I’ve blogged about Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson before: https://bernardjporter.com/2017/11/12/boris/. It really beggars belief to think that he could be regarded as a suitable candidate for Leader of the Conservative Party, let alone a future – perhaps the next – Prime Minister. He was the worst Foreign Secretary we have ever had, managing to insult almost every foreigner who came into his view, except Donald Trump, and to increase the prison sentence on a poor woman he was supposed to be interceding on behalf of. He’s shallow, and exceedingly foolish. His recent comparison of Moslem women in burkhas with pillar boxes has given offence: though I have to say I thought this was one of his better jokes, and religions ought to be able to put up with insults. – Yet the Tories still love him, and calculate that his teddy-bear looks, fun antics and odd juvenile upper-class-Etonian language will endear him to the plebs. If so, that doesn’t seem to say much for the plebs. (Too much ‘reality’ TV?)

I don’t reckon any historian could be on his side. This old review of his biography of Churchill – by the most respected current historian of the Second World War years – shows why: https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2014/11/one-man-who-made-history-another-who-seems-just-make-it-boris-churchill. Of course Johnson is not up for Evans’s job as the next Regius Professor of History at Cambridge. The qualities required for both positions are different. But ‘making up’ things is not a qualification for high political office either. Or didn’t use to be….

I’m still sweltering under a Scandinavian sun. (Hence no proper blogs – only reposts.) Is this the tipping point of global warming? If so I imagine Boris will deny it, if he thinks that can get him into his fellow-liar Donald’s good books.