Boris johnson

The great Brexit bus delusion

I know many Leave voters. Most of my family. Around half of my friends. Lots of the people in the immigrant community in London I grew up in. (We’re bad immigrants, being anti-EU, so we never feature in the migrant-sympathetic commentary of EU-pining hacks.) And not one of them has ever said they chose Brexit because of that £350m-for-the-NHS thing on the side of a bus. The idea that that bus swung the referendum, that it duped the voting hordes, has become one of the great, and nasty, myths of the Brexit era. The bloody bus is back in the news this week after Boris Johnson said he’d like to

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Boris is speaking for the majority of Brits

Boris Johnson has come in for plenty of criticism since setting out his Brexit blueprint in a 4,000 word article in the Daily Telegraph. But the Sun says the Foreign Secretary has done the PM a favour in speaking up for ‘the 52 per cent who voted Leave and the many more won over since’. ‘Theresa May must listen’ up, the paper says – and she should also ‘ignore the siren calls from Cabinet Remainers’ who want to reverse the referendum result. The attacks levelled at Boris are ‘designed solely to discredit him and trash the optimistic vision’ of Brexit he has set out. Instead of getting angry at Boris, the

The biggest Cabinet Brexit split

The Cabinet remains divided on one of the most fundamental Brexit questions. Everyone in the Cabinet does accept that Britain is leaving not just the EU but the single market too. But there remains a split over whether Britain should be aiming for an EEA minus deal with the EU or a CETA plus one. This might sound techy but it is fundamental to Britain’s future. Free movement makes it a political non-starter for Britain to stay in the single market. However, several of the most senior members of the Cabinet, backed by the institutional Treasury, think that Britain should stay as closely aligned to the single market as possible.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Boris’s ‘naked pitch’ for the top job

Has Boris Johnson launched a military coup? Based on ‘some of the chatter coming out of the Westminster Bubble’, you’d be forgiven for thinking his Brexit intervention was just that, says the Sun. It’s time for everybody to ‘calm down’, the paper urges. Yes, some of those who have questioned the timing of the article – published in the run-up to Theresa May’s major speech on Brexit this Friday – may have a point. But Boris is nonetheless ‘entitled to a view on what Britain might look like after we leave the EU’. The Tories need to quit the fighting amongst themselves and realise that the only ones to benefit from

Why is the UK’s supposedly impartial statistics watchdog joining the Boris-bashing?

Okay, it’s a rainy Sunday, but surely the new chief of the UK Statistics Authority has better things to do than send angry tweets to the Foreign Secretary? Alas not. Today Sir David Norgrove, the newish chairman of the UK Statistics Agency, tweeted out a letter declaring himself ‘surprised and disappointed’ that BoJo has ‘chosen to repeat the figure of £350 million per week, in connection with the amount that might be available for extra public spending when we leave the European Union’. He says that this ‘confuses gross and net contributions…. It is a clear misuse of official statistics’. Sir David Norgrove writes to Foreign Secretary about use of

Sunday shows round-up: Amber Rudd says Boris is ‘back-seat driving’ over Brexit

Amber Rudd – Boris should not ‘back-seat drive’ over Brexit The Home Secretary took to Andrew Marr’s sofa in the wake of the Friday’s failed terrorist attack on a London Underground train at Parson’s Green station. However, the topic swiftly turned from security to Boris Johnson’s latest 4,000 word essay published in the Telegraph on Saturday. The Foreign Secretary laid out his vision for Brexit – days before the Prime Minister is due to make a crucial speech in Florence. Rudd defended Boris’ intervention, but made clear that she did not want the Foreign Secretary to be in charge of the UK’s negotiations: AM: Do you think that this article

Boris’s nasty politics would hurt the Tories and Britain

I used to have a lot of time for Boris Johnson. Sometimes whole days, in fact: from 8am until 8pm, I’d ring and text and email him, politely urging him to tell me what he planned to write his exquisitely expensive Telegraph column about, and when he’d deign to send it to me. It was, as others who’ve had the joy of calling him a colleague can attest, maddening. But he always filed, in the end. I don’t claim that working acquaintance with Boris gives me any unique insight into his soul. In fact, familiarity only makes his real character more obscure. My overall impression of a man famous for being talkative

