If you think this is all that’s wrong with Boris Johnson, prepare to be educated!

https://twitter.com/LabourMedia4S/status/929422539327188995

Oh, and before we get down to business, let’s consider Mr Johnson’s regard for our illustrious war veterans and our honoured dead:

That’s right – he doesn’t have any.

Mr Johnson does have at least one supporter though – Michael Gove, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, defended him to the hilt in an interview with Andrew Marr today (November 12):

We do know what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran. She was on holiday, celebrating the Persian New Year with family members who live there.

Quite right – but worse than that is the following:

And there isn’t. It turns out Mr Gove may have an ulterior motive for supporting Boris Johnson – they have been trying to strongarm Theresa May into following their personal blueprint for Brexit.

Here‘s The Guardian:

A secret letter from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove giving Theresa May apparent instructions on how to run Brexit has emerged.

Transition arrangements for Britain’s exit from the European Union must end on 30 June 2021, the cabinet ministers demanded, according to the Mail on Sunday.

They also urged the prime minister to ensure members of her top team fall behind their Brexit plans by “clarifying their minds” and called for them to “internalise the logic”, the newspaper said.

The leaked letter appears to make a thinly veiled attack on the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who backed remain and wants a softer Brexit, for lacking the “sufficient energy” in preparing to the UK’s future outside the bloc.

A senior government source told the newspaper the foreign secretary and environment secretary had conducted a “soft coup” and described May as “their Downing Street hostage”.

“Internalise the logic”? What does that even mean, other than trouble?

There’s more.

The man who is still – unaccountably – foreign secretary recently attended a dinner to celebrate Anglo-Spanish relations, only to display his own ignorance yet again.

He told a room full of Spaniards who hate bullfighting that he supported the blood sport, and efforts to ban it were “political correctness gone mad”.

According to the Mirror: “One Spanish guest told a British MP: ‘He’s a clown. He’s not fit to represent your country.’”

Worse: “Boris Johnson is facing questions about the government’s links to key individuals named by the FBI in its Trump-Russia investigation, following the emergence of a photo of him with Joseph Mifsud, the ‘London professor’ with high-level Kremlin contacts.

“The foreign secretary is facing accusations of a potential security breach following the emergence of the photo of him with Mifsud, whose identity emerged as part of investigations into alleged links between Donald Trump’s election campaign and Russia.

“This development comes less than a week after Johnson denied meeting the professor, and at a time when concern is growing about possible Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, in which the foreign secretary played a crucial role.”

Let’s recap. Boris Johnson:

• has seriously compromised the UK’s good name abroad on more than one occasion.
• has conspired with Michael Gove to influence the government’s handling of Brexit.
• has apparently been involved in possible Russian interference in Brexit.

And now Jeremy Corbyn has demanded Mr Johnson’s removal, weighing in with a series of criticisms dating back across the failing foreign secretary’s 16 months in the role. He writes, in The Guardian:

Theresa May should never have appointed someone as Britain’s top diplomat who had accused Barack Obama of being anti-British because he’s “part-Kenyan”, and notoriously wrote about “flag-waving piccaninnies”.

Now, after 16 months of the foreign secretary damaging Britain’s standing in the world, she should sack him.

With shocking callousness, Boris Johnson caused outrage last month by declaring that the Libyan city of Sirte could become “the next Dubai” once they “clear the dead bodies away”.

In his first conference speech as foreign secretary, Johnson referred to Africa, a continent of more than 50 states as “that country”. He claimed that life expectancy in Africa “has risen astonishingly” as it “has entered the global economic system”. Sadly, life expectancy has not risen astonishingly across the continent in the last 30 years and has fallen in several countries.

He thought a Sikh gurdwara the appropriate place to discuss Indian whisky tariffs. Johnson was forced to apologise when it was pointed out that alcohol is prohibited in Sikhism.

On an official trip to Myanmar, Johnson was captured on film embarrassing his hosts by reciting a colonial era poem in a sacred Buddhist site. Britain’s ambassador Andrew Patrick was forced to intervene to tell him it was inappropriate. Once again, Johnson showed his nostalgia for a brutal imperial past.

And now we have the heartbreaking case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose future liberty is under threat because of Johnson’s serial bungling. The foreign secretary should have the decency to say clearly and unequivocally that he was wrong and do everything possible to make sure she isn’t punished for his cavalier mistake.

With growing tensions on the Korean peninsula, we need serious diplomacy and nuclear armed states to re-engage with the process of meaningful multilateral disarmament. Johnson has failed to provide it, ducking our international obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

We’ve put up with him embarrassing and undermining our country through his incompetence and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It’s time for Boris Johnson to go.

Yes, it’s time for Boris Johnson to go – but he won’t go willingly, and Theresa May needs to be incentivised (as her government might describe it) to sack him.

If you want to help encourage her to make the right choice, there’s a petition calling for his removal here.

Please sign – and share with like-minded friends. I have.

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