Where do you start when trying to write a blog about a Prime Minister who hides in a fridge? The only other examples of such behaviour that spring to mind are these;
Indiana Jones in order to survive a nuclear detonation
Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuul!!!!!!
Film buffs will know that the former was one of the least ridiculous set-pieces of Steven Spielberg’s ill-advised fourth instalment of the Indy franchise - Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, while the latter as every 80s child knows refers to the Gatekeeper of Gozer who lurks between Sigourney Weaver’s eggs, milk and peanut butter while waiting patiently for her Dana Barrett character to come home so she/he/it can possess her spirit. Forgive the indecision on pronouns there. I’m not woke enough to be certain of the pronouns of the Demigod minion of Gozer,
Where were we? Oh yes, Johnson. Your Prime Minister. He has been notoriously difficult to interrogate during this General Election campaign. He had agreed to be interviewed by the BBC’s political verbal torturer Andrew Neil but pulled out after seeing Neil interrupt the other major party leaders into submission. Johnson’s main rival Jeremy Corbyn came out of his ordeal with Neil as negatively as is possible for a man who is smeared more often than the peanut butter in Dana’s fridge. Seeing this, Johnson took evasive action and reneged on his agreement to appear on Neil’s show.
Despite his distinctly right wing leanings Neil did his best to shame the PM into sitting down for that chat he promised. Neil delivered a lengthy and stylish monologue, the theme of which was basically the slippery cowardice of Johnson and a run down of the lies he was evidently not prepared to defend on national television. Have you heard the one about the 50,000 new NHS staff which is really 31,000 new NHS staff and a commitment to try to prevent 19,000 current NHS staff from quitting under the strain of a woefully and deliberately underfunded service? Or the one about the 20,00 extra police offers that are the 20,000 that were taken away by heavy-handed austerity measures? It was scathing, but it did not alter Johnson’s stance. He knows that he is considered selfish, racist, homophobic and unfit for office. Why would he open his mouth and prove it?
Avoiding the gnarled former This Week presenter’s grilling is one thing but you might have thought that Johnson would be more open to a discussion with the altogether gentler Good Morning Britain duo Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid. Morgan has been known to hack the odd phone or mock up the odd front page photo to get a scoop, but these days he’s a sofa-softie who is only permitted to be slightly more demanding of his interviewees than Phil and Holly. Surely someone who is hoping to continue as Prime Minister for the next five years, who has in his own words negotiated a ‘fantastic, oven-ready Brexit deal’ and who sells us EU departure on the basis that he will be able to make yet more ‘fantastic’ deals with Donald Trump and other world leaders can handle a few minutes on Breakfast TV?
Evidently not. GMB’s reporter asked for those few minutes, a request which seemed to spark a degree of panic in Johnson and his team of aides. One such, his press secretary Rob Oxley, was seen mouthing ‘oh for fucks sake’ at the prospect of his man having to face anything as terrifying as some light early morning questioning on his campaign and the policies he hopes will win him a majority at tomorrow’s big vote. This is where the fridge came in. Johnson was visiting Modern Milking, a small business in Pudsey, Yorkshire when he was approached by GMB’s man. It seems that in the absence of any better ideas from his team Johnson was bundled into the nearest available hiding place. Like Zuul only he got inside Dana’s fridge door (if you’ll pardon the expression) all by himself, without any help from a panicked Tory press team fully aware that their man is an electoral liability.
He soon emerged beaming that Etonian simpleton smile, carrying a crate of milk bottles, playing up to the lovable clown persona that was funny on Have I Got News For You in 2005 but is starting to wear thinner than a Soccer AM sketch. We were told that he had been prepping for another interview which had been previously agreed. That’s a stretch. Who could he possibly have agreed to give an interview to if he’s too scared to take on the collective might of Morgan and Reid on GMB? CBeebies? Nickelodeon?
Meanwhile Johnson’s champion, the repugnant BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, was again busy trying to take the heat off her man. Behind every man there is a good woman they say, so it makes sense that behind every snivelling, scheming chancer there must be a woman of similar disrepute. Just as Fridgegate threatened to gain momentum Kuenssberg took one for Team Boris by blathering on about postal votes and how many might be of a Tory persuasion. Firstly, how does an organisation that can’t choose which of its staff gets to interview the Prime Minister be privy to supposedly secret votes cast in an election that hasn’t yet got under way? And secondly, if they do have that information isn’t it illegal to share it with their viewers? Even though there are only 14 of them left. Only 12 still take Question Time seriously and they are all either related to Nigel Farage or they are adolescent boys hoping for the despicable Emily Hewertson to get more screen time. But it’s the principle. If it is against GDPR for me to write someone’s name in the subject field of an email sent from my work account then disclosing information on General Elections that haven’t happened yet has to be a little bit on the Harry Redknapp side.
It wasn’t the first time this week that Kuenssberg tried to detract attention from a Johnson gaffe. Earlier in the week your PM was questioned by a reporter from a local newspaper in Yorkshire (how did he get so close?) about a photograph of a young, clearly very ill boy lying on the floor in a Leeds hospital due to the absence of an available bed. This happened, in the fifth largest economy on Planet Earth. Naturally Johnson didn’t want to talk about it, so proceeded to take the phone from the reporter and casually plonk it into his pocket like a schoolteacher confiscating a packet of fags from some spotty teen.
Kuennsberg’s response and that of ITV Tory apologist Robert Peston? Take to Twitter to announce that Health Minister Matt Hancock had been ‘punched’ while out campaigning. Tragically for the credibility of journalism and for people like me who would quite like to see Matt Hancock get punched while out campaigning, the story wasn’t in the same postcode as the truth. What had actually happened was that Hancock had walked very gently into someone’s outstretched arm which happened to have been extended at an inopportune moment. The ‘punch’ story was nothing but an attempt to bury the controversy around the boy in the hospital and the confiscated phone. When that didn’t work as a strategy the Tory PR machine then attempted to discredit the story. The rumour that the whole thing was staged by the mother of the boy spread on social media like......well......a smear on Jeremy Corbyn. It has since been verified by the newspaper involved but is still being questioned by the same kind of ignoramus blurts who insist that nobody has to use food banks due to Tory cuts.
We’re less than eight hours away from the opening of the polls as I write this. The final days of the campaign have shown, if we didn’t know it already, that we are living in the same kind of post-truth era that we have seen in America since Trump came to power. There will be consequences if we do not act tomorrow by voting Labour or for the party most likely to stop the Tory candidate in areas where Labour cannot win. If that means holding your nose, closing your eyes and voting for a party you dislike, do it. Just get the Tories out.
If we fail to do that then Corbyn will be partly responsible. Whether the accusations levelled at him are true or not (and who doesn’t have a few doubts about the nice grandad act?) he should have recognised his unpopularity is a barrier to removing the Tories from office. A moderate Labour leader would be making mincemeat of the far right fascists who have seized control of the Tory Party, backed as they are by vacuous vegetable-heads who justify their choice to inflict suffering on the most vulnerable with the phrase ‘but.....Jeremy Corbyn’. And backed as they are by the once impartial, public service broadcasting giant that is the BBC.
But in the end we still have an opportunity. Don’t hand power to a fridge dweller with sinister intentions. Don’t hand power to Zuul.
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