Boris is a disgrace

When Boris Johnson was Brussels Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, from 1989 to 1994, he denounced the EU in weekly instalments by highlighting what he said were its most absurd rulings.

The European Commission, he told us, had banned “bendy” bananas and demanded straight cucumbers. It had required fishermen to wear hair nets, prohibited donkeys from giving children rides on British beaches and put the kybosh on prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps.

And this was before he stood in front of the Vote Leave battle bus to proclaim that quitting the EU would release £350 million a week to spend on the NHS.

None of his claims was true. He couldn’t stop himself. And he still can’t.

In his latest column for the Telegraph, published today, he gives us a spoof version of what Remainers actually claim. Thus, as a consequence of Brexit, Britain will run out of Mars bars and drinking water and – for some reason – ornamental horticulturists. As part of a revived  “Project Fear,” they are apparently forecasting a desperate shortage of cheese and electricity – and (God help us!) Viagra. According to the Remoaners, as quoted by Johnson, there will be no staff to clean our restaurants. There will be no tea – and no carrots.

I know, I know. He’s only kidding. He’s having a laugh. But satire is far too grand a term for what is in fact little more than tripe. The “serious” point he wishes to get across is that these people are seeking to deceive you by making stuff up. Don’t believe them. Everything will work out just fine.

So what other ridiculous lies are Boris’s fictional Remainers spreading? “The threat to British chocolate supplies will endanger every Easter egg hunt in the land and – to judge by his tone – cause the Archbishop of Canterbury to cancel the festival of the Resurrection for the first time since Christianity was brought to these islands.”

Ha-ha! Just having you on. No harm done. Johnson’s default position when a sensible argument needs to be made is to lapse into schoolboy humour. This is his MO. He knows no other way.

“Across this darkening landscape we will see swarms of destitute expats expelled from their timeshares in Spain and mingling with untreated radiotherapy patients and criminals no longer in fear of the European Arrest Warrant. At checkpoints in every high street there will be troops to contain public unrest. The internet will pack up. Bins will go unemptied. There will be traffic jams at Dover and a serious shortage of fresh fruit on the Isle of Man.”

As it happens, he is probably right about the traffic jams at Dover in the event of a No-Deal Brexit. He’s also right to ascribe to Remain the contention that in the event Britain abandons the European Arrest Warrant, British criminals will no longer live in fear of it. For how could it be otherwise? Did he smuggle this duo of genuine assertions into the mix so that we’d be confused over what was real and what was false, or was he rehearsing for an appearance as a contestant on the Radio 4 panel game The Unbelievable Truth? Next he will be on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue singing Yes, We’ve Got No Bananas to the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

Johnson’s latest column is not an example of exaggeration exposing an underlying truth. He doesn’t have the wit for that. The point is that he is putting into Remainers’ mouths exactly the sort of claptrap he would have deployed had he not, as part of his bid to seize the keys to Number 10, decided to back Leave. In other words, he is poisoning the well. He would have us believe that he is doing no more than satirising the sorts of concerns expressed by actual Remainers. But that’s rubbish. For every ha’apworth of truth concealed in what might be called his inverted pyramid of piffle, a fortune in fantasy propaganda is being expended with the express intention of gulling the public.

In politics, as in cards, the Joker is also the Knave.

Back in 2002, reflecting on his time in Brussels for the Telegraph, Johnson informed us that some of his “most joyous hours” had been spent composing “foam-flecked hymns of hate to the latest Euro-infamy”. Among his favourites: the European Commission’s plot to scrap Britain’s double-decker buses and a “tense international row” over the dimensions of the Euro-condom.

No wonder his then editor, Sir Max Hastings, came to lament Boris’s appointment, describing him years later as without “conscience, principle or scruple”.

The man is a disgrace. Decent Leavers should denounce him for what he is – a buffoon in buffoon’s clothing, but also a scoundrel. It is time the debate over Europe continued without his malicious, Viz-inspired farago of gobbledygook and twaddle.