Kate Plummer
Nov 23, 2022
content.jwplatform.com
Boris Johnson has just savaged Liz Truss's mini-budget, heaping further insult to injury on our summer PM.
Speaking to CNN, the former prime minister had some pretty unflattering words about his replacement, who lasted in the job for less than seven weeks because of her reckless handle on economics, and used a metaphor which left us with no doubt about what he thought about her policies.
He first tried to sidestep the question and said it wasn't polite to talk about British politics abroad.
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But then he told Richard Quest: “It’s kind of like when I play the piano. The notes individually sound perfectly OK, but they’re not in the right order, or occurring at the right time.”
\u201cBoris Johnson making light of Liz Truss' disastrous mini-budget. \n\n\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like when I play the piano. The notes individually sound perfectly okay, but they\u2019re not in the right order, or occurring at the right time\u201d\n\n#CNN\u201d— Haggis_UK \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa (@Haggis_UK \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa) 1669196345
Truss's mini-budget was widely said to have tanked the pound, crashed the economy and made mortgages more expensive. Because it was so bad, to put it bluntly, she first sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to get back on track then realised she had to resign herself.
Johnson was among those rumoured to want to replace her but at the last minute said he had decided not to run, leaving us with only one option because of Tory party leader election rules - Rishi Sunak. And here we are today with a recession, cost of living crisis, and just general Bad Vibes.
Elsewhere in the interview, Johnson also spoke about the likelihood that he would become prime minister again, and seemed to downplay the idea. He said:
“I’ve always said for about 20 years that my chances of becoming PM were about as good as my chances of becoming decapitated by a frisbee, or blinded by a champagne cork or locked in a disused fridge… I then did become PM so my chances of becoming PM again I think are those impossibilia cubed or squared.”
Meanwhile, he rejected accusations Brexit had damaged the UK economy as “complete and utter nonsense” and “confirmation bias”, amid news the policy is becoming ever less popular.
Well at the very least we've learnt that Johnson isn't good at playing the piano.
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