Beyond Kuenssberg. The truth about Boris Johnson and the truth
Laura Kuenssberg has produced a piece about Johnson and the truth for the BBC news website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56624437
Perhaps it would be unfair to suggest Ms Kuenssberg isn’t a very good journalist when a fairer assessment might be that she is just a very partial one who would be better off by far writing opinion pieces for a right-wing paper than trying to be a BBC political correspondent where certain considerations of balance are meant to apply.
Anyway Ms Kuenssberg has somehow missed that Johnson has been sacked twice for lying (once by the Times and once by Michael Howard) which is quite important in assessing how truthful someone might be. Let’s take it though that she thought this was all in the past- the Howard sacking was in 2004.
However, even though they are even further in the past, Johnson’s Eton School reports-easily discoverable- do suggest a consistent picture of evading the truth and reality over many decades.
His personal tutor Andrew Hobson wrote a report which says in part ‘I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else’.
In 1982 Hobson noted ‘Boris seems affronted when confronted with what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility’.
Here perhaps is a clue to the untruths of Johnson. It’s not that he is incapable of knowing the difference between truth and fiction. Rather the lies cover up things he hasn’t done, couldn’t be bothered to do or did because he thought he could and should get away with them, even though others would not. It’s a matter of class arrogance.
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