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ORn On Monday, Boris Johnson sang the praises of “good old British common sense”. A higher order of common sense than French or German common sense, of course. Therefore, it is regrettable that this is the quality that it seems to lack. Because you would have thought that the only thing Boris could have learned from his first time against Keir Starmer in the Prime Minister’s questions last week was that it would be helpful to be properly prepared.
But Boris has never prepared for anything. It is not in it’s nature. The preparation is for feminine spots. It is a tabula rasa that is treated every day as a new beginning. One free from the consequences of any past action. He is the masher who has always been able to fly, powered by some pranks and some rushed last minute reviews. Something that could have been good enough, when backed by a chamber full of gleaming Tory MPs, to fire Jeremy Corbyn, but that is proving hopelessly inadequate against superior quality control in an almost silent courtroom. Now things are so bad that every time Boris opens his mouth, he only encourages the jury to sentence him and the judge to increase his sentence.
It is also possible that Starmer made the same mistake as many people by severely overestimating Boris’s intelligence. That the long words and the Latin phrases simply hide the fact that the Prime Minister is not particularly brilliant: after all, it takes a very smart type of intelligence to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. But old habits are also difficult for the opposition leader. He learned from his time at the bar that there is no such thing as having too much evidence against a defendant, so he wasn’t taking anything for granted when coming to the Commons was something too prepared.
Give it time and Boris can get down to business and plead guilty beforehand to save him from torture by answering six questions, but we’re not there yet, so Starmer opened his folder and asked the court to consider Annex A. Care homes. Wasn’t it true that the government had been too slow to act to protect the most vulnerable members of society? Absolutely not, Boris insisted. No country had done more to protect the elderly. What better protection could someone get than to be killed?
Hmm That was odd, Starmer said, because on Attachment B he had a surgeon quoted in the Daily Telegraph, quoting the newspaper that he had so far been very happy to print any old garbage that the prime minister writes was a cruel twist of the knife. saying the government had not changed its advice on releasing untested patients in nursing homes until mid-March.
That’s not just true, Boris raged, sounding more guilty for seconds. Although it was true. Although accusing the prime minister of lying is making a philosophical mistake. Since Boris has no idea what advice his government has and has not given, it cannot be knowingly false. Nor, given his career history, shows any signs of being able to differentiate between truth and lies. Rather, he only recites the answer that he wants to be true and hopes to do so only with willpower. And to be fair, it is a tactic that has worked quite frequently in the past.
Starmer turned to figures from the Office of National Statistics for nursing home deaths. Their report suggested that there had been a death toll in excess of 18,000 people, however, the government was certain that only 8,000 of them had died from the coronavirus. So what did you think the other 10,000 had died of? Boris shrugged his shoulders. It was a great mystery. Perhaps some were dying of happiness. Or an excessive effort in the gym during the closure? Or perhaps they were dying of disappointment that the UK had not yet technically left the EU?
“I am puzzled,” Starmer said. Baffled quality control speaks for “Now I’ve got you nailed, dirty toerag.” Baffled because the government had stopped using the international death rate comparison at the Downing Street press conference, and had done so continuously for the past seven weeks.
Boris was furious once again. It turns out that a prime minister who was supposed to be a great communicator can now barely speak in united sentences. He has returned to the preverbal stage. “Um … er … ah,” he murmured.
Little was left of the prime minister, but a drenched mess by the time Keir was done with him, though SNP’s Ian Blackford was happy to make some waves in the sweat puddle previously known as Boris. All Johnson could say in his defense was that it was a consensus roadmap, the consensus being that he had not bothered to consult Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It seems he was surprised to learn that there were so many people in London that he needed to use public transport.
At other times, it could have been encouraging for opposition banks to see the prime minister so thoroughly dismantled. But there was little cheering or a sense of satisfaction, because in a time of crisis you would prefer that the country have a leader you can believe in. Someone you can trust to make at least some of the right decisions. But we have Boris. Incompetent, unprepared, selfish, lazy, amoral, and not so brilliant. And no matter how many times Starmer hits him with an indefensible charge sheet in PMQs, Boris will remain Prime Minister the entire time.
