Smirks, smugness and self-love will not deter predominantly rightwing, old, white and male Tory voters
Kettle possibly shares three of the four undesirable characteristics of the Tory voters too, of course. The piece starts with a prediction that shows the problems of such a partisan state:
He will sack Sir Kim Darroch as UK ambassador to the United States as soon as he gets his feet under the table and he will cosy up to Donald Trump by making a political appointment to succeed the man Trump called “wacky”.
Actually, Darroch resigned yesterday. Commentators have tried hard to blame Johnson's 'lack of support' for him in the debate -- actually he said if he made PM he alone would decide Darroch's fate (ie not Trump nor the press). Darroch was reported as saying he felt undermined by Johnson -- not by Trump, not by the colleague who leaked his confidential memo, but by Johnson! Whether he actually said anything of the kind is debatable of course. All ambassadorial appointments are political, of course, and it was Blair's appointee, I recall, who said his main task was to get as far as possible up the ass of the White House.
Kettle tries to recover and then embroider a bit in this current article
Darroch was brought down by three people. The first was the leaker of successive critical memos from the Washington embassy, who gave them to one of Britain’s most effective pro-Brexit journalists [ah-- dark artery]. The second was President Trump, who followed up on the leaks with a fusillade of personal insults and punitive actions of his own which brought Darroch to the brink. And the third was Boris Johnson, who knowingly refused to express confidence in Darroch during Tuesday’s ITV leadership hustings with Jeremy Hunt. It was Johnson’s action that led directly to Darroch’s inevitable resignation today.
The most recent event must be the cause? Or Johnson just must be blamed the most?This is the Grudian's 'evidence':
The Guardian understands that he [Darroch] concluded he could not go on after he watched Tuesday’s Conservative leadership TV debate...A broad political consensus [all anti-Johnson Tories] has emerged that Johnson’s refusal to back Darroch had made the diplomat’s position untenable....Sir Alan Duncan, a Foreign Office minister, attacked Johnson’s role in the affair....Conservative MP Sir Patrick McLoughlin agreed...And the former Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said: “Anyone, I think, would have seen last night’s events and seen a potential prime minister letting someone go very publicly.”
Kettle extends his case:
Johnson’s ITV debate exposed once again a politician who can rival Trump for self-centred and ruthless opportunism. Tuesday reminded us that, in Johnson’s world, other people are always expendable. Ask the former London police chief Ian Blair, sacked by Johnson in one of the most disgraceful acts of his mayoralty. Ask Iran’s prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, innocent victim of Johnson’s lazy mind and incontinent tongue.
Incidentally, the link reminds us that
Blair has faced pressure to step down over a number of issues, most notably the botched anti-terrorism operation in July 2005 which saw a Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead by police who mistook him for a potential suicide bomber.
Blair's virtue is restored simply because Johnson sacked him?
Kettle looks into his crystal ball again, and sees doom, doom:
Britain risks becoming the vassal of a capricious unilateralist state. Johnson or his successor would be Britain’s Carrie Lam to Washington’s Xi Jinping. This is a new world. There are no precedents. Britain’s postwar belief that it is a unique bridge between Europe and the US [the plot of the classic James Bond movie, usually ridiculed by the Gaurdianistas] is more rickety now than ever. The Brexiters are set on destroying one end of the bridge. Trump is equally bent on blowing up the other.
Other Kettle predictions, curiously mixed together in the earlier piece are:
He [Johnson] will not override the Democratic Unionist party on LGBT rights in Northern Ireland. The HS2 high-speed rail plan is now as good as dead. And Johnson will kill the third runway at Heathrow and, in all likelihood, revive his plan to move London’s airport to an eye-watering and uncosted site in the Thames estuary which Britain’s sycophantic press will undoubtedly christen Boris Island.
So HS2 is a liberal cause now, and so is the third runway? Both are akin to overriding LGBT rights? Boris Island has not been comprehensively rejected after all?
The ways in which stories get legs, moral panics deepen and quotes and actions are interpreted as spectral evidence is well illustrated in another Graun piece on the Darroch affair:
Kim Darroch: effectively sacked by Johnson on the orders of Trump
The heading on the website leading to the article even misses out the word 'effectively'
Whatever sanctimonious expressions of regret Johnson mouths and however much he blames the leaker, the Foreign Office knows he effectively sacked Darroch, believing he was carrying out the orders of Donald Trump.
Of course there might have been other factors, but let us not be distracted by them:
According to McDonald, Darroch felt that as long as he stayed in Washington he and his family would be a target....Darroch could sense that a wounded Trump meant to carry out the threat to ostracise him. A diplomat is by profession the ultimate networker and cannot continue if the lines of communication are cut....These were all cogent reasons to resign. Johnson’s decision not to defend him was a deliberate act of sabotage...Johnson chose to betray him...The last three days have shown a man who when asked to jump only answers: “How high?” It is not surprising that the Trump administration is so optimistic that Johnson will follow Trump’s thinking on issues such as Iran, Huwaei and Israel....he will have revealed himself to be shallow and willing to take advantage of an illegal leak to oust a civil servant who had dedicated himself to public life. Yes, ultimately the leaker is to blame, and Trump’s thin skin, but evasion of personal responsibility is already becoming the defining negative feature of Johnson’s candidacy.
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