Well, I suppose we can all sigh with relief that Priti Patel didn’t holiday in North Korea. But my mind is in turmoil. I just can’t make up my mind who is more ghastly, her or Boris. Both are hopelessly over promoted, over rated and over exposed. Both are headline chasers. And both don’t give a damn about anything other than a delusional sense of entitlement to the keys of Downing Street. They really are quite awful people. Never mind nearly throwing a spanner in the works of Middle Eastern diplomacy. Never mind not bothering to read your brief about a woman languishing in an Iranian hell hole jail and doubling her sentence with a few lazy, ill chosen remarks. But probably their worst crime is that they probably don’t think that they have done anything particularly wrong. Worse, that they don’t even care. She returns to the backbenches with the Disneyland belief that the troops will rally behind her. They won’t. And remarkably he is still there. Not a blush of humility, a whiff off remorse nor even a snigger of apology.
Poor Mrs Ratcliffe, as if she hadn’t got enough trouble without the assistance of Bozo. He has given the largest exporters of terror a wonderful propaganda tool. They now say that this is an ‘unintended confession’ by Britain. And what does the little creep do? Pull out all the stops to get her released? Of course not. He just rings up the Iranians and asked for an assurance that his slack mouthed incompetence wasn’t responsible for adding to her troubles. And then he tells us that he received that assurance. We now know that that is a lie. As if we couldn’t guess.
This really is a turning point for Boris. The public can put up with his capers, his disloyalty, his Janus faced promises, but will not stand for his cavalier treatment of an innocent. He has morphed from a rather bad joke wearing thin, to a menace. A clear and present danger. Madame can really show strength by sacking him. He is no longer the useful human shield against the carpet biters. He has become a serious liability to foreign policy at a time when the well oiled Rolls Royce of the Foreign Office is in despair. And she could get away with it. The longer she leaves him in post the worse it will become. Sadly, the Ratcliffe saga will run and run. This is the beginning of the Christmas season. The country turns their thoughts to family. Mrs.Ratcliffe will be alone and afraid. Her family will in bits. It will not escape the attention of the media.
May can risk sacking Boris. The party have no desire to be led by an ageing Lothario anymore. They can sniff young blood. His following is diminishing. The joke has worn off. This is a rare window of opportunity to show she can be strong and in control if she really puts her mind to it.
I am not convinced that there is any merit in the current fantasy that the government will fall by Christmas or that Madame will soon be ushered out of the door. It may be Christmas, but Tory turkeys won’t vote for it. Madame should be known as Tina, as Thatcher was at the height of her pomp. Tina? There Is No Alternative. Oh, and don’t give me all that Moggmentum moonshine. One day Guido will reveal that Mogg doesn’t really exist and that he’s really Sasha Baron Cohen making a movie. Surely, it cannot be possible that he is real.
So now is the time to be bold. While Boris is taking a wrecking ball to diplomacy Brussels is in total confusion. We don’t seem to have a coherent Foreign policy just a series of back drops for a few Bozo one liners. We are in a very bad place. He has to go. Soon. The government needs to be reborn. The hopeless and clueless have to be culled. There are plenty of able youngsters who could rejuvenate the government. Who knows, we might see Tom Tugendhat in the Cabinet before long. Now he is classy.
