Boris Johnson has entered the election campaign with a bang. The Foreign Secretary was being squirrelled away, some were saying, after a number of ministers apparently suggested to Theresa May that she should sideline Boris to avoid alienating voters. It’s clear that’s not going to be happening. Today, Boris is front and centre calling the leader of the opposition a ‘mugwump’. In the Sun, Boris said that some may think Corbyn is harmless – a ‘mutton-headed old mugwump’ – but they’d be wrong to hold that view. The po-faced will say this is proof that Johnson is up to his old tricks and we shouldn’t fall for it; shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has done just that, calling the comments ‘crass’. She’s right; it’s childish. And yes, its also nonsense: a mugwump is someone who remains aloof or independent. Of all the charges to level at Corbyn, this seems far from the most obvious. But like it or not, it’s a simple truth that people are more likely to be talking this morning about mugwumps than the housing policies Labour was unveiling today in a flailing bid to win over voters.
As ever with Boris, there’s also much more to his silly words than meets the eye. The mugwump insult is a cover for Boris to repeat the Tories’ main line of attack during this election: that Britain would not be safe if Corbyn gets the keys to Number 10. In his article in the Sun, tucked away beneath his comments that Corbyn is not a ‘benign Islingtonian herbivore’, are the same Crosby buzzwords Theresa May parroted ten times during PMQs yesterday and a dozen times during a speech the day before: ‘strong’ and ‘stable’. To avoid boring voters, the Tories need to find ways of repeating this message repeatedly in different ways over the coming weeks. Boris, as ever, is just doing it more skilfully and subtly than most.
It wasn’t all talk of mutton and mugwumps during Boris’ interview on Today this morning though. The Foreign Secretary was eager to hammer home the point that Theresa May was the one to trust on defence and security. He said that if the US asked Britain for help in Syria they would have our support:
‘I think it would be very difficult if the United States has a proposal to have some sort of action in response to a chemical weapons attack – if they come to us and ask for our support…whatever it may happen to be, in my view, and I know this is also the view of the Prime Minister, it would be very difficult for us to say no.’
This is something of a moot point, given that the US specifically did not ask for Britain’s help when it bombed a Syrian government airbase last month. But it still allows Boris to maintain a position of talking tough and offers a handy contrast to Corbyn’s flim-flam.
Finally, Boris also spelled out the Government’s attitude towards a Brexit divorce bill. His message? Britain won’t be coughing up upfront before the main talks begin. Here’s his exchange with John Humphrys:
The cynics will say that Boris caveated his comments by suggesting that Brussels won’t physically get the money before talks begin. That is to say, that doesn’t mean that Britain might not agree to a divorce bill, even if it doesn’t pay out immediately. He also possibly hinted at this point by suggesting that Britain wouldn’t be forking out ‘in the long term’. The Foreign Secretary’s headline-grabbing intervention this morning has been happily dismissed by his critics as typical Boris buffoonery, but Johnson’s efforts today will still be a big boon for the Tories.JH: ’Are you going to refuse to pay maybe fifty or sixty million pounds, which is what Sir Ivan thinks it will be?’ BJ: ’If they’re saying they want the money before they want any substantive trade talks that is obviously not going to happen. Let me just make an obvious point, there is no reason at all why the UK should be paying huge sums of money in the long term for trading with the rest of Europe’
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