All things Boris: has it really come to this?

[Hermit]

‘Donnez-moi un break’: Johnson deepens rift with France over defence deal

UK prime minister hits out after Paris reacted with fury to announcement of defence pact

Boris Johnson has reopened the rift with Paris over the Aukus defence and security deal, urging the French to “prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break”, after he and Joe Biden discussed deepening the pact.

The prime minister was speaking in Washington, where he attended a dinner on Tuesday evening with the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, after meeting the US president at the White House.

Johnson and Biden talked about extending their cooperation through the pact to cover further issues including safeguarding human rights and promoting free markets – and ruled out inviting more countries to join.

Johnson said: “What I found on Capitol Hill was that they want to populate the agenda with all sorts of other things which matter.” He cited the need for a western rival to telecom giant Huawei, which the UK government recently decided to remove from some parts of the country’s critical infrastructure because of security concerns.

“What we need is a western technology on which we can all rely,” he said.

France is not in the west?

It is, but its technology is not reliable.

[Brian Peacock]

"Safeguarding human rights and promoting free markets." Anyone see a problem with that?

[rainbow]

France is not in the west?

It is, but its technology is not reliable.

Les balivernes!

[Svartalf]

I'll give him a break, a good kick in the nuts might break one...

[Svartalf]

‘Donnez-moi un break’: Johnson deepens rift with France over defence deal

UK prime minister hits out after Paris reacted with fury to announcement of defence pact

Boris Johnson has reopened the rift with Paris over the Aukus defence and security deal, urging the French to “prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break”, after he and Joe Biden discussed deepening the pact.

The prime minister was speaking in Washington, where he attended a dinner on Tuesday evening with the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, after meeting the US president at the White House.

Johnson and Biden talked about extending their cooperation through the pact to cover further issues including safeguarding human rights and promoting free markets – and ruled out inviting more countries to join.

Johnson said: “What I found on Capitol Hill was that they want to populate the agenda with all sorts of other things which matter.” He cited the need for a western rival to telecom giant Huawei, which the UK government recently decided to remove from some parts of the country’s critical infrastructure because of security concerns.

“What we need is a western technology on which we can all rely,” he said.

France is not in the west?

It is, but its technology is not reliable.

It is, it's you furriners who don't know how to use it.

[Svartalf]

"Safeguarding human rights and promoting free markets." Anyone see a problem with that?

contradiction in terms, but nothing really athletic from that level of politico.

[Hermit]

‘Donnez-moi un break’: Johnson deepens rift with France over defence deal

UK prime minister hits out after Paris reacted with fury to announcement of defence pact

Boris Johnson has reopened the rift with Paris over the Aukus defence and security deal, urging the French to “prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break”, after he and Joe Biden discussed deepening the pact.

The prime minister was speaking in Washington, where he attended a dinner on Tuesday evening with the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, after meeting the US president at the White House.

Johnson and Biden talked about extending their cooperation through the pact to cover further issues including safeguarding human rights and promoting free markets – and ruled out inviting more countries to join.

Johnson said: “What I found on Capitol Hill was that they want to populate the agenda with all sorts of other things which matter.” He cited the need for a western rival to telecom giant Huawei, which the UK government recently decided to remove from some parts of the country’s critical infrastructure because of security concerns.

“What we need is a western technology on which we can all rely,” he said.

France is not in the west?

It is, but its technology is not reliable.

It is, it's you furriners who don't know how to use it.

My mistake, sorry. Instead of 'reliable" I should have written "unsuitable".

[Scot Dutchy]

UK asking Brazil for emergency food supplies?

Boris Johnson asked for ‘emergency’ food deal, says Bolsonaro

No 10 denies Brazilian president’s claim but some speculate food item is turkeys for Christmas

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has claimed Boris Johnson asked him for an “emergency” deal to ease shortages of an unspecified food product, amid concerns about further disruption to supermarket supplies.

A lack of drivers and food pickers, as well as carbon dioxide used to stun animals for slaughter and create dry ice to keep food fresh, has led to fears that some goods will be missing from shelves in the run-up to Christmas.

Downing Street has urged people not to panic-buy, after the announcement by BP that there may be a lack of fuel at some petrol stations and the managing director of Iceland supermarket warned food supplies could come under threat within days, not weeks.

Government insiders worry about a return to the days leading up to the first coronavirus lockdown, where shelves were left bare as people stockpiled items such as toilet roll.

[rainbow]

UK asking Brazil for emergency food supplies?

What is funny about people starving?

[Brian Peacock]

Scot believes that the entire UK is responsible for his miserable experiences as a schoolboy in the cold and claggy north, therefore we must all suffer, perpetually, in attornment for his suffering.

[Scot Dutchy]

Oh FO Brian.

