Yes Boris is a buffoon but........

[Anotheronebitesthecheese]

NC as I know I will get flamed and also because of opinions around me personally and the vitriol I know I will receive from my point of view. I wanted to know if there are others out there.

So....... First of all, I despise all the shit that has happened 're partygate / watching porn / groping and sexual misconduct massively. I think the Tories in general have been scrum of the earth, thinking they can get away with vile behaviour and thinking they are untouchable.

What I do think (which I know On mn is blasphemy) is that Boris is a great PM that has balls. He obviously lacks in other areas like keeping grown elected men and women in his party under control and not behave like horny teenagers on their first holiday! They are the ones I worry about, he may have been a soft touch boss but surely the party could see that and his strengths were elsewhere? The fact he didn't crumble when the odds were against him. The party are showing their true colours now and I hate the Tories but respect Boris more. go hate me

Boris is a great PM that has balls

This was presumably a typo for "Boris is a PM that has greatly ballesed up absolutely fucking everything"?

BTW, I voted Conservative for my entire life, until Boris and Brexshit.

This article reveals exactly how much of the buffoon persona is carefully-crafted play-acting. He’s an extremely shrewd operator.

Btw, if he didn't agree with lockdown, why inflict it on everyone else? I ignored the rules completely, so have no objection to his parties (what astounds me is that so many people were willing to be herded into doing as they were told). But I do object to him having killed off so many small businesses by coming up with this bone-headed policy.

I think he didn’t step up to the job. We gave him a chance and he wasn’t able to get it together quick enough.

He is an effective communicator. People don’t read the controversial Telegraph articles and think about his actual points. Tony Blair’s foreign policy. (He was a journalist giving an opinion) Freedom of religious expression. He was actually arguing we should never ban religious expression like some other countries do.

I think it was a too much to start a family just as he became PM. And still within the pandemic have a second. I think that was stupid. (I know this is a cruel idea that you delay a family for work reasons but really that’s life for most people)

I think he did help Ukraine from before the war was in our news. This is significant. You can’t just assume that all PM’s would have been proactive.

I think it’s a shame the media and those briefing against him kept on. It wasted time and energy. It is just too obvious which people are doing it. I don’t trust them either.

Personally I think aspects of the Pandemic effort were cruel. No government should ever interfere with the dying and grieving families. The rules were wrong. That is what I feel strongly about. Not cake in a Tupperware. It’s loosing time with family. I will never do that again.

I don’t disagree with your wider points in slightest @Hrpuffnstuff1 but I haven’t seen any evidence that this run of Tory cabinets have discouraged population habits at all. If anything they’ve propped it up (eat out to help out, suspending capital gains, supporting expansion of airports primarily driven by private commercial travel etc.) and encouraged it because the way we spend is a fundamental part of our economy. It’s always been that way, even the romans said we were a nation of shopkeepers!

@HaveringWavering thanks for that article. The most time I’ve given Jeremy Vine in years but good insight into the made up “comic” persona of B Johnson.

apparently BBC / Adam Fleming has a good programme coming up about the "creation of Boris the persona". Talks about BJ being bullied & misfit as a youth, until he leant he could charm people with the buffoon act.

Good to know that Brexit is done & delivered. Let the people in Norn know.

I’m a Lockdown Skeptic so I can be glad so-called Libertarians were in power when pandemic hit. That reduced Lockdown harms. … except that they are high-tax pirogue-Parliament ditch-human-rights ignore-sex-pests sorts of Libertarians. I am amused that the “Party of Low Tax” is so pleased with them.

I ❤️ Keir. Bring on the boring !!

Boris Johnson is a man who is entirely focussed on what he believes is good for Boris Johnson, and who believed his own hype sufficiently to imagine that he might actually be Prime Minister material.

What becoming Prime Minister exposed is what many people who knew him had warned about, he was utterly self interested, lacked morals, lacked any real work ethic and didn’t have any genuine vision for the country beyond seeing himself at the head of it.

As someone temperamentally on the more liberal wing of the Conservative Party he threw his lot in with the hard core Brexiteers because he sniffed an opportunity for power. Far from “getting Brexit done” he’s just left the country submerged in endless red tape, with businesses watching in disbelief as their ability to export goods and services dwindles away and the country lags economically behind Europe. Northern Ireland is a complete mess because he couldn’t just will it into being solved.

Covid then showed how unsuited he was to leading through a pandemic, every press conference had him looking deeply uncomfortable, as he just wanted to crack a joke and forget about it all. Far too much detail and science involved for his liking, better by far to host parties and pretend it wasnt happening.

As a final insult he clung to power even as he watched the whole mechanism for running the country fall apart around him, with resignation after resignation. The entire point of a Prime Minister in our country is that they are chosen by their Party as the first among equals. And yet Johnson wanted to represent himself as a President, he wanted us all to believe that the opinion of his Party didn’t actually matter as he was chosen by the people.

So convinced was he of his right to rule us he has left the country rudderless and with a crew that has now abandoned ship.

Who is actually making decisions? Who is effecting policy? Is there any policy any more? We’re entering an incredibly worrying period and Johnson has ensured that we are now in the worst possible shape to deal with the difficulties ahead. He is a disgrace, and will hopefully be acknowledged as our worst Prime Minister (although I’m sure we can expect many books from him explaining why he is actually a Great Man who was tragically betrayed).

