Amid a dramatic series of resignations of government ministers over the last 48 hours, Boris Johnson has finally resigned his post as leader of the Tory party. Normally this would mean that he is also no longer Prime Minister but nothing is normal concerning Johnson! Like others before him, he intends to stay in the role until a new party leader is chosen but the chorus of voices saying that they don't trust him to fulfill the role of caretaker is loud and growing. His record is against him!
Of course we all know that Boris Johnson, in his time as the Telegraph’s Europe correspondent, made his reputation by inventing Euromyths about straight bananas and one size fits all condoms etc.; in effect creating the Big Euromyth which he used together with the big red bus "£350 million a week" lie, to narrowly win the Brexit referendum.
As Prime Minister he has lied repeatedly and presided over probably the most corrupt and unprincipled government in UK history, but when I saw this interview with Chris Patten, in May 2016, I was surprised that he was able to call Boris Johnson a liar so directly and without any risk of legal proceedings for slander (from 1:42).
I investigated further and discovered that Johnson was sacked from the Times in 1987 following a story in which he fabricated a quote from his godfather, an Oxford academic, who was ridiculed for Boris' inaccuracies.
He has also been sacked from Michael Howard’s shadow ministerial team in 2004 for lying to Guy Black, (Howard’s press secretary), David MacLean (the Tory Chief Whip) and the Press about an affair that he was having with Petronella Wyatt that resulted in her having an abortion.
But the most revealing episode of his character so far has been in a recorded telephone conversation with Darius Guppy, one of his Old Etonian chums, in which he agreed to get the address of a News of the World journalist, Stuart Collier, so that Guppy could arrange an assault intended to scare him off investigating a fraud case in which Guppy was involved. This took place in 1990 when Johnson was the Daily Telegraph's Europe correspondent. In an interview with Eddie Mair, Johnson subsequently denied that he had done anything wrong and said that he was just humouring his friend.
Judge for yourself whether he was asking Guppy questions about how much he was going to hurt Stuart Collier in order to humour him.
Someone has requested that this video be age restricted by Youtube even though it contains no content likely to disturb anyone, even a young child. I suspect political interference!
We are now in a period of post-truth politics in which skilled individuals, who are good at saying what people want to hear, whether it's true or not, can rise above reasonable and sensible discussion and get away with it.
Did the 92,153 Tory Party members who elected him really want a proven liar leading the country?
I know I didn't!
I know I didn't!
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