Boris johnson

Trust Boris to dominate the headlines by reopening that most famous of books, Johnson’s Dictionary. Writing in the Sun, our effortlessly provocative Foreign Secretary swiped at Jeremy Corbyn with this colourful barb: ‘He may be a mutton-headed old mugwump, but he is probably harmless.’ Couched rather incongruously as the reflections of ‘the people’, this comment has left many laughing, but more still scratching their heads. In fact, there’s more to being a ‘mugwump’ than a throw-away jibe. The word comes from the original New Englanders, the Algonquians, for whom mugquomp meant ‘great chief’. It was a term of respect laden with connotations of nobility. But that presumably wasn’t what Boris

Boris Johnson has received a bit of a kicking this week. There have been no shortage of people wanting to say he has been humiliated by the G7’s refusal to back his call for further sanctions on Russia and Syria after the chemical weapons attack. But I argue in The Sun today, that the real story is the weakness of the EU members of the G7. To be sure, Boris got too far forward on his skis on sanctions. But the bigger issue, by far, is the weakness of those members of the G7 who wouldn’t back them: principally, Italy and Germany. Lenin used to say “Probe with a bayonet;

A few weeks ago, Boris Johnson made a point about the EU negotiations and the futility of the idea of punishing Britain for the sake of it. ‘If Monsieur Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape’, he said, ‘rather in the manner of some World War II movie, then I don’t think that is the way forward, and actually it’s not in the interests of our friends and partners’. Cue howls of outrage. ‘Abhorrent and deeply unhelpful’, said Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator. But was Boris really so wide of the mark? Yesterday Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, gave an interview

Spare a thought for Boris Johnson. Ever since the Brexit vote, the Foreign Secretary has struggled with the often hostile reception he now receives in London from angry remain-ers. Now it seems things have got so bad that he can’t even enjoy a quiet night out at the theatre. Thandie Newton — the Crash actress — tells the Sunday Times that her teenage daughter, Ripley, spotted Johnson in the audience on a recent trip to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre. Alas Ripley doesn’t hold such a high opinion of the Conservative politician and she proceeded to seek him out to alert him to this fact: ‘She

What on earth does George Osborne know about journalism? How can someone with no journalistic experience go straight in as editor – editor! – of the London Evening Standard? What were its proprietors thinking? To have dinner with an MP is one thing, but to hire him as an editor? And what does this sacked politician know of the demands facing an editor in the digital era? How can he combine such a demanding job with his duties in parliament and towards his constituents in Tatton? If I wasn’t an editor, these might be a few of my reactions to the extraordinary news today. But much as I hate to

For an exercise in popular sovereignty, which was meant to take decisions away from the hated ‘elite’, the Brexit referendum has, inevitably,  produced Britain’s greatest outbreak of political lying. Yesterday’s liars look pale and wan in comparison with the latest models. It is as if the long-awaited singularity has occurred. But rather than advances in technology creating a new species of artificial superintelligence , the advance of plebiscitary politics has created a new species of artificial superliar. The liars of the past were often furtive figures. Like the man who has staggered home at 3 a.m. and tried to explain away the beer on his breath and lipstick on his collar,

It is many a Brexiteer’s fantasy: In 2019, shortly after the UK formally leaves the EU, Theresa May welcomes Donald Trump to Downing Street to ink a trade pact. Out with the old, in with the new, and the ‘special relationship’ standing tall. But how likely is that scenario? A trade deal would certainly be politically meaningful for both sides. For Trump, who is facing pressure over his protectionist rhetoric, it would be an opportunity to boost his pro-trade credentials. While Theresa May could use it to show that Britain has trade options beyond the EU. The prospect of a deal with the US could also boost her hand when it

Boris Johnson came to the House of Commons to answer questions on the Trump visa ban with the opposition benches in full outrage mode. The policy is wrong, ill-considered and a blunt instrument. But those in the Chamber who see it as a sign the US is on the road to fascism are getting things out of proportion. As Johnson said you can see it as ‘divisive and wrong’ without resorting to 1930s parallels or wanting to disinvite Trump from his State visit. There were a series of irate questions from the Labour benches. Yvette Cooper demanded that Johnson ‘for the sake of history, for Heaven’s sake have the guts

Thanks to the Home Office’s crackdown on hate crime, the Home Secretary recently found her conference speech officially recorded as a ‘hate incident’, after an Oxford University physics professor complained to the police that she was ‘picking on foreigners’. However, Mr S can’t help but wonder if Amber Rudd will soon be joined by her former colleague David Cameron on the ‘hate incident’ list. In a speech at Davos, Cameron told the global elite how he tends to spend his days now he is no longer prime minister. The Mail on Sunday reports that Cameron said he had taken up shooting again — with a specific focus on taking down ‘Borises and

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out