David Craig, on June 24th, 2019(Monday blog)
Has Boris blown it?
You’re probably all fed up with the press articles and comments about the latest Boris Johnson shenanigans. But I’ll still add my uninformed contribution to the issue.
I reckon Boris has just blown his chances of becoming PM. Not because of his little altercation with his latest girlfriend. But because of the way he dealt with press questions. He was evasive and shifty, when he should have come out fighting. And that will rattle people’s confidence in him as a future PM and leave him open to accusations of cowardice.
Let me explain:
Turning your weaknesses into strengths
One of the few things I learnt while selling dodgy management consultancy projects and even dodgier computer systems was that you should always turn your weaknesses into strengths.
So, if I was trying to sell consultancy to say a client building oil rigs with a team that had never seen an oil rig in their lives and the client asked whether I had someone on my team with oil rig experience, I would answer something like “No. Your company has hundreds of man-years of experience of building oil rigs. My team has been specially chosen because of its broad experience of many other industries so our experience complements the experience of your people”.
Or, if I was selling a project to a pharma company and my team had several members who had actually worked on previous projects with other pharma companies, I would extol the breadth of experience in pharma of my team; “My team has been specially chosen because of its broad experience working with other pharma companies”.
Selling is just a game – in both business and politics – and the key thing is always to turn your weaknesses into strengths.
Boris should have attacked
Applying the principle of turning one’s weaknesses into strengths, here’s the answer I believe Boris Johnson should have given at the very first hustings (shown on Sky News) when Iain Dale asked him about the incident: “Yes, like in any relationship, where strong feelings and passions are involved, Carrie and I had a temporary falling out. It was my fault – I spilt a glass of red wine on her sofa and things escalated from there. But we’ve made up since then. However, what we didn’t expect was to have neighbours who seem to spend all their waking hours trying to get recordings of our conversations and then selling those recordings to the national press”.
An answer like this would have achieved three things:
- It would have shown honesty and openness from Boris
- It would portray the argument as a strength of the relationship suggesting that people who don’t have such arguments occasionally are in relationships without strong feelings and passions
- It would have focused the public’s attention on the underhand behaviour of the neighbours making them, rather than Boris, into the villains of the piece
Boris has made a career out of turning his myriad of well-documented weaknesses into strengths. It’s surprising and worrying that he didn’t do that on this occasion and instead looked cowardly and indecisive. Whatever Boris now says will always be too little too late.
I believe support for Boris will leak away over the next few weeks aided and abetted by continuous sniping from the Establishment press. Then the Establishment’s favourite, Theresa-May-clone Remainer Hunt, will be crowned as the next PM and we’ll never really leave the EU.
However, who knows for sure?
After all, if I was so smart to be able to see into the future, then I’d be successful and rich.
Bye bye Brexit?
I’ve just noticed an article in today’s Times where Jeremy Theresa Hunt says “Preserving the United Kingdom is more important than achieving Brexit“. I think he’s getting ready to sell us down the river and keep us in the EU.
Never trust a Tory!
Category: 
Ballot papers go out 2 July and most are returned within couple of days. Hence next weekend will be the final attack and this effort was just the warm up.
Maybe Boris is holding back until the tape leaks either for positive or negative reasons or in case there is something more juicy to come out. No doubt establishment can call on MI5 file a mile thick to target Boris so could be interesting weekend coming up.
Sadly I think you may be right but the Tory party is so riddled with Brussels/Soros/pro-immigration nutjobs and apparatchiks that it needs to be completely replaced…by The Brexit Party…if they can get their act together.
It amazes me that people are continually fooled by the non conservative party despite the reality before their eyes.Of course the are going to deliver a non brexit brexit whoever is anointed PM.What is important is how many are going to vote for the Brexit parties at the next general election.How many conservative voters will fall for the same old con trick? Can we trust in the electoral system any longer? I have my doubts.
Spot on. I think he has blown it and Hunt is not the right choice. It should have been Gove. Perhaps the best thing the Tory party could do is get Boris to stand down and let Hunt and Gove run for leader.
I think Boris wrote a good piece in The Telegraph but I just don�t believe he, or any of them can deliver. One thing the BBC debate revealed is none of the senior Tory MPs can agree on anything and the next Cabinet will not agree. Parliament cannot agree. Why? Because a majority of them do not respect the democratic vote of the public.
On an entirely different issue have you seen the glossy Sky News item on their web site about the invented climate change crisis. The entire world seems to be suffering from mass delusion and that is the real crisis. They even claim that plants will produce CO2 as temperatures rise. I have seen CO2 compared to the way a small amount of poison acts in the human body. Now Sky News is promoting the idea that it like exercising in a hot room. Anything to cause panic, which is now easy to do by our brainwashing institutions – the media, the schools and universities.
Off topic.I have been intrigued by the make up of teams in the ladies football world cup.Greatly surprised to see that the Swedish team was,apart from one,comprised of blonde,blue eyed young ladies, not good enough Sweden! None,as far as I have observed,of the African teams have included a Caucasian or for that matter the Oriental Asian teams.Surely this lack of diversity must be commented upon by our”woke” commentators? Obviously not,it only applies to us.
Nice one Hardcastle! Back on topic, spot on about Boris. Exactly what I’ve been panting all weekend for him to say. A domestic relationship without the occasional rather noisy spat is no relationship at all. Doubtless the nosey neighbours had their own political agenda when they made the recording. We learn since that the female in the relationship is known to abuse Boris for being a Tory if she encounters him in the street. Just about feasible that they phoned the police if they had genuine reason to believe Boris’s partner was in danger of being injured, but having been reassured that everything was fine it is inexcusable, indeed possibly prosecutable, that they then passed their recording on to the press. Surely making the recording in the first place was surveillance and, as such, illegal? I’d like to see Boris and his partner sue for damages! Strange, isn’t it, that the Met, who don’t we are told have the resources to deal with London’s escalating violent crime, found time to visit Boris? The whole episode stinks!
Mark Field should also have kept his nerve and come out fighting. He career was gone anyway What a pity he thought he needed to tender an apology.
@ Leila
All the women I’ve spoken to think Field was absolutely right in taking the action he did and had no need to apologise.