Countdown for Boris

Bullshitter meets his match

What a week for Boris Johnson, the man who would be king. Despite claiming that his negotiations for a deal are going well, some of his own MPs and Cabinet members admit that there has been little or no progress and that it is a sham. The EU confirms that whilst there have been meetings there have been no negotiations to date because there have been no proposals from his government. He loses a vote on MPs taking over control of parliament. Parliament votes that a 'no deal' Brexit should be ruled out so he kicks out 21 conservative MPs who voted for this. He fails to get two thirds of MPs to call an election on 15 October that would allow him to leave without a deal on 31 October. He claims that the opposition parties are 'frit' whereas they do not trust him to carry out the decision of parliament to prevent a no deal. He then confirms that their reasoning is sound by saying he would rather 'die in a ditch' than request an extension to Brexit beyond 31 October.

But worst of all was watching his performance at his first PM questions and when launching his unofficial election campaign in front of police cadets in Wakefield. The man can hardly string a sentence together, he has a tendency to repetitively repeat abusive, childish and sexist remarks about opposition politicians, and contradicts things he has said a day, hour or minutes earlier. He answered no questions from opposition MPs during his first appearance at PM questions and had to be told by opposition leaders that they ask the questions and he is supposed to answer them. Fine chance of that ever happening. No wonder that the PM's minders have prorogued Parliament for five weeks, he really would have been found out, even Jeremy Corbyn scored a technical knockout in the first round.

Could things get any worse for a man whose self-belief goes off the Richter scale? Probably, given his total disregard for democracy, truth and reconciliation.Yet he remains 10% ahead in the polls and is unwilling to accept that Parliament has stopped a 'no deal'. I realise that Scotland is different and that most of my contacts are either baby boomers or millennials but I have yet to meet anyone in the past month who has a positive word to say about him and that includes ex Tory councillors, businesses along with a fairly large but random collection of people whom I have come across in daily activities. Am I living in a bubble? This will not end happily for the country formerly known as the UK.

A Dutch newspaper verdict