on media


Journalism is a winner in the Tory race


But media unlikely to stop Boris Johnson, says Raymond Snoddy T


he president of the Ukraine is a comedian and then there is Trump. Now Boris Johnson is on the


verge of joining the trio of the absurd. The battle for the Tory leadership


and prime minister could have been the perfect race designed for offshore national newspaper proprietors. It looked like Michael Gove of the Times in the Murdoch colours would be competing against Johnson of the Daily Telegraph running for the Barclay Brothers.


Rothermere of the Daily Mail looked pretty much like an also-ran on the fringes, managing merely to have the wife of candidate Gove, columnist Sarah Vine, under contract. Alas, the all-journalistic slate failed


to make it over the class A drug hurdle. In the final gallop to the vote of the 160,000 members of the Conservative party, Johnson was joined by a total interloper who has never been a journalist, Jeremy Hunt. The media nous of Hunt is best


marked by the £40 million he forced the BBC to waste on his personal hobby-horse when culture secretary – the underwhelming and underperforming local television experiment. At least in this most limited of all


elections the media and journalists now have a central role – to the extent that they are allowed to – in interrogating the final two. They are performing the role


of opposition. There is little doubt that the Daily


Telegraph and the Barclays would very much like to have their man in 10 Downing Street.


If so, they will have got a bargain for the £270,000 a year that they pay him as a columnist. Each Boris column is turned into an


uncritical splash whether Johnson is talking nonsense or not. And yet, out of an honourable adherence to news values or not wishing to be exposed as a tame Boris mouthpiece, the Daily Telegraph splashed on the late-night police visit to the Johnson-Carrie Symonds household along with everyone else. Despite Johnson’s reluctance to appear before the Today programme presenters or turn up for the Sky planned debate with Hunt, the media have already scored a few direct hits on Boris.


Not for the first time, the persistence


of Nick Farrari of LBC exposed hypocrisy by asking Boris 26 questions about the happy families picture of Johnson and Carrie that suddenly appeared in the papers. Johnson refused to answer questions


about his personal life but then appeared willing to exploit it by placing positive pictures in the media – a stunt tried years ago when the errant David Mellor lined up his family by a garden gate.


Through a nice piece of basic


detective work, Ferrari nailed the fact that the pictures were old – because the Boris haircut was not the same as the one he was wearing on the day of the interview.


Sir Max Hastings, who used to


employ Johnson on the Daily Telegraph, yielded the stiletto in an article for The Guardian. There was room for debate, Sir Max said, about whether Johnson is a scoundrel or mere rogue “but not


“ ”


much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for the truth”. If the Conservative Party were to foist a tasteless joke on the British people, they would not find it funny for long, Sir Max believes. The Financial Times seemed almost apologetic about having to expose the key Johnson strategy that the UK could continue EU trade without tariffs in an interim period while a new trade agreement was being negotiated. The FT noted that invoking article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade for such a purpose was a ‘fantasy’. It was a rarely used provision, which applied only when a deal was nearly complete and could only happen if the EU agreed and no other members of the World Trade Organisation objected. “There has been a lot of nonsense


In this most limited of all elections, journalists have a central role. They are performing the role of opposition


over the past three years, but this is a strong contender for the most absurd of all,” the FT argued. The media has also done its job in expressing scepticism about the other main plank of the Johnson strategy – that his positive, enthusiastic, optimistic outlook would somehow persuade the EU to do something they have repeatedly warned they would not accept – reopen the withdrawal agreement or water down the Northern Ireland backstop. Hunt suffers from the same delusion


although he is banking on his supposed negotiating skills as an entrepreneur rather than his charisma. Will all the excellent journalism that


has already been produced – and the dozens of stories to come – make any difference at all to the coronation of Boris Johnson? Possibly not. The only thing that can sink Boris is Boris.


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