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Alone in the House of Commons: Prime Minister Johnson
PHOTO: JESSICA TAYLOR/UK PARLIAMENT HANDOUT / EPA
Maybe it's time to defend Boris Johnson.
Now that everyone is picking on him again just because lavish parties were celebrated at his place of work and residence during the strictest British lockdown.
Because people were drinking, throwing up and fighting in the British government headquarters, while ministers in the next room were explaining to the 65 million other Britons why they can no longer visit their terminally ill grandmother.
Bad, all of that.
And, yes, illegal too.
But what can Johnson do about it?
He only discussed it again on Wednesday in the mother of all parliaments: that he was present at one or the other illegal sundowner, maybe even downed a glass of champagne.
But only for a short time!
And when all subordinates could still look halfway straight ahead.
Then he quickly left again.
Govern.
Or sleep.
And didn't notice the wheeled suitcases full of alcohol and the karaoke party a few meters away from his desk or bedside table.
how could he?
He knows he knows nothing.
Nobody told him anything
That's why he hasn't lied when, over the past six months, he has asserted that Downing Street has always 'fully complied with all guidelines' or that there was 'no party' or that there might have been a party, but he did certainly "didn't break any rules" or that he might have broken his own pandemic law, but only - if at all - "because nobody told me it was something against the rules".
It's always been like that with Johnson.
He means well with us.
and yourself.
But the others don't mean well enough with him.
That started when he was still a reporter.
If someone had told him back then that a novelist is allowed to invent quotations, but not a journalist – what would he and the world have been spared?
Also that you shouldn't necessarily lie to your party leader about an extramarital affair - especially not when practically everyone knows about it: How was he supposed to know?
The columns about "Negro children" and women who wear burqas that look like "letterbox slots": Can you imagine that that hurts people, non-whites, for example, or Muslims?
Clear bodies from the beach
Nor did anyone suggest in 2016, when Theresa May sneakily appointed him Foreign Secretary, that as Her Majesty's chief diplomat one should exercise a certain - well - diplomatic restraint.
Otherwise, Johnson would never have said in Sirte, Libya, what a beautiful city it could be if someone cleared the bodies from the beach.
And he would certainly not have opened his mouth in the case of the Iranian-born British woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in Iran in 2016 for alleged espionage.
She has always denied that she helped train journalists there – until the British Foreign Secretary divulged that she only trained a few journalists there.
Allegedly delayed Zaghari-Ratcliffe's extradition by a few years.
But it's certainly not Johnson's fault.
His words, as he said himself, were "misinterpreted."
And besides, once again no one had warned that it would have been better if he had kept quiet.
Customs border came as a complete surprise
It must be difficult to rule in a circle of stubborn subjects.
One should exercise caution.
This of course also applies to the other hot topic these days: the situation in Northern Ireland.
Hand on heart: When Johnson signed an agreement with the EU in 2019 that provided for a customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, nobody would have guessed that a customs border would suddenly be created in the Irish Sea.
He has also repeatedly drummed that into the exporters and importers: everything – as with Brexit – fear mongering!
Should anyone want to check anything or request any forms from anyone: "Only over my dead body." Can't be.
There won't be.
Is there now, well.
But only because the EU is petty enough to insist on compliance with internationally binding treaties.
cheek, stuff.
That's why he's having his people write a law that could pulverize the contract with Brussels.
That Washington, Brussels, Dublin, even many of their own people have been warning loudly for weeks that he is jeopardizing the shaky peace in Northern Ireland?
He hasn't heard of it yet.
And what if buses really go up in flames again in Belfast or Derry?
Then those who have let him run into the open knife again and again for years can finally experience something.
