NEW JOURNAL ENTRY JUNE 18th 2019.

I sometimes used to read Private Eye magazine back in the 'sixties when people such as Willie Rushton and Peter Cook wrote for it but haven't bought it since. However, I couldn't resist buying the current June issue after seeing it's hilarious front cover on display at my local Tesco supermarket. I just had to share it with you....😄

Interesting words (in the main, nothing most rational people with half an eye open didn't already know, but) this evening, from Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph (and the London Evening Standard) and Johnson's boss in the 80's at the Telegraph.

"I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister":

"Six years ago, the Cambridge historian Christopher Clark published a study of the outbreak of the first world war, titled The Sleepwalkers. Though Clark is a fine scholar, I was unconvinced by his title, which suggested that the great powers stumbled mindlessly to disaster. On the contrary, the maddest aspect of 1914 was that each belligerent government convinced itself that it was acting rationally.

It would be fanciful to liken the ascent of Boris Johnson to the outbreak of global war, but similar forces are in play. There is room for debate about whether he is a scoundrel or mere rogue, but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth. Nonetheless, even before the Conservative national membership cheers him in as our prime minister – denied the option of Nigel Farage, whom some polls suggest they would prefer – Tory MPs have thronged to do just that.

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.

Tory MPs have launched this country upon an experiment in celebrity government, matching that taking place in Ukraine and the US, and it is unlikely to be derailed by the latest headlines. The Washington columnist George Will observes that Donald Trump does what his political base wants “by breaking all the china”. We can’t predict what a Johnson government will do, because its prospective leader has not got around to thinking about this. But his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability.

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. In a commonplace book the other day, I came across an observation made in 1750 by a contemporary savant, Bishop Berkeley: “It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.” Almost the only people who think Johnson a nice guy are those who do not know him.

There is, of course, a symmetry between himself and Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn is far more honest, but harbours his own extravagant delusions. He may yet prove to be the only possible Labour leader whom Johnson can defeat in a general election. If the opposition was led by anybody else, the Tories would be deservedly doomed, because we would all vote for it. As it is, the Johnson premiership could survive for three or four years, shambling from one embarrassment and debacle to another, of which Brexit may prove the least.

For many of us, his elevation will signal Britain’s abandonment of any claim to be a serious country. It can be claimed that few people realised what a poor prime minister Theresa May would prove until they saw her in Downing Street. With Boris, however, what you see now is almost assuredly what we shall get from him as ruler of Britain.

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. The weekend stories of his domestic affairs are only an aperitif for his future as Britain’s leader. I have a hunch that Johnson will come to regret securing the prize for which he has struggled so long, because the experience of the premiership will lay bare his absolute unfitness for it.

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."

Watched Rory Stewart this morning on “Fareed Zakaria GPS” Sunday show on CNN. Like ‘Dateline London’, Fareed’s show I try not to miss. Fareed seemed to like Rory and Fareed is all about globalism. I thought something interesting that Rory, ‘the alleged former spy’ said in this interview was that what’s different about the nationalism in Britain compared to the nationalism in the USA is that British nationalists are ‘nationalist radical free traders’. This sounds like he’s describing Republicans that my parents knew, people that were capable of mixing-and-matching various ideas, even those that seemed contradictory. I guess enough people felt that the mixing and the matching didn’t work as well as hoped and so we got the neocons beginning in the Reagan era and culminating in the GWB era. Rory seems like a real young un but also throwback to more nuanced politics. Certainly most of us over here on the left feel that the nuanced politics failed us, the Clinton era that is, or at least that there’s no time for blending right with left anymore.

Nic’s portrait is Sailor Bill ...

Wow. I think he beats Trump in the bad hairdo department. Sorry about all that political nonsense going on where you live, but it's worldwide also. Putting your trust in nobles is a heart ache...even the good ones because there will never be lasting changes.

On the positive front: Thanks, Bill, for all these great tunes...I put my Music Bee app on random and heard some selections from 'Special Metal' and 'Rejoice' from Northern Dream.

Clowns both, but up to no good whatsoever.

Ahahahaha good one Tourist. Birds of the same feather !!

Ok, so I'm hijacking three lines of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics and using them totally out of context to make the point, but they fit this situation so perfectly..in a nutshell.....and, as Ol' Blue Eyes used to sing, so very well:

But where are the clowns?

Send in the clowns

Don't bother

They're here...…….

Well, those candidates who were eliminated from the race to be Prime Minister have now decided to throw their votes in behind the dreadful bumbling Bozo and it looks inevitable that he will end up being PM. Rory Stewart, the one seemingly moderate man in the race, was eliminated yesterday and the hard-line Brexiteers now have the field to themselves. What a disgrace.

Stewart has said he won't serve in a Boris led government, so we'll see if he sticks to his word. The other lot are clearly looking after their gig though and will be royally rewarded for their votes by the Prince of Fools.

I suspect that they have seen the popularity that Bozo has with the rank and file Conservative members and believe that, no matter how dreadful the man is, he will garner them support in the face of a possible General Election and stop the drift to the Brxit party.

I didn't know whether to laugh or throw my shoes at the television when some party members were asked why they wanted Bozo for leader. It seems it's because he's a 'character' and will happily drag us out of the EU without a deal. When his poor track record as Foreign Minister and his numerous gaffs and lies were pointed out, one woman said she didn't know about them and didn't care, she thought he was great, and that was that. And that's the problem. People don't know and people don't care to face the truth. It's no longer about what's best for the country, it's about winning and keeping the very wealthiest in jollies. Waffle for Toffs. Actually, that a good title for a protest song...I just might create one.

Hopefully though, Bozo will come undone when the profound problems of Brexi finally land in his lap. Parliament are not going to give him the go-ahead to run roughshod over the situation. It's not over yet...

And we had the cult circus on TV here last night in the states. Well I should say one channel, State TV fox news. The original fake news. It's unbelievable why his followers don't get tired of the same old crap.

Well, to pick up on some of the content of my latest journal, I watched the television debate between the six remaining Tory candidates tonight, including, for the first time, Boris Johnston who seems to have been hiding from scrutiny for the last few days. And now I know why. He came across as a useless, dismal, bumbling amateur with absolutely nothing to offer. We're all in serious trouble if he manages to wangle the PM job. After tonight's debate though, I would imagine that his chances have been somewhat reduced. Well, I hope so... But, watch out, crazier things have happened, (look at Trump, for instance.)

Once again, the only one that remotely captured my interest was Rory Stuart who seemed to face up to the realities of the situation we're now in and offer comparatively pragmatic, cross-party solutions. You can tell the other candidates don't like him though, and didn't have any encouragement to offer him. Maybe he should defect to the Liberal party...

Sorry to bring politics into this particular forum, it migh have been better placed in the 'World Outside The Window' forum but I felt that it warranted this thread as it follows on from the subject brokered in my latest Journal.

Jeez, what a bloody circus this whole thing is, a circus full of nightmare clowns. 😝