Betting on Boris, and other stories

 Experts in the City, experts in the media, experts in the Cabinet, and experts running the betting shops. Just about every aspect of the Conservative leadership contest represents the high esteem in which we hold these soi-disant people….and why we should pay far less attention to them.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

There is nothing quite like a Conservative Party leadership contest for sheer visceral stab-in-the-neck East End gangster tactics. Today saw the release by a Remoanoid fat cat, Nigel Green, the chief executive of deVere Group, of especially strong vitriol against Boris Johnson. Johnson has pledged to cut the taxes of those earning over fifty thousand pounds a year if he becomes Prime Minister. Green comments:

“I’m normally in favour of reducing taxation – more money back in people’s pockets is always a good thing for individuals, households, businesses and the wider economy. However, I believe that the UK’s likely next Prime Minister’s vow to cut income tax for higher earners is half-baked at best….there would be a significant net cost for the Treasury, and it is unlikely to get through parliament”.

Note that Green’s rationale is 100% based on costs and Parliamentary privilege rather than justice. Very much an accountant’s viewpoint.

Previously on Westminsters, Green aserted that an already weak pound would fall further if Boris Johnson becomes PM, due to his positive approach to a no-deal Brexit. Just so we’re clear about this, that outcome remains the biggest single opinion group in the UK, but let’s not get hung up on small things like democracy: we’re talking financial markets here, and so all must listen up and pay heed to one of our many masters.

The one objective behind all the furious PR in my inbox this morning is that – BoJo being the current front-runner – his neck is the currently favoured knife recipient. The Spectator reported at lunchtime that ‘Dominic Raab took a shot at Boris Johnson, saying “we won’t get Brexit delivered with bluff and blister”‘. Bluff & Blister is a new one on me, but perhaps it is a reference to the infamous image management duo Saul Bluff and Ivor Blister, alleged by some to be masterminding the Johnson campaign.

Either way, the inflexibly pragmatic Amber Rudd is backing Jeremy Hunt. With an obvious swipe at the Blond Turk’s antics over the years, she wrote in this morning’s Times that ‘these are serious times. They require a serious leader… Jeremy Hunt is that leader’.

I continue to harbour doubts about Bonker Boris winning the race, but they are reducing with every day. What I’m enjoying most about this brawl is the panic that has set in among the Donor Sugar-Daddies, now terrified that their ten-year investment in Hunt may all come to nothing….and equally important – Heaven forbid – Johnson might actually produce a Tory Party that really is for One Nation, as opposed to One Square Mile of it.

Why they have such fears is beyond me. Boris Johnson is a disgusting individual with an Olympic Gold track record of cover-up, brutality, disloyalty, and the promotion of fake data on numerous subjects, but no verified compassion or concern whatsoever for the less fortunate and deserving in our society. If he had any genuine moral empathy with such people, he would be supporting an immediate restitution of the State Pension civil rights so callously removed from Waspi/2020 1950s born British women.

Were he (or any other Tory hopeful for that matter) to have the balls to break with the Whitehall/Westminster conspiracy against female UK State pensioners, he could at a stroke tell Brussels to stuff their €39billion blood money and spend at least a proportion of it on righting a terrible wrong for which the entire Government class is equally responsible. But Boris lacks the spine to do any of that, so there you are.

Happily – and that word comes with many health warnings – the good news tonight is, “By Gove – he’s doomed!” Yes, the former Murdoch favoured son has fallen upon the very sword of Truth he used to admit to something of a Colombian marching powder habit when he was younger. I have to fess up here and say that if there’s one thing I dislike more than Mr Gove, it’s the media’s unwillingness to accept an honest confession – along with the confessor’s obvious mea culpa about the dangers of Class A drugs – to something that happened three decades ago. However, Gove has form about being Tough on Drugs, so hypocrisy is apparent….and media considerations are massively outweighed by my delight at seeing this damaged human being out of the race. Also, I really did enjoy today’s Spectator cartoon on the issue:

Penultimately, let me say that I am hugely indebted to prnewswire for sending me the following table about the relationship between the bookies’ odds on the Tory Grand National result over the years, and what actually happened. It is most illuminating:

In over fifty years of forecasting, the turf accountant space has been right just the once….on the subject of Michael Howard. Obviously, another defeat for the self-styled experts.

Tonight, the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee confirmed that – under the hastily altered leadership election “rules” – there will be ten candidates on the ballot paper. Round 1 takes place this Thursday. Bizarrely, Theresa May has put back her resignation until mid July, saying that she will not go “until the new leader has been formally elected”.

As her unlucky replacement will be known long before then, I really do smell an enormous disconnect here. She is such a vile woman, I am left wondering what on Earth she and her fellow Whitehall Putchists might be planning with their chums in Brussels.