THIS week, a key point was drowned out amidst the justified outrage about Boris Johnson's obvious lies about the constant partying that went on in Downing Street during lockdown and the equally justified outrage about his attempts to bully and intimidate his way out of trouble by allegedly threatening to withhold public funds from the constituencies of rebel Tory MPs, an allegation which if true would constitute blatant corruption and a criminal offence.

Buried away was the news that Johnson's abortive plan to construct a fixed link across the North Channel between Scotland and Northern Ireland has cost the taxpayer £900,000 in the feasibility study which Johnson apparently needed in order to be told that his insane headline grabbing plan was never going to be feasible. 

This government spent almost a million pounds to feed Johnson's vanity, but for the Tories, feeding children was too expensive. What's the betting that this £900,000 will be tacked on to the GERS figures and used to tell Scotland that it's too poor to govern itself? £900,000 is a lot of money, it could have bought Johnson at least four rolls of wallpaper.

The plan for a fixed link between Scotland and Ireland was a grotesque waste of public money. But it did its job of generating a few nice headlines for Johnson in the right-wing press. At least it was eventually dropped, unlike the even more grotesque £200 million that the Conservatives want to spend on a royal yacht which Andrew can use in order to be conveniently out of mobile phone range of any American judge who might like to speak to him.

Just about anyone in Scotland and their granny could have told Johnson that his original idea for a bridge was as detached from reality as those back bench Conservative MPs who claim that a chastened Johnson has learned his lesson from the partygate scandal, and would not have needed the best part of a million quid's worth of taxpayers' money in order to do so. In fact, the only lesson that he has learned from partygate is that there is no apparent limit to the credulity of most Conservatives and that they will continue to indulge his narcissistic and entitled behaviour.

Likewise the only lesson he has learned from the Scottish-Irish bridge fiasco is that he can continue to spaff away public money on fantasy infrastructure projects which encroach upon devolved competencies safe in the knowledge that he will be cheered on by the staunch opponents of independence who relish any opportunity for the British Government to meddle with the competencies of the Scottish Parliament.

Like the narcissistic megalomaniac dictators in other corrupt regimes, Johnson is obsessed with grand civil engineering projects to which he can attach his name. He wasted millions on the aborted London Garden Bridge project, and prior to that backed a lunatic plan to construct an artificial island, the so-called Boris Island, in the Thames Estuary as the site of a new airport for London. He does so in the hope that future generations will remember him for something other than being a vain and corrupt little man, who was the worst Prime Minister the UK ever had. 

He doesn't have to spend millions in public money to avoid that fate, even if he does fall, his miserable party is still in power and is perfectly capable of giving us someone who would be even worse than him, like Gove or Rees Mogg, or heaven help us, Dominic Raab.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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