Sooner or later, every British NVE maverick winds up as a sort of National Treasure. But Boris Johnson is in danger of becoming a National Treasure before he has held any national legislative role whatsoever. He is that man coming too soon. Allegedly.
During several years as London Mayor, BoJo has asked us to like Tim ‘Taxi!’ Yeo, the entire banking community, Rupert Murdoch, and everyone who ever spent time at the Elm House bordello….which was, lest any detractors forget, supplied with under age male flesh by Richmond council – as a result of which, two former Tory Councillors served jail sentences.
Now Doris Jobsdone says the super-rich are a ‘put-upon minority’ like homeless people and Irish travellers.
And those working to zero-hours contracts, Waspi destitutes, the disabled on benefits, and couples in their fifties who can’t find any State retirement complex for their parents that isn’t a cesspit as well? We’re never quite sure with the Blond Turk.
However, on the basis of yesterday’s unbelievably deranged display of bubble ignorance and flying-brick tact, I’m left wondering if Mr Johnson might have been coaxed into the Brexit camp as part of a Black Ops sting initiated by a deadly combo of Europol, CIA and MI5 operatives.
When Mayor Johnson joined the Leave EU campaign, I did feel that he would have a useful, populist influence to tempt across some of the Smuggie Thickies who – up until that point – had displayed zero interest in an Independent future for England & Wales.
I’m bound to say, I have yet to see an iota of evidence to suggest I might have been correct in that assumption.
But be not of heavy heart, because The Independent (now a fully paper-free virtual medium) tells us that ‘Voters no longer tolerate wealth being flaunted or covered up – something the prime minister forgot to his cost’.
That’s an odd assertion, and suggests the Indie accepts the Johnson hypothesis – viz, poor old richies, damned if they flaunt it, and damned if they don’t. I think the point being missed here is not how much money someone’s got – what are they supposed to do if it’s legally acquired – turn it down? – but rather what grubby political leaders said previously about other people pulling this kind of stunt. Surely, hypocrisy is a far more heinous crime than being spotlessly rich?
The issue here is a potentially negative ‘Left/Right always wrong’ thing: the Right is wrong to position all the rich as objects of aspiration, if many of their number got rich quick through criminal quackery; and the Left is wrong to assume all the rich hate all the poor.
As a neutral in this ad nauseam infinitum debate, let me be positive and suggest that the best model of governance is to accept that we are born with an unequal ability to generate wealth – but wealth is about far more than money. Thus, those with a surfeit of money should be prepared to use some of it to ensure a wealth of fulfilment, health and education among their employees…without which – robots or not – they would be sunk: for robots do not consume.
That pragamatic rather than Utopian goal will never be achieved as long as every wealthy person’s main interest is in avoiding tax. But last January, long-suffering victim of MSM moral blindness Nick Wilson revealed that even the BBC has a tax haven shell company through which it channels various allowances not available to those who pay the Licence fee …..in order to watch the human origami of BBCNews reporters and analysts as they try and square circles of equally insane feminist and Islamic belief.
All of which brings us to the really quite extraordinary case of John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale OBE PC, a Member of Parliament. Mr Whittingdale’s alleged addiction to being whipped by daft prozzy bints dressed in black Nazi SS caps is far from unique. But what might well be unique (even in the annals of Cameronian HR errors) is the appointment of Whitters to the Culture & Media brief where he was likely to become “The culture secretary Rupert Murdoch dreamt of, and the Cabinet insider those who fought Leveson’s recommendations prayed they would get.”
The Leveson Report produced a cross-party agreement – signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. It was endorsed by Royal charter.
But then Rupert Murdoch decided he didn’t like it: and ever since, those bits of Leveson designed to reveal Whitting down and dale proclivities have not been signed off by the Monarch. This has nothing to do with QE2, and everything to do with David Cameron’s lack of spine when it comes to Australo-American persons whom – purely for the sake of argument of course – I shall call, um, Rupert Murdoch.
If John Whittingdale wants to be punished by ladies with athletic calves and fishnet stockings that is his inalienable right as a private individual. But if he held public office and those carnal desires as the Culture & Media Secretary, then that would leave him open to blackmail….by, er, Rupert Murdoch. Or Rebekah Brooks. Or Piers Morgan. Or any other sub-prime hack in it for the sales rather than the truth.
Mine is not an idle accusation. If you can find one scintilla of support from Whittingdale for the best bits of Leveson, do let me know.
Here’s the bottom line to tonight’s Slogpost: in this decidedly bizarre In/Out debate in relation to the EU, we find ourselves horizontally arranged among some very strange bedfellows indeed. But if we sometimes think perhaps we might be batting for the wrong side, it is a matter of only a few minutes thought to correct that view by examining the opposing XI.
I’m thinking Lord Mandelson, Jeremy Hunt, Theresa May, Andy Burnham, Tony Blair, David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg.
And said analysis is enough to supply an ancient conclusion: almost nothing in this life is black and white.
The Slog 