Fraser Nelson

Finally, Boris Johnson has overcome his stage fright. Let’s hear more from him

In my Daily Telegraph column yesterday, I asked where Boris Johnson had gone. We never hear from him now, I said, unless there’s been some tragedy overseas or some risqué joke backfiring in Bratislava. Since becoming Foreign Secretary, the most gifted communicator in the Tory party had been mute – a baffling waste of talent. While he sulked, Brexit was being defined by its enemies. The narrative has become one of tedious negotiations and no one in government seemed able (or even interested) in saying what the point of Brexit was. Boris helped inspired a nation to vote for Brexit, and gave a wonderful, liberal and globally-minded definition of it

James Forsyth

Can Theresa May satisfy both Boris and the EU?

We are only six days away from Theresa May’s big Brexit speech in Florence. But it is far from certain what will be in it, as I say in The Sun today. The biggest domestic challenge for May, insiders say, is squaring Boris Johnson. I’m told that ‘there is quite a lot of nervousness about that’. ‘Boris has been the most hard-line’ of the Cabinet Brexiteers an insider tells me. One of those involved in the negotiations between the two camps predicts ‘it is going to be a tetchy week.’ Boris’s issue is money. He is opposed to paying a big exit payment to the EU and he’s told Number

David Davis is heading for a tragic failure of his own making

Stephen Bush of the New Statesman asked a good question the other day. Why do people who hate what Boris Johnson and Liam Fox are doing to Britain go easy on David Davis? He’s right to be perplexed. It turns out all those trade deals the leave campaign promised can’t be done for years. Liam Fox has nothing to do except be a public nuisance, which now I come to think of it is the only post he’s qualified to fill. Johnson meanwhile is an embarrassment, even to an administration which seems beyond shame, and Theresa May does her best to keep him locked in an FCO cellar. Davis, on the

Is Rachel Johnson becoming a Corbynista?

During the snap election, Boris Johnson was given reason to blush when his sister Rachel came out for the Liberal Democrats. Despite having always voted Conservative previously, the Mail on Sunday columnist said the party’s Brexit stance had meant she had no choice but to defect. Since then, Johnson has written in The Spectator of the need for a new centrist party – ideally headed up by Gary Lineker, the people’s snowflake. However, is Johnson actually considering another political defection? Mr S only asks after his mole reports a curious exchange between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at last night’s GQ Men of the Year awards. At the champagne-fuelled bash at

Kensington MP’s Boris Johnson prank

Since Labour’s surprise victory in the People’s Republic of Kensington, new MP Emma Dent Coad has been quick to make her mark on Parliament. As well as saying her predecessors are not ‘hard acts to follow’ and calling for the monarchy (many of whom are her constituents) to be abolished, Dent Coad made the news after she said Sir Martin Moore-Bick should be replaced as head of the Grenfell Tower inquiry because he does not ‘understand human beings’. So, Mr S was curious to tune into Dent Coad’s appearance on today’s Pienaar’s Politics where the backbencher was asked whether she has ever done anything illegal. After admitting to experimenting with cannabis, Jon Pienaar asked

The special envoy is on his way… and Boris is in his swimming trunks

Boris Johnson is inspecting the guard of honour and we are doing our best not to giggle. The Foreign Secretary is walking down a line of soldiers from the Libyan National Army. The red carpets are blowing over in the breeze. One of the senior officers looks uncannily like Colonel Gaddafi. And the band is playing the worst version of the national anthem I have ever heard. Yet Mr Johnson manages to control his features. Just. For this is the headquarters of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control large swaths of eastern Libya. A thought strikes me. Mr Johnson’s critics accuse him of upsetting allies, lacking foreign policy vision

