He Just Won't Lie Down...

It's like a slasher movie, isn't it?  Specifically, that bit near the end when everyone thinks that Jason or Michael Myers or whoever is under the mask this time around, is dead - but just as the heroes are walking away, we get a close up on his face and his eyes flick open, just as the closing credits start to roll.   I refer, of course to Boris Johnson's appointment as Foreign Secretary.  Just two weeks ago we were rejoicing at what seemed to be the derailing of his political career for the foreseeable future, when he unexpectedly dropped out of of the Tory leadership contest.  But here is - back again in a senior political post. Just what do we have to do to get rid of this utter cock end?  His appointment seemed to blind side everyone.  Certainly, at least one TV channel seemed to be busy trawling the web for dirt on Johnson - they were clicking on various anti-Boris pieces I've written both here and over at The Sleaze.  For a while I was expecting news exclusives about how Boris was about to be unmasked as the Balham Buggerer, or that he had once blacked up and run through the streets of London, dressed as a Zulu warrior, singing 'Umbongo, Umbongo, they drink it in the Congo'.  But, sadly, it wasn't to be. 

After the initial negative reactions to the prospect of having a dangerous right-wing clown representing the UK abroad, I noticed that tonight the news programmes wheeling out various boris apologists, to tell us how great  he was going to be as Foreign Secretary and telling us how, under the buffoonish exterior, he was really a 'brilliant intellect'.  I'm afraid that I've yet to see any evidence of the latter.  I think people confuse ambition and a sense of entitlement with intelligence.  Indeed, there are too many people out there who still think that going to Eton and being an Oxbridge graduate makes someone intelligent.  It doesn't.  Money gets you through the former and helps with the latter.  Moreover, Boris studied Classics, the quintessential bluffer's degree.  But really, Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary?  Didn't the Brexit vote make us enough of a global laughing stock that Theresa May thought it was worth destroying her credibility as Prime Minister less than a day into the job with this appointment?  It seems we're determined to completely undermine our credibility overseas.  I ask you, what next?  Sam Allardyce as England manager just because he's English?  I mean, that would be ludicrous, wouldn't it?  A return to the dark ages of international football for England.  Oh, hang on - apparently the FA are talking to him now...