The most insightful contribution to the Conservative leadership contest was made this week by a smoked fish. That does not reflect well on the human candidates, one of whom brandished a kipper as a prop to facilitate a rhetorical point. Boris Johnson told a hustings audience that “Brussels bureaucrats” had caused distress to a businessman by requiring that shipment of his product be accompanied with an “ice pillow”.
But the kipper told a different story. Its refrigeration was a matter of domestic rules. “The case described by Mr Johnson falls outside the scope of EU legislation,” a European commission official clarified. The prop was only there to set up a pun about “kippers” as former Ukip voters, whose repatriation to the Conservative fold is a promised electoral benefit of Mr Johnson’s candidacy. It was a theatrical flourish to tickle a receptive audience. To that end, facts were immaterial.
Unfashionable though it may be in the Tory party, telling the truth still matters. Especially so when the UK’s EU membership expires in little over three months and Mr Johnson claims, in that time, to be able to enact a deal in Brussels different from the one negotiated by Theresa May. He cannot. A new settlement is not on offer and, even if it were, an extension to the article 50 period would be required to complete it in orderly fashion. As with the smoked fish, Mr Johnson is either lying intentionally or avoiding engagement with facts. Both explanations would be consistent with his character – that word applying in the sense of his temperament but also his stage persona. » | Editorial | Friday, July 19, 2019
