By Hannah Jane Parkinson/ The Guardian
Well, here we are then. Someone who could easily be rejected as a Guess Who character for looking too ridiculous is now to lead the country. A man whose DNA profile is the exact same as a Bernard Manning joke. A man who mentioned the 20 hustings he had taken part in, approximately 30 seconds after Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis talked of the 16 hustings held.
With 8,000 members of the Johnson family watching on – and Jeremy Hunt, looking for all the world like a sub who’s never gonna get off the bench and knows it – Boris Johnson was announced as the new leader of the Conservative party, and, in short order, the new prime minister.
Elected by a staggering 0.2% of the nation, we can’t say it isn’t the will of the people.
It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it, when the new leader of the country opens his inaugural speech with: “There may be people here who wonder quite what they have done!” – having to address the fact that many people in the room are coming to terms with the fact they’ve got shit on their shoe.
“Do you look daunted?!” he boomed, “You don’t look remotely daunted to me!” Which was met with a Spectoresque wall of silence, a number of faces as white as Elizabeth I’s, and a solitary cry of: “No!”. Probably from Matt Hancock, who has the sucking-up power of a Dyson, but not one of those ones with balls.
Johnson’s speech wasn’t so much circuitous as re-routed entirely around the North Circular. In the most excruciating moment, he mentioned that “Deliver, Unite, Defeat” was not the greatest campaign slogan he might have chosen, because it spelled out “DUD”.
You just know that he came up with that campaign slogan purely so that he could make this quip, which wasn’t even good. He then added an extra letter, E, for “energise”, saying: “DUDE, we are going to energise this country!”
I have never, ever wanted to DIE more. How about a different brand, Boris? I’m thinking more: “Dithering, Idiot, Clown, Klutz.” You see, Johnson can’t even negotiate with his own hands to clap properly, let alone with an entire European bloc:
Then there’s this, in which he looks like he’s stumbled, wasted, off a party catamaran moored off Magaluf, drinking WKD from a hat with straws:
And this, being caught on tiptoes, like a child who adds a fraction to their age when asked. An unbelievably humiliating way to start your tenure, aside from just being Boris Johnson in the first place:
The only good thing to come out of this announcement event was Rachel Johnson and Amber Rudd’s unveiling as a couple. Or at least I assume that’s what this is:
I don’t really know what to say myself. I don’t understand how a man can lie his way about bananas and condoms to high office. I don’t understand how a man whose entire prep for anything seems to consist of drawing a cock and balls – but in Latin! – on a sheet of paper, ends up in high office.
I don’t understand how a man can be recorded offering to facilitate the assault of a journalist and reach high office. I don’t understand how a man can be fired twice for cavalierly making stuff up and reach high office. I don’t understand how a man whose entire personality is a job-lot sold off from a closing down joke shop can reach high office. A racist, an inveterate liar, a man who makes Machiavelli look misunderstood and Pinocchio button-nosed.
It’s 33C outside in London. You can’t tell whether people are crying or sweating. We can’t do anything until we get a say – which, this time, we did not. So we beat on, against the sun, borne back ceaselessly into hell.
- Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnist
