TORY BRITAIN TODAY : 10 DOWNING STREET is busting a gut to put lipstick on the ever present pig today after Boris Johnson napped through events in Afghanistan, and woke up to find his Foreign Secretary on holiday and his administration on fire.
The issues appear to have started when Donald Trump decided to deal with the Taliban and the British Prime Minister (apparently in a coma at the time) went along with it. This mistake was underlined by a parallel one of assuming the then US President would be able to gaslight his way into a second term. Alas, it was not to be, although no one thought to wake up Johnson to tell him it maybe time to reconsider.
Now, unfortunately for Johnson’s true fans, he finds his international reputation taking a battering just when no one thought it could get any worse. But it is worse. The Afghanistan failure risks foremost the lives of people there who trusted Britain. It also punctures the delusional mythology of Tory MPs about their own country, which they’ve done so much to ruin lately, but no one has thought to mention it.
“Johnson was too busy with Brexit anyway to worry about Trump’s deal with the Taliban,” a 10 Downing Street insider tells LCD Views. “He was having far too much fun hammering the bubbles and thinking up new ways to have Lord Frost wind up the EU. Then there was wallpaper to choose. A prop dog to hire. Too many plates in the air at one time.”
But all is not lost as the crack team the PM surrounds himself with can be guaranteed to find away to spin the mess Raab made away.
“We’re going with it’s Johnson’s defining Churchillian moment,” the source says. “Draw on that powerful emotional network in the minds of voters linked to WW2. It’s got us out of every problem before now. Why wouldn’t it work? Just so long as no one thinks to say it is Johnson’s Churchillian moment, but it’s Gallipoli.”