[Scot Dutchy]

Jeff Bezos’s date with Boris Johnson didn’t prove all that taxing

The Amazon boss turned up late and then told the PM to get on with his job. As Jennifer Acuri points out, it’s tough in New York

“Look, you can fake it everywhere else, maybe try it in Los Angeles, but they’ll eat you alive in New York.” That’s a piece of advice Jennifer Arcuri says she once gave Boris Johnson. It doesn’t seem like he took it because, on Monday, he was in New York meeting Jeff Bezos and it didn’t seem to go very well.

We know about this Arcuri tip because on Tuesday she was talking about Johnson via video link to the London Assembly’s oversight committee. By an oversight, the committee seems to have been confusingly named. Is it a committee concerned with overseeing what the mayor of London does or with oversights that he has committed? Or does that amount to the same thing?

In this case the committee is overseeing whether the fact that Arcuri went on several mayoral trade missions with Johnson was an oversight if, as she claims/boasts/admits, they were also having sex. He has neither confirmed nor denied the sex, which obviously strongly suggests they were having it. She says that officials at City Hall knew about it because: “Everyone could see the dramatic difference in this man when I entered the room.” Or maybe he just had a gun in his pocket.

Other than causing further distress to Johnson’s ex-wife and family, it’s hard to imagine this investigation making any difference. It feels too long ago to affect the prime minister now. He’s like a dog running down the street doing shit after shit after shit – our attention is inevitably drawn to his more recent messes.

Far from anxiously watching Arcuri’s testimony, the prime minister had reached Washington by Tuesday and, having bounced back from his Amazon encounter, he was sitting mask to mask with Joe Biden in the Oval Office failing to get a trade deal. Maybe Johnson will take Arcuri’s advice and try LA next? He could pitch an animation about an artfully scruffy dog whom everyone somehow tolerates despite its chronic incontinence.


That’s why Johnson took the standard line British politicians always take when failing to rein in the private sector: calling a meeting with the offending capitalists, announcing the intention of talking tough and getting some photos taken. What’s then supposed to happen is that the private sector people come out tugging their forelocks and resolving that their particular area of industry will immediately start self-regulating without the need for any nasty legislation. “We must give them the chance to put their house in order,” says the sagely paternalistic politician, moving the issue firmly into the out-tray until after the next election and taking plaudits for having done something without really having done anything.

Sadly for the prime minister, Bezos couldn’t be arsed to play that game. Perhaps he’s too rich to care about his image. Perhaps he was tired from the traffic. He just explained to Johnson that taxation is the responsibility of governments and that the minimum amount of tax he’s legally required to pay will remain the maximum he will ever pay. And then he sent little Johnson out to the waiting media to explain that to everyone.

[Brian Peacock]

Lolz.

[Scot Dutchy]

[Scot Dutchy]

More corruption?

In plain sight, Boris Johnson is rigging the system to stay in power

Weakening the courts, limiting protest, hobbling the elections regulator. If another country did this, what would we call it?

Corruption?

If this wasn’t us, how would we describe it? If this was Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, or Poland, what language might we use? Would an announcer on the BBC World Service declare: “Amid fuel and food shortages, the government has moved to cement its grip on power. It’s taking action against the courts, shrinking their ability to hold the ruling party to account, curbing citizens’ right to protest and imposing new rules that would gag whistleblowers and sharply restrict freedom of the press. It’s also moving against election monitors while changing voting rules, which observers say will hurt beleaguered opposition groups … ”

It doesn’t sound like us. We like to tell ourselves that we live in a mature democracy, our institutions deep rooted. Political competition is brisk, never more so than at this time of year, as one party conference ends and another begins. This is not a one-party state. All it would require is Labour to get its act together – to which end it made a decent start this week – and, with a fair wind, the Conservatives would be out.

It’s a consoling thought, but not a reliable one. Almost unnoticed, perhaps because it’s done with an English rather than a Hungarian accent, our populist, nationalist prime minister is steadily setting out to weaken the institutions that define a liberal democracy: the ones that might act as checks and balances on him. And he’s moving, Orbán style, to make it ever harder for his government to lose power.

Start with the courts. After all, that’s what Boris Johnson did. It seems petty to suggest that he is out for revenge after the supreme court delivered an 11-0 humiliation over his unlawful suspension of parliament in 2019, but Johnson is acting like a man determined to settle a score.

He set his sights early on a bill to reform judicial review, the process by which courts can overturn unlawful decisions by the government and others. The language is less overt than it was, but that bill stays true to its initial aim of declaring entire categories of government action off limits to judges – and it explicitly bans a particular, 11th-hour form of judicial review often used in immigration cases. No wonder the Law Society has been sounding the alarm, warning of a threat to essential curbs on “the might of the state”.


There is a pattern here, if we’re only willing to see it. A populist government hobbling those bodies that exist to keep it in check, trampling on democratic conventions and long-held rights, all to tighten its own grip on power. We need to recognise it, even when it wears a smile and tousled hair, and speaks in the soothing cadences of Eton College.

Just one of many measures creeping towards a one party state. There is no approach to get rid of the tory second chamber; the house of lords.
The UK is so corrupt now even Hungary will appear more democratic.