They do say that the summer is the silly season for news, but, until today, the laughs were in short supply.
However, it is good to be able to rely on Boris Johnson to get us back to the belly laughs.
Apart from the running joke that he is the UK’s Foreign Secretary, our representative across the globe, he has added depth to his buffoonery with one of the most hypocritical statements I have heard in a long time.
For reasons that, at present, escape me, he is in Libya, meeting, greeting, pontificating.
And apart from slapping his boss in the face with the warning to local politicians not to hold an election until they are ready, what topped it all was his call for unity.
“I think the politicians need as it were to suppress their own selfish interests, compromise for the good of the country and get behind the UN plan.”
It takes a very special kind of non-awareness to make that statement. To decry sectarian and internal disputes in favour of the greater good. To value agreement over aggravation, duality over division.
When Hollywood decide to remake ‘Faceoff’, the good news is that they will only need one person to play the two opposing characters. Because Boris has been facing both ways for his entire career.
And whilst the button-pushing capabilities are not the same, the similarities between Boris and the other arch ‘both ways at the same time (or even in the same sentence)’ protagonist – Donald Trump – are striking.
We do indeed live in a post-truth, or at least a post ‘remember history’ world. And it is an indication of the lack of respect held by those in power for their constituents that they have no concerns about chopping and changing their pronouncements as it suits.
I have no problem with political leaders changing their minds. What I keep hoping for, but never get, is the human admission that they got it wrong to begin with.
That will never happen.
But at least, with the sun shining and a bank holiday looming large, at least the silly season has been represented by the arch-clown himself.
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