Say the fake war. All someone in Westminster was really thinking about was when the Prime Minister knew about his former deputy chief, Chris Pincher, and when he knew it.
Over the last few days, line number 10 has changed from Boris Johnson not knowing anything at all to not knowing anything about any specific complaint to not knowing anything about any specific serious complaint: a bit of casual palpitations wasn’t so bad: after everything, even The Condemned had form for it: he might have known something, but he would put us back in touch when he had found out what he was supposed to know. The defense of Thérèse Coffey. Lying has become second nature to Downing Street that no one ever thinks will admit the truth.
But it would have been hard for you to know that the trial of the Rwandan panda was again questioned for its statement to the Commons on last week’s trips to the Commonwealth (Chogm) meeting of heads of government in Kigali, the G7 in Bavaria and the NATO summit. in Madrid. Everyone had their best behavior without a word out of place. Not even of Scottish natives. It was a surreal limit. As if there was a common agreement that what happened at the Carlton Club would stay at the Carlton Club.
The only sign that something was wrong was in the empty spaces of the government benches. These days, the best way to judge Johnson’s popularity is by absences. And in this screening, the main whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, has his work cut out for him. Typically, on such occasions, subsequent banks are full to greet the heroic return of their glorious leader after mingling with the great, the good, and the not-so-good. On Monday afternoon only about 50 or 60 MPs bothered to make the effort to show their face. And some of these had only gone crazy.
Johnson opened by making a list of his apparent successes. NATO had been a triumph, with Finland and Sweden eager to sign up. The G7 had been a triumph, with countries committed to more aid to Ukraine. Chogm had not been so triumphant, though no one should have argued as much as he would have been worse if it were not for the brilliance of the condemned. He hesitated to make the connection between these summits, but would like it to be noted that he had been the only leader to attend all three.
“Welcome back,” Keir Starmer joked. While he wasn’t sure if “absence makes the heart grow more” was a good strategy for party management. But that came as close as the Labor leader came to refer to Johnson’s ill-advised calls to Pincher. A strange fault. If the convict is making bad easy calls, “Let me think. Is it a good or bad idea to give a government job to a man with an alcohol problem who resigned from a ministerial position for misconduct?” , what other misjudgments might he be making.
But Starmer overlooked all of this, reluctantly praising Johnson’s performance at the G7 and NATO. It’s not a shame as it could have been. Ian Blackford took a similar line. Then, he has a sex scandal in his own party to deal with. Thus, the SNP leader merely pointed to Johnson’s hypocrisy by calling for global observance of international law when he was busy breaking it by breaking the Northern Ireland protocol. The convict affected the outrage. No world leader had ever mentioned the protocol to him. I guess he has a selective audition.
And that was almost the sum of total criticism that came to Johnson, other than that conservative rebel Mark Harper noted that the prime minister did not seem as determined to commit to spending 2.5% of GDP on defense as he had. made in NATO. Nor had he said how he set out to find the extra £ 10bn a year. The Rwandan panda shot him a dirty look and muttered something about the growth of the economy. That would certainly be news. Although there is no time soon.
Otherwise, we were treated to a succession of unbranded conservative bankers who did their best to get preference with outrageous flattery. Gissa’s job. Even if it only lasts a few months. It is the only opportunity most of these dropouts have to become a junior minister. The first was Alec Shelbrooke. Could you make some vaguely helpful comments about something not very important? Of course you could. It’s a measure of Johnson’s current desperation that took Shelbrooke seriously. He would normally have ignored it, but now he was lying that the banker behind him had been the toast of the whole of NATO. As if.
Crispin Blunt and James Gray were also treated with unusual deference for their usual boring interventions. As was Duncan Baker who explained how he had welcomed two refugees at the start of the Ukrainian war. It seems like a long time ago, he said with regret. Imagine how long the refugees feel, locked up with someone as boring as Baker. Ukrainians have not suffered enough?
Throughout all of this, the convict’s private parliamentary secretary, Joy Morrissey, nodded gratefully to all of her statements. It’s the kind of loyalty that only money can buy. Either that, or it’s even more stupid than any of us thought.