Diary – 31 August 2017

Boris Johnson is inspecting the guard of honour and we are doing our best not to giggle. The Foreign Secretary is walking down a line of soldiers from the Libyan National Army. The red carpets are blowing over in the breeze. One of the senior officers looks uncannily like Colonel Gaddafi. And the band is playing the worst version of the national anthem I have ever heard. Yet Mr Johnson manages to control his features. Just. For this is the headquarters of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control large swaths of eastern Libya. A thought strikes me. Mr Johnson’s critics accuse him of upsetting allies, lacking foreign policy vision

Boris Johnson has returned to the political wilderness

Some of his friends will tell you that beneath all the bluster and fluster, beneath the posture and the persona, Boris Johnson is actually quite like the rest of us. He has doubts and fears, good days and bad days, times when he’s up and times when he’s down. ‘Boris’ in a sense, is a construct, a costume worn by a man whose given name is actually Alexander and is sometimes known as Al. Whatever his name, Boris or Al could be forgiven for feeling a bit down these days. Not too long ago, reaching his life’s ambition of the premiership seemed a realistic possibility. In a story that still

Low life | 24 August 2017

My mother has various chronic illnesses and finds it almost impossible to remain both immobile and awake during the day. At night she can’t sleep owing to hallucinations caused by her Parkinson’s medication. I think she is also subject to a general delusion that the house is overrun with mice. There is hardly a drawer or cupboard without a wizened lump of cheese set in a trap. Otherwise, she is sane and serene and while her forgetfulness is infuriating to her, its origin doesn’t seem to be organic. She’s 87. I’ve been staying with her for the past few days. Also visiting is my mother’s sister, aged 91. Apart from

Forget London’s ramshackle Garden Bridge: bring on Nine Elms-to-Pimlico instead

I can’t work up much indignation at the collapse of London’s Garden Bridge project, which has been strangled by the refusal of mayor Sadiq Khan to guarantee its continuing operational and maintenance costs — assuming its trustees, led by former banker and minister Lord Davies of Abersoch, would have succeeded in raising the £150 million of private capital required to build the bridge and plant its 270 trees in the first place. Promoted by Joanna Lumley and Sadiq’s predecessor Boris Johnson, this was a beautiful but whimsical idea, placed in an overcrowded stretch of the Thames and based on a ramshackle business plan. In a more confident economic climate it

The Garden Bridge was the definition of a folly

Dry your eyes, Joanna Lumley, and try to move on. For the Garden Bridge was doomed from the start. Sure, it had all the hallmarks of an absolutely fabulous idea dreamt up by Patsy and friends in the early hours of Sunday morning after a humdinger of an evening on cocktails and Bolly. But by mid afternoon its shortcomings should have been uncomfortably apparent and the whole fuzzy-headed wheeze quietly forgotten. The mystery is that it’s taken so long – although even now, with the death-knell sounded, the bridge’s giddy supporters are petulant when confronted by unbelievers daring to suggest that, as a purely practical proposition, the idea stinks. Let

The furore surrounding the Brexit divorce bill is hotting up

The furore surrounding the Brexit divorce bill is hotting up. The weekend’s papers saw speculation that Britain would cough up £36bn as part of a settlement package for its departure from the EU. Nonsense, says Downing Street, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying this morning: ‘I don’t recognise the figure’. It’s not only the government hitting back; Tory eurosceptics are also turning up the volume. Yet while the government is eager to talk down the size of the bill, the criticism coming from the backbenches is less nuanced. Instead of quibbling over the amount, the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood dismiss the bill out of hand. Rees-Mogg wrote on

Letters | 20 July 2017

Yes to Boris Sir: Get Boris (15 July)! Get Boris to be prime minister, in fact. He is the only possible candidate for the Conservatives who has the flair, the experience, the ideas and the sense of humour to rescue the party and the country from its current malaise. That he has opposition there is no doubt — but then so did Winston Churchill when he was recalled by Lloyd George in 1917 to be minister of munitions, and again in 1940 when he became prime minister. To sideline him at this time would be foolish in the extreme and a further example of the party’s ineptitude. George Burne Woldingham, Surrey