ALEXANDER Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has appeared in some totally spontaneous photos in the Mail on Sunday in which he's shown doing press ups in order to prove that he's as "fit as a butcher's dog". Speaking as a dog owner, many butcher's dogs are, overweight, over-indulged, overfed and under exercised. We already had that opinion of our part time Prime Minister before he embarked upon his latest episode in attention seeking.
The photo op was spontaneous as in planned beforehand and agreed in advance with the Prime Minister and his staff. So not spontaneous at all then. It's the exact same kind of spontaneous you get in reality TV shows where one of the main characters just happens to accidentally bump into another character with whom she has a feud an event which was not in any way set up by the producers. Oh no. Not at all. This is where we are now, British politics as Real Housewives of Downing Street. After all, we've already got the serial adultery, leaving one's spouse, and not being clear on how many children he has. Although Made in Chelsea has already pretty much cornered the televisual market for shallow and stupid rich people behaving irresponsibly, but that won't stop Boris Johnson.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson sparks ridicule with 'press-up' on Sunday Mail front page
Boris Johnson doing press ups for a photo shoot for a Conservative newspaper is probably the nearest we'll get to our lazy part time Prime Minister ever getting off his backside. It's the sort of stunt that Vladimir Putin usually pulls, impressing his base with how manly he is. In the case of Boris Johnson it's more a question of showing us how desperate he is for attention and approval.
Here we are, in the middle of a pandemic that has left tens of thousands of people in the UK dead. We have a government which has mishandled the epidemic every step along the way and which lurches from one crisis to another, and the priority of our part time Prime Minister is to perform adolescent stunts for a tabloid newspaper. Maybe he could do a sponsored push up for each of the deaths that his government is responsible for. We could use the money to pay for a contact tracing app.
The fact that he was only too happy to participate in this childish photo op only shows, as if we didn't already know, that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is utterly unsuitable for high public office. The entire Boris schtick is an act, we'd be as well to offer the position of Prime Minister to Ant and Dec. They'd probably make a better job of it. The end of the pier show that is Boris is tiresome, unserious, unfunny, and way out of his depth. This is a man whose entire life and political career has been based on bluster, buffoonery, clowning, chancing it, publicity stunts, deceit, race-baiting, lying, laziness, incompetence and a complete lack of integrity, shame, or morality. He may be perfect for the modern Conservative party, but he's unfit as a member of a parish council, never mind as Prime Minister.
Still, at least we're now talking about this latest act of buffoonery, and not about how the Conservatives allowed him to spaff £1 million on a plane paint job that makes his official transport look like one of the cheaper and nastier budget airlines. We're not talking about how last week his party voted against weekly coronavirus tests for NHS staff and care workers. The Conservatives are happy to clap for carers and NHS workers, because that's free. Giving them a living wage or ensuring that they have access to testing, that costs money, so the Tories won't allow it.
It would not be Boris Johnson's lack of physical prowess that made him unfit for office. It really wouldn't matter if he was incapable of doing a single press up. It's his lack of a moral compass, his opportunism, his lying, his racism, his entitlement, his laziness and his selfishness that make him unfit to be a leader. What we need in a leader is a person who puts the interests of the country before their own selfish needs. We need a person who is serious and who works hard. We need a person who turns up and does the job. We need, in other words, someone like Nicola Sturgeon.
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