Still, he made some good jokes on Have I Got News For You. It was quite funny when he dangled from that zip line. And there was that thing about wiff waff that sounded quite clever at the time so…you know…it was well worth electing him.

This.

I'm old enough to have lived through the Thatcher years. I never thought I'd hate a PM more than I hated Thatcher, but on this occasion I can.

Thatcher may have had different opinions to a lot of the electorate but she didn't lie like BoJo does. I hate him with a passion. Wanker.

Exactly. The audacity of trying to say that this man has a neurodiverse condition when it’s perfectly obvious that he’s just a bad person to the core. He’s been married 2 minutes and is now cheating again on his new wife.

There's a difference between short-term covid nudges and long-term sustainable changes to habits, eg fuel. We cannot expect to live in a maritime climate and have our homes heated to Caribbean levels. It's not sustainable as we switch to more efficient methods.
Everyone knows about the net neutral carbon goals agreed by the nations, this switchover is happening right now.
Food, as a nation 75% are at unhealthy weight levels, moaning that a bag of crisps has gone up or a packet of biscuits is not what government intervention is for. The government is not designed to micro-manage choices.

I cant see Rishi, getting BJ's on the couch. But we know he isn't for handouts or micro-managing people.

People like him are entitled and pompous. They see themselves as above others. They think that other people with genuinely good intentions are inferior. They have no empathy. That’s who Johnson is.

I’m very pissed off with the idiotic people who voted him in and who voted for Brexit. Now I’m having to struggle because of you?

Apart from the fact that the country is in a right state, far worse than when he arrived, even taking our covid, he literally cannot be trusted! He says one thing, does exactly what he chooses then lies when things surface til he's found out then just changes the rules or sticks his fingers in his ears and Carries on with more lies

So he delivered Brexit and dealt with Covid - but both extremely badly with disastrous results for the country whilst enriching hinself and his mates. I fail to see how that makes him a good PM. I think he's the worst we've ever had.

@Nesbo
Excellent post. He hasn't got Brexit delivered effectively. OK during the pandemic he got the furlough scheme and the vaccination programme rolled out, but everything else? Not enough PPE, refusing to cancel Cheltenham, the whole covid+ patients being discharged to care homes, refusing to recognise the value of NHS front line staff by giving them pay rises in line with inflation and on top of it breaking his own rules and lying about it!

I'm so embarrassed to be British with That Thing as PM in much the same way many Americans were embarrassed to have Trump as president.

Ps I think the nurses in St Thomas hospital should have unplugged his O2 supply and/or smothered him with a pillow. They probably wish they had too once it became clear that the hard work they did in ICU keeping him alive was not met with any kind of appreciation of the hard work of the NHS and how covid showed only to well how it lacks resources.

No its not rocket science but neither was not having parties during a pandemic

the response to Ukraine is the one thing he has done ‘right’ but as you say that should have been a given

agree completely with your second paragraph

Happy to be a woke leftie if it means understanding that Johnson is without a doubt the worst PM this country has ever had. Anybody still excusing him and, worse, admiring him is a reason we're in this bloody mess.

@Hrpuffnstuff1 You are out of touch.

People are not moaning about the price of crisps but that heating their homes has doubled as has travelling to work, add in food inflation and people are having or will soon have to make harsh choices.

It is the well off who are moaning about discretionary spending, these people are not struggling.

However, i do think that many people have not yet grasped the reality of their economic situation yet.

As for net zero? unless there is genuine help for change, it wont happen, drafty poorly insulated new builds, no air source heat pumps, nothing for EV transition and in 7 years time, all petrol and diesel car sales banned..... so that will see a huge price increase in 2nd hand fossil fuel cars and people unable to buy a EV car.
The 2030 deadline will have to be moved..... people and our economy cannot afford it.

Its a load of lazy bollocks anyway

im not a woke leftie and my dad who has voted conservative all his life and always will, voted for brexit, loves maggie and loathes labour with every fibre of his being thinks johnson has turned out to be a shite pm….and he thought johnson was fabulous and even thinks Mogg talks sense!

(to be fair he thinks both men are very clever and for some reason that blinds him to all sense…up until now)

Jesus, keep drinking the Kool Aid!! You've really been sucked into the Tory narrative hook, line and sinker haven't you. Because this is the dumbest comment I've ever read on here - a war in Ukraine is no reason to suspend critical assessment of a government's actions. Should we all stop everything because Boris is leading a war? Don't be so ridiculous. He's made some phone calls, that's about it - flogging his relationship with Zelensky for all its worth to try and distract from his epic shortcomings and criminality. His CRIMINALITY. And idiots like you actually fall for it.

@canyoutoleratethis well said. Can you imagine the tory future if it had been a Labour leader or government giving any time and money to Ukraine? Or a Labour government keeping the country in furlough? Given the right’s rhetoric about benefit claimants. Etc etc

@OhMerde I'm well aware he doesn't give a shit about women, as I said in my original post.

I don’t understand the plaudits Johnson is getting for Ukraine. He’s visited the country which I suppose is good. Apart from that his government has overseen a poorly managed refugee relocation scheme and delayed sanctions on Russian individuals until they were pressured into it, seemingly because they are so mired in Russian corruption they were alarmed by having to take action 🤷🏻‍♀️ And… that’s all I can really think of.

Ha ha I agree, I’m no Jeremy Vine fan either but he did well there.