Constantly bashing Boris Johnson will just hurt Britain – so let’s stop it right now
The Foreign Secretary’s circle is becoming increasingly fed up with him being the butt of the Government’s jokes
“IF they want the UK to be taken seriously, they need to back him, not mock him,” fumes one of Boris Johnson’s closest political allies.
The Foreign Secretary’s circle is becoming increasingly fed up with him being the butt of the Government’s jokes.
This week, Philip Hammond used the Autumn Statement to make fun of Boris’s failed leadership bid. While earlier this month, Theresa May suggested he would be put down once he had outlived his usefulness.
Taking the mickey out of Boris is hardly new, every Tory leader since Michael Howard has done it.
But taking the mick when Boris is Foreign Secretary is very different to doing it when he’s just an MP or Mayor of London.
RELATED STORIES
When Boris was Mayor, the Tory party could get away with treating him as the party jester — after all, the most important negotiations he had every year was with the Treasury.
But now Boris is out representing Britain on the world stage, these jibes have consequences.
When the Prime Minister and the Chancellor suggest that they regard the Foreign Secretary as a bit of a joke, they invite the rest of the world to follow suit. Why should other governments take him seriously if his own Cabinet colleagues don’t?
“It doesn’t create the right impression in Europe,” warns one friend of Boris.
I’m told that the German government has already picked up on these put-downs of him.
Boris hasn’t responded in kind to these jokes. But don’t think he doesn’t mind them. One of those who sees him regularly in Government predicts: “At some point Boris is going to have a sense of humour failure about this.”
That moment might be closer than people realise. Privately, Boris fears there is a deliberate attempt under way to make him look foolish, to stop him being taken seriously.
He is furious about reports that he has taken the wrong papers to a Cabinet committee meeting, that he is slapped down when he tries to talk in Cabinet and keeps putting his foot in it with EU diplomats.
I am told he has made clear to Downing Street how unhappy he is about this briefing against him.
Boris’s frustration is compounded by the fact he feels he is not being allowed to make the positive case for Brexit and what it means for Britain’s place in the world
Boris’s frustration is compounded by the fact he feels he is not being allowed to make the positive case for Brexit and what it means for Britain’s place in the world.
Some in Government have sympathy with Boris. But others feel he brings this ribbing on himself. “If you don’t want that, you can’t do whinge-orama and say free movement is b******s,” says one figure close to Downing Street.
Since becoming Foreign Secretary, Boris has thrown himself into the job.
He has thought seriously about the Russian threat and what Britain’s role in the world should be once we have left the EU. Next week he is making a major speech setting out his foreign policy vision.
But if he is to be listened to, his Cabinet colleagues must stop treating him as a figure of fun. As one friend puts it: “Do they want him to be the court jester, the butt of jokes? Or do they want him to be the Foreign Secretary?”
But one close Boris ally admits: “The difficulty is one of the people who does the ridiculing is at the top.”
If the Government wants Boris to bat for Britain, his team-mates can’t break his bat before he gets to the wicket.
James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator.
‘BONKERS’ BOSS PAY TARGETED
WHAT should be done about pay of chief executives? Should workers be represented on boards?
The Government will launch its Green Paper on these questions next week.
One Downing Street source tells me the PM's is keen to deal with “bonkers pay deals” for CEOs.
She feels that at a time when ordinary workers are facing one of the longest wage squeezes in history, these deals are particularly wrong and undercut support for capitalism.
But I’m told by those who have seen the document that it is “very open”.
It sets out options, rather than stating what Government policy will be.
That is, I understand, partly how it got through Cabinet committee, where there were concerns about plans for workers on boards.
But it is also revealing of the new, more deliberative type of government that Theresa May wants.
RIP UKIP?
IS there life for Ukip after Nigel Farage? On Monday, we’ll begin to find out as the party’s new leader is announced.
Their first test is to last longer in the job than Diane James’ 18 days. James has not only quit as leader, but resigned from the party too – she sits as an independent MEP now. This is just one example of how Ukip is failing to seize its post-referendum opportunity.
Fundraising-wise, it is even worse, raising less money in the past quarter than the toxic BNP, whose only remaining elected official in the whole of the UK resigned from the party this week.
Paul Nuttall, above, an MEP and former deputy leader of the party, is expected to win the leadership.
He is a comprehensive school-educated Scouser who will try to get Ukip to go after Labour in its northern heartlands.
He hopes to exploit the fact that huge numbers of Labour constituencies voted for Brexit despite their party’s pro-EU stance. He will push Ukip as the patriotic alternative to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
But will Nuttall be able to get out from Farage’s shadow?
I understand that Farage intends to remain the leader of the group to which Ukip belongs in the European Parliament, denying Nuttall the limelight there.
Combine that with Farage’s show-stopping visits to the States to see Donald Trump and his team, and you can see how hard Nuttall will find it to get noticed.
CORBYN IGNORED
WANT to know how out of the game Labour is under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell?
Well, when Philip Hammond was briefing Tory MPs after the Autumn Statement on Wednesday, he simply skipped over the points attacking Labour.
The Chancellor told colleagues that Labour was completely irrelevant and “intellectually derelict” so he wasn’t going to bother dissecting McDonnell’s response.
When your opponents can’t even be bothered to attack you, you really are in trouble.
DONALD TRUMP’S benevolent view of Russia has been causing alarm in European capitals.
But it isn’t just Trump who wants to cosy up to Vladimir Putin. The next US President’s view that Russia is entitled to be top dog in its own backyard and that the West should be working with it in Syria are, in the words of one senior British security source, “exactly the view of” the man most likely to be the next president of France, Francois Fillon.
This means that by next summer, Britain could be the only one of the three major Western military powers unequivocally opposed to the idea of Russia being allowed to dominate its near neighbours.
This has profound implications for UK policy, the need to further boost defence spending and the Brexit negotiations.
GUY VERHOFSTADT, the European Parl-iament’s point man for the Brexit talks, is a classic car enthusiast.
But the problem in getting a Brexit deal is that the EU has the engine of a lawnmower but the brakes of a Rolls-Royce.