Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asking for everything bar the kitchen sink to help him and his people in the face of Russian invasion, so this week we sent him a massive weapon in the form of Boris Johnson. Johnson has been desperate to go to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy in the hope no doubt of some positive headlines and of course wanting a Churchill moment as he eyes an opportunity to be seen as some kind of wartime leader. The fact he still thinks himself any kind of leader is pathetic, he’s thrown his own people under a bus throughout the pandemic, through his refusal to help people make ends meet in response to the cost of living crisis, he couldn’t care less though. He wants the papers to call him Churchillian and for that he needs a war story. He’s been wanting to go to Ukraine for weeks, he’s been stopped by officials up until now, but finally he got his chance and the comic book pretending to be a newspaper that is the Daily Express duly obliged, saying he has been compared to Churchill for going. Who has made this comparison? Twitter apparently. A national newspaper using the opinions of 4 random people praising Johnson whilst not presenting any views to the contrary. Well, as I was writing this Churchill happened to be trending and as you can imagine, it wasn’t at all like the Express implied!
The Parody Boris twitter account hit the nail on the head saying if I offer you 6 aircraft carriers and a fleet of fighter jets will you publicly compare me to Churchill? Which is basically all Johnson wanted from this trip, though he is sending 120 armoured vehicles apparently. Others made more serious points. Sarah reminds up of partygate, hoping Johnson gets fined for it right before the local elections, therefore undoing this shameless photo op. David Heath went on the visa scandal where if Johnson really wanted to do something useful he’d concentrate on helping Ukrainian refugees rather than press the flesh for personal advantage. Paul Upham went on Russian funding and called out the shamelessness of Johnsons trip to Kyiv as a face saving for poor governance propped up by a desperate media, and calling out more of that desperate media was Russian Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, taking to task a Guardian journo who had also written a puff piece on this trip.
Johnson went this time, basically because other leaders had made the trip, not least of which Ursula Von Der Leyen, the EU President, who met Zelenskyy a day ahead of Johnson. She also went to the beseiged town of Bucha, the scene of that recent massacre and met the mayor there.
Johnson is Churchillian in as much as they were both horribly racist and like to drink. That’s where the similarity ends.
Where Churchill led a war effort from War Rooms to protect him, Johnson requires a fridge to protect him from difficult questions. Where rationing was introduced to ensure people got the bare minimum they required, Johnson is leaving more people to starve in Britain than ever before. Where Churchill renationalised BP in 1914, albeit for naval benefits, Johnson won’t even lean on foreign owned energy companies to not charge British people so much for heating, let along renationalise them. Johnson has more in common with the nodding dog than the former Tory Prime Minister, he’s just another Thatcherite in a never-ending line of them and instead of gaining popularity through positive actions to benefit us, he prefers pathetic photo ops with follow up newspaper puff pieces to benefit himself.