To squirm or not to squirm

Tweet

 

One should always be careful about believing the detail of what people plugging a book – or a podcast – about politics have to say. They do, after all, have a vested interest in selling something, and brash headlines are not exactly unhelpful. Guto Harri, Boris Johnson’s former Communications Chief has been at it today, claiming that Johnson squared up to the soon-to-be-king and gave him a dressing down over his description of the Rwanda policy as 'appalling' leaving Charles ‘squirming’; that Johnson thought that Sue Gray was a ‘psycho’ (takes one to know one, maybe?); and that Johnson was all set to sack Rishi Sunak as Chancellor when Sunak beat him to it by resigning, the dastardly Chancellor that he was.

There is a question over the discretion of both men in talking about what did or did not happen in what was supposed to be a private conversation with Charles but, notwithstanding the golden rule about being careful about taking the word of someone who has something to sell, it is entirely credible that Johnson would have said all these things to Harri. What is a lot less credible, though, is that Harri, as someone who knew Johnson better than most, and would have been extremely familiar with his tendency to dissimulate, exaggerate, and say different things to different people, could apparently have so readily believed that what Johnson was saying to him might bear some relationship to truth.

Johnson has denied the bit about Charles, of course, with a ‘source close to him’ claiming that he “does not recognise this account and it is inaccurate”. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, to coin a phrase. Johnson’s great hero, Churchill, once said that he knew that history was going to be kind to him because he intended to write that history. In Johnson’s case, we have two versions of history in one day, and in all probability neither of them actually reflects what happened. Still, it might all help to sell a podcast or two.

Ordering in the polish

Tweet

 

According to reports yesterday, the PM has stated that it will take a whole Panzer division to remove him from Downing Street. Calling in the German army to do a job which Tory MPs are too spineless to do themselves seems a little on the extreme side, but if needs must… It wouldn’t exactly be the first time that England has looked to Germany to replace its ruler – England didn’t end up being ruled by the Hanoverians and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas by accident.

Meanwhile, the attempt to prop up the unproppable, and defer the inevitable, continues with the announcement that Guto Harri is to return to the PM’s side to assist in digging him out of the largely self-excavated hole in which he finds himself. Given the descriptions which Harri has himself used of Johnson in recent years (to which Johnson’s would-be nemesis, Dominic Cummings, has delighted in drawing attention), no-one can argue that he’s going in blind. Indeed, many must have wondered what on earth can be going through his mind, even taking this job on at this stage (although there were reports suggesting that he’d initially taken a six-month leave of absence from the day job – hedging his bets, perhaps – before being required to resign). I can understand, however, why an experienced PR professional might see this as the turd-polishing challenge of a lifetime, and with minimal risk. If he pulls it off, he’ll become a celebrity in the PR world, able to command ever higher fees for his services. And if he doesn’t, future employers are more likely to give him credit for being willing to try than blame him for failing. It’s not as if there’s anyone in the field to whom the nature and scale of the ordure that he’s agreed to try and tackle are not obvious.

I’d guess that one of his first actions would be to take the spade away from self-appointed assistant digger-in-chief, Nadine Dorries. With Ministers like her prepared to go over the top and declare publicly that the PM tells the truth at all times in all circumstances, despite all the mere factual evidence to the contrary, the hole gets bigger daily. A six-month fact-finding trip to a location where there is no internet coverage would be even better than a spade-ectomy. What Harri might struggle with, most of all, is uncovering the full scale of the potential damage that he’s trying to manage. Cummings is hardly going to give him the whole story (he prefers the steady drip-drip to catch Johnson unawares) and Johnson himself doesn’t see anything wrong with anything he does, so has nothing to which he feels he needs to own up. The potential for new scandals, or new twists on the existing ones, to emerge is somewhere between high and astronomical. And the probability that either the spin doctor or his master will be allowed the time to build a strategy for recovery is diminishing with every new story.

As spectator sport, it’s worth following. If only Wales were indeed just a spectator…