Credibility Vampire

Top marks to Hugo Rifkind for his column in today's Times and some highly insightful analysis of the Prime Minister.

Anybody can pile up the rebarbative adjectives and it's hard to miss or risk contradiction but once in a while somebody exceeds that 'shooting fish in a barrel' exercise and I dare say they feel temporarily better for it.

For a long time it was Matthew Parris who led the way with his brilliant 'incompetent scoundrel' but now Hugo is in with his analysis of how the Prime Minister is a 'credibility vampire' sending out ministers to defend the indefensible and undermining their credibility on his behalf, which sucks the credibility out of them, too. He cites Nadhim Zahawi as an example who might appear to be competent were it not for his ongoing dutiful defence of his line manager.

Hugo further explains how any of us who might try to unravel the rat's nest of Johnsonian fecklessness eventually become exhausted by the effort because no amount of reason or appeal to decency ever has any impact. The Prime Minister takes no notice and we begin to sound repetitive or even obsessive. Somehow it begins to look as if we are the weirdo. (I am paraphrasing here. I heard Hugo on Times Radio. I didn't expend £2.20 on a copy of a weekday Times.) One inevitably ends up feeling like banging one's head against the wall.

I've long got over any respect I had for Jacob Rees-Mogg's facade of punctiliousness now that he's been put into anything like a 'job'. I only ever found some peculiar accord with Victoria Coren-Mitchell when she broke with any decorum on HIGNFY and told him she found him 'strangely attractive' which outdid anything a Sex Pistol could say to Bill Grundy.

Dominic was always the evil svengali, using Johnson as the puppet to his own wicked ends but, like Dr. Frankenstein, he lost control of his monster. He might be trying to finish him off now but it's too late and he still hasn't succeeded.

So, while journalists, week after week, continue to predict 'a difficult few days ahead for no. 10', that becomes routine. That's what it's like. In such circumstances it might be difficult for any other Prime Minister but it's business as usual for this one. That is how he lives his life. He's been doing it for a long time now. The lying is a default setting. He's averse to 'the truth'. He prefers to tell the teacher that the dog ate his homework and get away with it because he always has done before.

Never a prolific poet, I'm almost maintaining my steady output of four finished poems per year but I need to count this recent doggerel to do so. It would be a shame to keep it private when I can make the slightest of contributions. I wish I didn't have to. I'd never have been tempted to put finger to keyboard on the subject of Theresa May.

Boris
after Hilaire Belloc

Boris told such Dreadful Lies,

It soon came as no surprise 

The boorish, scandalous, uncouth 

Yob had no concept of the truth 

And yet we remained agog 

That the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg 

Cared less for verisimilitude 

And in fact could be quite rude 

To those who pointed out this fault 

Which, even with a dose of salts, 

Was so plain for all to see 

And had no credibility. 

He lied to Parliament, the Queen, 

Which is a crime so obscene 

In olden days it was enough 

To have got one’s head chopped off. 

One untruth gainsaid the last 

But that was in the recent past 

And so to him now mattered less 

As he created yet more mess 

And dug himself deep into holes 

And such complex rigmaroles 

He forgot what he’d done and said 

And where his inventions had led 

And then thought he could extricate 

Himself and perhaps also placate

Those who knew that he had lied, 

Including lots on his own side, 

By issuing apologies
Though they were less sincere than his

Rococo version of events 

And defied all common sense. 

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,
Change the subject in a hurry, 

Say we have to wait and see 

And then say it’s too late and he 

Was getting on with the job 

Or some other thingamabob 

Because detail is not his thing

And he preferred to try to wing 

It as he’d always done before 

But surely there can’t be much more

And historians will soon write 

How he went down with a fight 

With all his boats and bridges burnt 

But still with no lessons learnt.