They’d soon have this all sorted…”

That big long article about Boris up there ^ misses out a very important thing. All the massive **** this year – the app, exams, testing, Cumming’s cumshot in our gobs aka Durham. Add all that in and it’s an assassination.

I honestly don’t think Corbyn et al would have got this as wrong as Johnson has.

The Tory ideology is a big part of the problem here as to why Covid was/is handled so poorly. In other words, in this scenario and many others, the current Tory/Leave party ideology is malignant.

I had some serous reservations about Corbyns ideology but I could never have labeled it as malignant. At worst naive.

I’d take naive every time these days and others. That said, this is off topic anyway and been done to death.

“Will you help England by populating her with liars?”

Poop, you’re not off topic.
Too many of our concerns and problems lead directly back to johnson; his unwillingness and, more importantly, his inability to lead or manage or inspire – on any subject.
His pathetic use of greek and latin are attempts to convince the naive he is superior; only in his own mind.
I would have more confidence in the views of a bloke who licked bogs clean for a living.

I honestly don’t think Corbyn et al would have got this as wrong as Johnson has

It’s a tricky one. Would more support for the NHS and more support for the poor (by far the hardest hit group in the pandemic) really have helped? Meaningless slogans and contracts for dodgy Tory supporting companies is how we are going to get through this.

Corbyn would not have sidelined existing expertise in track and trace so we would have had a wiorking system
Much of the tories poor performance in this crisis has been down to dogmatic ideology refusing to use the public sector

Much of the tories poor performance in this crisis has been down to dogmatic ideology wanting to line their mates pockets by refusing to use the public sector

FTFY.

The whole “oh Corbyn would have been worse” is such an awful argument and not even something to debate its 100% fictional. People are like oh Boris makes decisions but there is zero conviction in then because in 5 seconds he will change his mind. Also, why are Tories still so concerned with Corybn hes not even in charge any more… Tories are a joke.

I would have more confidence in the views of a bloke who licked bogs clean for a living.

Finally!

I thought you were never going to ask

I honestly don’t think Corbyn et al would have got this as wrong as Johnson has.

Theres two levels of problem in the impact the pandemic has had on the UK – one is poor choices made directly in response – dithering and delaying, we even stopped our existing track and trace system of 6 weeks right at the height of the first wave as part of the heralding in on something new that wasn’t ready. But the other impact is the toll of the last decade of tory- a lack of capacity as a result of under-investment. We fundamentally can’t implement good decisions even if they were being made. Part of the reason the current government are throwing money at cronies in the hope that will fix things is theres no other direction for them to throw the money in.

Corbyn’s crazy plan was, in summary, to  turn a UK public sector that is approx 40% of GDP (as we have it now) into one where the public sector is 46% of GDP….. a bit like Germany. The difference between Boris’s and Corbyn’s promises was measured in 100s of Billions when they really should have been stated as just a few percent. Aside from any good or bad strategic decision making the difference between 40% (the UK)  and 46% (Germany)  is an infrastructure that fundamentally can’t cope under stress and one that clearly can.

It feels safe to say Corbyn would more readily have sacrificed the economy to try and save lives (and probably fail)  than sacrifice lives to try and save the economy (and probably  fail)  but he would basically have the same lack of tools the Boris has because he couldn’t have turned 40% into 46% in 3 months – throughout the pandemic Boris has been fundiemetally unable to deliver on promises simply because our entire public infrastructure has been run down to a bare minimum – it only takes ‘winter’ to bring the health service to its knees. No matter how many test kits you buy the bottle neck is qualified people and suitable facilities. If we could buy 70 millions doses of vaccine tomorrow… we would have nothing close to the means to distribute and administer it effectively- and that would be same if functional vaccines could be produced in 6 months time or 6 years time.

We would need to have elected a Corbyn 20 years ago and keep electing people a bit like him to have both been able to make the right decisions now and actually deliver on them.

Leadership campaigns incoming

It feels crushingly unfair that 6 people can meet in a pub & 30 people can go shooting, yet some mothers have to go through birth alone. My article in today’s Mail: https://t.co/Bo5QHre0b8

— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) September 20, 2020

Today I chaired a call with @MarkDrakeford @NicolaSturgeon @DUPleader @moneillsf to ensure as COVID-19 cases rise we can seek to move forward together

The discussion was constructive and talks between UK Government & devolved administration officials will continue over weekend

— Michael Gove (@michaelgove) September 19, 2020

Much as I enjoy tories fighting like rats in a sack I’d rather have a proper government.
I wonder how people who voted for Boris will feel about pob in charge? Probably won’t give a **** I suppose.

Lets not forget Strong And Stable.

maccruiskeen, that is the best post I’ve read on here in quite some time

Corbyn may have enacted lockdown quicker and done other things differently too, but I can imagine that he’d have had an opposition who would have been resisting his efforts, rather than Johnson’s opposition who mostly have been pushing for him to do more. Assuming that Corbyn would never have gotten the sort of majority Johnson has then that would have caused quite a lot of problems.

The Spectator today has a piece that is very clearly pushing the line that Johnson will quit. They place Gove as the main contender to take his place but also hope that maybe the Tories will find someone who is both popular with the electorate, and possessing enough intelligence and application to run the country: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-boris-quit-

but also hope that maybe the Tories will find someone who is both popular with the electorate, and possessing enough intelligence and application to run the country:

That’s the kind of half-baked fantasy that the Spectator specialises in.

Johnson will walk away on the 1st of Jan, and anyone who says “oh, but Corbyn would have been worse” can GTF in the sea.

I tink the Tories will want to wait until there is a vaccine in the pipeline at least and the no-deal Brexit wave has broken. No-one is going to take on responsibility before then.

Johnson may go first but he knows history will judge him as both incompetent and a coward if he does

GTF in the sea.

That doesn’t sound like a punishment, the way you’ve phrased it. Depends on which sea, obviously.

Johnson is going nowhere! Will he fight the next election? Only if they let him. But he’s not about to disappear next year, when it’s time to start to dish out the “tough love” and see still more billions of money taken from tax payers and given to backers and fellow travellers. He’ll wear the crown whole Cummings and Gove smash up the UK, while making sure we get the cracks to deal with, and their people get all the pieces to do with as they see fit.