Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has an incredible brain. Or so we were told. Maybe we’re not hearing this quite so much now, but for years it was a canard that we were regularly served up. Mercurial Boris, effortlessly penning columns of brilliant wit and insight was a journalist of rare acuity. Later, as he entered on his career of exemplary public service, a masterful Mayor of London. You could tell he was great, because everything started to be named after him.
Take Boris bikes. A jolly good wheeze – now Londoners could pootle around their city for just £2 for 24 hours. (Just be careful around those bendy buses – actually a Ken Livingston idea.) Except that apparently the total net Government expenditure to keep these bikes in circulation is £195 million, which works out at around £17,000 for each Boris bike – but Boris never gave much thought to such boring minutiae as cost or value for money – let the beancounters do that. Boris don’t do detail! Boris hang dangle on zipwire waving Union Jack! That make them all laugh, show them all what good sport Boris is. And how patriotic, too.
What else can I propose that cost lotsa moolah? Boris Island!! Whole island, name after Boris… Let’s build it!
Boris Island, his proposed new multi-billion pound airport in the Thames estuary, was to be sited on an artificial purpose-built island very close to the mouldering remains of the SS Richard Montgomery, a ship sunk in 1944 and with a hold still packed with high-explosive bombs considered too dangerous even to try to defuse – which, if it ever goes up, will take out half of Kent and Essex. Boris’ Bendy Buses (oh, those Beautiful, Bumptious, not to say Bodacious ‘B’s, the voiced bilabial stop that just Bellows Borisness)! Actually, and counterintuitively, because they were costly, expensive and began with ‘B’, it was Boris who phased these contraptions out. But – what else can Boris do that can be named after Boris? Preferably something beginning with ‘B’.
Ah! The Boris Bridge (which one?) There have been several. There was the Garden Bridge, yet another Boris vanity project which sucked away £50m of taxpayers’ cash just in surveys and feasibility studies alone, before Boris’ successor Sadiq Khan pulled the plug on it – the spoilsport. “Of course we want a brand new bridge in Central London covered in planters and hanging baskets,” cried thousands of Londoners from Tower Hamlets to Elephant and Castle. “Not schools! Not boring old hospitals! Not more police or youth groups to combat the scourge of knife crime! A gleaming new bridge, overflowing with petunias and bizzie lizzies for Alan Titchmarsh to come and wax lyrical over. Sadiq Khan, you’re such a killjoy!”
Cheated of his Garden Bridge, dauntless Boris proposed another one – bigger! Better! More Borissy! Bridge across English Channel to France! Then someone pointed out that there was already a tunnel underneath it. Oh, Boo, sucks! Foiled again!
So… What does Britain really need? How about a bridge!? Where to this time? A bridge connecting Scotland to Northern Ireland! No tunnel there, Mr Killjoy surveyor! You can take your Cost Benefit Analysis and stick it wherever such things are meant to be stuck – it sounds dreadfully boring, anyway.
I may have missed out a few, but those are the only bridges I can recall Boris proposing – but there’s probably six or seven others I’ve forgotten about. Every time he’s stuck for something to do, or wants to distract attention from the fact that he’s hopelessly out of his depth first as Foreign Secretary, then, God help us, as Prime Minister, he suggests another bridge. Maybe build bridge to America? That will help our trade deal with Donald! Assuming he gets re-elected, which I’m sure he will.
All these bridges and islands have rather led me away from my original point, which was that Boris has an incredible brain. He must be brainy – he speaks Latin! Just the thing you want in a twenty-first century leader – especially in the middle of complex trade negotiations or a pandemic! Misere discedere volo enim virum. Which means ‘I wish this miserable virus would go away’. Well, we all wish that, Boris! But it’s good to know how one would say it in Latin.
Oh, and he’s such a laugh! You need someone with a sense of humour – especially at a time like this, when everyone’s feeling glum. “We’re going to squash the sombrero,” quipped Boris, brightening up tedious pointy-head Chris Whitty’s assertion that Britain needed to “flatten the curve” (of covid deaths) with good old British humour. Except that the sombrero refused to stay squashed. “Hasta la vista, muchachos!” sneered covid, its sombrero temporarily but ineffectually squashed. But like the Terminator, he’d be back… Anyway, I thought coronavirus was from China? Well corona is a Mexican beer, isn’t it? So it sort of works. Details, details – bother ‘em.
Of course, this pandemic is the biggest challenge any Government anywhere, or any leader, has faced since the war. But surely it’s just the thing a really brainy person would rise to? Someone with great people skills, unquestionable integrity and unrivalled problem-solving intelligence? Come on, Boris! No more oven-ready deals! Let’s see you use that famous brain of yours for the good of all of us!
O tempora, o mores.
NEXT TIME: We keep hearing how incredibly brainy Michael Gove is. So why doesn’t he […]