SPY V WORK SHY : Downing Street has been forced into an edifying admission today concerning (what it perceived at the time) to be former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s fitness for the role.
“We didn’t conceal sensitive intelligence briefings from Mister Boris, while he was in post at the FCO,” an aide to Theresa May said, “we simply placed the briefings on his desk with other boring, detailed information that required deliberation, effort and digestion.”
But sources close to Mr Johnson have hit back, labelling the confession disingenuous.
“They did put them on Boris Johnson’s desk, but they hid them in a file named ‘Work’. They knew full well there was bugger all chance of him reading them. It was clearly a carefully planned strategy to stop him blurting out half absorbed facts as inaccuracies, thus potentially endangering British subjects abroad. I guess Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe is a good case in point.”
Other methods used to prevent Mr Johnson seeing classified information appear to have been employed, alongside hiding the briefings on his desk, in plain sight.
“They also employed a series of blonde ladies in their twenties, positioned strategically about the corridors of the FCO. Some days he was so busy pursuing them along the marbled halls he never actually made it to his office.”
And if all else failed there was a further go to tactic.
“But if he somehow managed to bulldoze his way into the office they would have a secretary race in ahead of him and stick a post-it note on the work file.”
And what would it say.
“Your wife called. She says she saw the text messages and she insists you phone her back immediately to talk,” the source said, “you could guarantee that would see him about face and march right back out into the street.”