Max Hastings: I was Boris Johnson’s boss - He is utterly unfit to be Britain's Prime Minister

[Markhor]

Max Hastings was editor of the Daily Telegraph when Boris Johnson was hired as a reporter. He is written a SCATHING article about his former protege who is favourite to succeed Theresa May as Britain's next Prime Minister.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ris-johnson-prime-minister-tory-party-britain

Here are a few choice quotes:

I have known Johnson since the 1980s, when I edited the Daily Telegraph and he was our flamboyant Brussels correspondent. I have argued for a decade that, while he is a brilliant entertainer who made a popular maître d’ for London as its mayor, he is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification.

A few admirers assert that, in office, Johnson will reveal an accession of wisdom and responsibility that have hitherto eluded him, not least as foreign secretary. This seems unlikely, as the weekend’s stories emphasised. Dignity still matters in public office, and Johnson will never have it. Yet his graver vice is cowardice, reflected in a willingness to tell any audience, whatever he thinks most likely to please, heedless of the inevitability of its contradiction an hour later.

Like many showy personalities, he is of weak character. I recently suggested to a radio audience that he supposes himself to be Winston Churchill, while in reality being closer to Alan Partridge. Churchill, for all his wit, was a profoundly serious human being. Far from perceiving anything glorious about standing alone in 1940, he knew that all difficult issues must be addressed with allies and partners.

Churchill’s self-obsession was tempered by a huge compassion for humanity, or at least white humanity, which Johnson confines to himself. He has long been considered a bully, prone to making cheap threats. My old friend Christopher Bland, when chairman of the BBC, once described to me how he received an angry phone call from Johnson, denouncing the corporation’s “gross intrusion upon my personal life” for its coverage of one of his love affairs.

“We know plenty about your personal life that you would not like to read in the Spectator,” the then editor of the magazine told the BBC’s chairman, while demanding he order the broadcaster to lay off his own dalliances.

Bland told me he replied: “Boris, think about what you have just said. There is a word for it, and it is not a pretty one.”

He said Johnson blustered into retreat, but in my own files I have handwritten notes from our possible next prime minister, threatening dire consequences in print if I continued to criticise him.

Johnson would not recognise truth, whether about his private or political life, if confronted by it in an identity parade.

We can scarcely strip the emperor’s clothes from a man who has built a career, or at least a lurid love life, out of strutting without them.

If the Johnson family had stuck to showbusiness like the Osmonds, Marx Brothers or von Trapp family, the world would be a better place. Yet the Tories, in their terror, have elevated a cavorting charlatan to the steps of Downing Street, and they should expect to pay a full forfeit when voters get the message. If the price of Johnson proves to be Corbyn, blame will rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the British people – who will not find it funny for long.

 

[Markhor]

That story about Johnson threatening the BBC Chairman with blackmail is damning and another blot on his chargesheet which includes:

- Referring to Africans as "wide eyed piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles".
- The same year he said of Africa that “the continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience”, adding its problem was “that we are not in charge any more”.

- Sacked from The Times for inventing quotes. Invented fake stories during his time as Brussels correspondent at the Telegraph.
- Getting sacked from the Tory front bench after lying to former Conservative leader Michael Howard about an extra-marital affair.
- Fathered an illegitimate child and has had three affairs - then tried unsuccessfully to get a gagging order on stories about the kid.

- Promised to eradicate rough sleeping by 2012, only for it to DOUBLE as Mayors of London.
- Claimed police numbers would increase in London despite government cuts.
- The Garden Bridge project he oversaw as Mayor of London which cost £43m of taxpayers money.

- Supported remaining in the Single Market as Mayor of London; changed to support Leave to further his leadership bid.
- Lied during the Brexit referendum that remaining in the EU meant having a common border with Turkey leading to 80m Turks being able to migrate to Britain, when Turkey aren't even close to acceding to the EU. He was REPRIMANDED by the UK's official Statistics Authority for falsely claiming leaving the EU meant the UK could invest £350m a week into the NHS.
- Compared the border between Northern and Southern Ireland to Camden and Islington !
- TOTAL failure at the Foreign Office.

Yet this cretinous hairball will be elected by a senile Conservative membership driven by a lust for more tax cuts for them and their wealthy associates, and their desire for an economically disasterous no-deal Brexit.

 

[barah_admi]

The same sections of the media that now criticise him, have spent the last decade popularising his buffoonery, covering his lies in some, cute posh boy character, the mad hatter who is up for a laugh. It has so brainwashed the public that we once voted him as mayor of western Europe's largest city.

He will be prime minister and the same media entity will claim the only man fit to run this country, Corbyn and his team, is unfit.

Lies upon lies.

The prophet of Islam said the leaders of a nation reflects its people. We are all now buffoons.