Boris on the (run)way
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Compare Bojo, the uncut version: “I will lie down in front of those bulldozers and stop the construction of that third runway.”
And Boris’s 2018 incarnation “I have long been an opponent of a third runway at Heathrow and that is why I am not voting for it tonight.”
Authenticity used to be Bojo’s thing in the coalition era: Bold, daring, unfettered by attachments and the orthodoxies of Cameroonism. Zip wire? No problem! Olympics? Easy! Boris bikes? They’re everywhere! ‘Boris Island’? Erm…
There are lots of good reasons for voting against Heathrow expansion. As Iain wrote today in Reaction, it’s the wrong choice at the wrong time. The flight path into Heathrow is grossly congested. We don’t need another runway there; we need another airport somewhere else. It’s outdated thinking that was rejected by Cameron at the start of his premiership. Bojo used to see that; the new Boris can’t.
After Greg Hands resigned as trade minister last week, and other high-profile Tories, like Justine Greening are set to defy the three-line whip, it is hard to see why Boris didn’t make it a point of principle to leave his post. He’s in good company and, unlike the time-limited Brexit backstop issue, is actually a credible resigning matter and a readily explicable story that would have a big public impact.
He’s having a humiliating time as Foreign Secretary and seems to have made it his mission to degrade the office of Palmerston, Castlereagh and Canning. Reciting Kipling in Myanmar was definitely a lowlight as well as successfully engineering a longer gaol sentence for a British national in Iran. On the back benches, he can write his funny columns, work on his next book on ‘why Classics matters’ etc and present ‘Have I got news for you’. Endearing, funny and far away from power, he could have a great future: a sort of loveable throwback to the Etonian dominated coalition years.
Get him on Love Island – he’d be a hoot!
Boris has to face up to some tough realities about where his career is. He’s over the hill – nothing sums up the degree to which the Boris brand has been irrevocably diminished in the public eye than this quote from one of his constituents, speaking today. Beverley Robinson used to vote for Boris because “he’s a fun sort of guy.” But now, “he’s turned his back and run. He’s been hypocritical.”
When Boris was little, his Mother said he always wanted to be “World King.” Now, he’s just another very naughty boy.
Alastair Benn, News editor