Boris Johnson is running in the fumes. The Black Knight of Monty Python tries to convince himself and those around him that he has suffered minor injuries to the flesh only when everyone can see that he has suffered fatal damage. So Thursday saw Convict go up to Blackpool and Fylde College – the closest he gets to going up these days is the weird day in the Northwest – where he tried to convince himself that he had some kind of future. With today’s figures, those 211 lawmakers who stood by him in Monday’s no-confidence vote will wonder why they were annoyed. They were tragic things. grotesque still. The desperation to try to talk about anything other than Partygate only revealed the poverty of the prime minister’s ambitions and achievements. Indicatively, the only specific proposals he has made – for refugees in Rwanda and changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol – include a breach of the law. Johnson began by saying that things were not as bad as they were in the 1950s, when the bulletin and life expectancy were lower. He slammed the podium on it, as if annoyed that his audience was no longer grateful. He then turned to Ukraine and rising energy costs. These were out of his control, so no one should blame him for not doing much. But at some point he would do something more. Just not now. Because now was not the time. He knew people were already struggling with the cost of living, but they just had to keep going as best they could until he thought about what to do. But if it was a consolation, it was a global problem, so people could be comforted that they were dying in company. The convict looked up to see if anyone else was still listening. Or following. Why he did not appear, as there were several times when he either lost his position or started doing ad-lib. One minute he talked about investing in the NHS and the other about how there was no money for anything. It was a government of tax cuts, he lied, even though it had imposed the highest tax burden since the 1940s. But all would be well because it would further reduce public service. With everyone broken, there would be no need to staff the Passport Office as no one would go abroad. It was almost as if Johnson was on autopilot. He was just chatting through a series of problems that had clogged his record in recent months. People should not expect higher wages because that fueled inflation, so people should just eat a little less until things return to normal. Which would soon be because of Brexit. There were countless benefits to leaving the EU. So many, he could not remember what it was. Now he has started openly trolling farmers, wondering why they did not do more to produce British food. E because all EU workers who were ready to do low-wage work have gone home. At this point, for at least 20 minutes in a speech that had revealed nothing but that the government was completely out of ideas, the convict unleashed his three grand plans to get the country back on its feet. First, it would reduce tariffs on bananas and olives. He then announced that he was going to reduce the number of staff working at train ticket offices. And finally, he was going to do a review of how the mortgage industry works, with the intention of introducing a 98% mortgage for people with housing benefits. Because nothing captured the aspirations of ordinary workers from the possibility of entering into negative equity. All that was missing was the reset of the cone telephone line. It was a measure of how distant Johnson had become – he seemed increasingly abandoned physically, as if his body had abandoned him – which he sincerely seemed to believe offered the country a way out of its financial crisis. So he went on to reinvent a housing policy introduced by David Cameron in 2015 that was dead when he arrived. Back-of-a-fag package items. Someone in policy unit No. 10 must have spent all 15 seconds thinking about this. “Chapter one, the boss is going to give a talk on Operation Save Big Dog tomorrow and we urgently need some ideas to complete the rest of the effort. Whatever will happen. They do not have to be good at all. Or even applicable. “Because they are not going to happen anyway.” The Convict’s understanding of his own reality is weak at best, but his perception of the reality of others is non-existent. He strongly believes that people with benefits will be able to save 16 16,000 – more than that and lose state support – and that they will be able to buy a house for around .000 105,000. More than that, Johnson had the impression that sales would lead to a huge rush to build more affordable social housing. Despite decades of evidence to the contrary. We will build an economy of high wages, high growth, he concluded. Johnson often contradicts himself, but rarely in the same speech. However, this was a collectible in vain. Something was not lost in the media that had accompanied him to Blackpool. “Did you really make everyone come here just for that?” was the underlying issue of each question. And Boris had no real answers. His answer as to why people should trust him was to lie about the construction of more Labor houses by the mayor of London. And he just refused when Guardian’s Jessica Elgot asked why he thought the OECD ranked the UK’s economic growth at the bottom two – Russia at the bottom – at the G20. I look forward to this exciting announcement when we reach 18th place. Stay with Boris. The UK. Going nowhere fast.
