In recent days, the No 10 line has shifted from Boris Johnson knowing nothing about anything to knowing nothing about specific allegations to knowing nothing about any specific serious allegations – a bit of casual digging wasn’t such a bad thing: after all and The Convict had a form about it – so he might know something, but he would contact us when he found out what it was he supposedly knew. The defense of Thérèse Coffey. Lying has become so second nature in Downing Street that no one ever thinks to admit the truth. But you’d be hard-pressed to know that Rwanda’s Panda crisis has once again been called into question since his statement in the Commons during last week’s travels to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Kigali, the G7 in Bavaria and at the NATO summit in Madrid. Everyone was on their best behavior without a word out of place. Not even from the Scottish Nats. It was borderline surreal. As if there was a common agreement that what happened at the Carlton Club stayed at the Carlton Club. The only sign that something was wrong was in the empty spaces in the government seats. These days, the best way to judge Johnson’s popularity is by absences. And on this show, chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris has his work cut out for him. Normally on such occasions the backs are packed to welcome the heroic return of their glorious leader from mingling with the great, the good and the not so good. On Monday afternoon, only about 50 or 60 MPs bothered to make the effort to show their faces. And some of them had only made it to the gawp. Johnson opened by listing his apparent successes. NATO was a triumph, with Finland and Sweden keen to join. The G7 was a triumph, with countries pledging more aid to Ukraine. Chogm was not so much a triumph, though no one should argue as much as it would have been worse than for the brilliance of the Condemned. He hesitated to make the connection between these summits, but wished he had been the only leader to attend all three. “Welcome back,” Keir Starmer joked. Although he wasn’t sure if “absence makes the heart grow fonder” was a sound strategy for party management. But that was as close as the Labor leader came to referring to Johnson’s bad calls for Pincher. A strange miss. If the Convict gets the easy calls wrong – ‘Let me think. Is it a good or bad idea to give a government job to a man with an alcohol problem who resigned from a ministerial post over sexual harassment?’ – then what other miscalculations can he make. But Starmer blew it all away, grudgingly praising Johnson’s performance at the G7 and NATO. Not nearly as embarrassing as it could have been. Ian Blackford followed a similar line. Then he has to deal with a sex scandal in his own party. So the SNP leader was limited to pointing out the hypocrisy of Johnson calling for global adherence to international law when he was busy breaking it by scrapping the Northern Ireland protocol. The Convict affected the rage. No world leader had ever mentioned the protocol to him. I guess he has selective hearing. And that was exactly the sum of the criticism that followed Johnson, apart from Tory rebel Mark Harper who noted that the prime minister did not seem as ready to commit to spending 2.5% of GDP on defense as he had done on NATO. Nor had he said how he proposed to find the extra £10bn a year. The Rwandan Panda gave him a dirty look and muttered something about growing the economy. Which would definitely be news. Although soon. Otherwise, we were faced with a series of unbranded conservative supporters doing their best to win favor with extravagant flattery. Job Gisa. Even if it only lasts a few months. It is the only chance most of these dropouts have of ever becoming a junior minister. First up was Alec Shelbrooke. Could he make some vaguely useful observations about something not very important? Of course he could. It is a measure of Johnson’s current desperation that he took Selbrooke seriously. Normally he would have ignored him, but now he was lying about the setback being the toast of all of NATO. As if. Crispin Blunt and James Gray also faced unusual respect for their usual boring interventions. Like Duncan Baker who told about how he had taken in two refugees at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Feels like a long time ago, she said plaintively. Imagine how long it feels for the refugees to be stuck with someone as boring as Baker. Haven’t the Ukrainians suffered enough? All the while, Convict’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Joy Morrissey, nodded appreciatively at his every statement. It’s the kind of faith that money can buy. Either that, or she’s even dumber than any of us thought.
