"IT'S the arrogance. It’s the contempt. That’s what gets me. It’s Boris Johnson's apparent belief that he can just trample on the democratic will of the British people.
"It’s at moments like this that I think the political world has gone mad, and I am alone in detecting the gigantic fraud."
That quote from a certain politician's column makes it clear: if the party in power gets a new leader, it is outrageous for them to simply assume the role of prime minister.
If you read the headline or recognise Johnson's familiar brand of hypocrisy, you might have spotted our sneaky change here. We replaced the words "Gordon Brown" with "Boris Johnson". This quote is straight from the mouth of the frontrunner for the Tory leadership himself.
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Writing in the Telegraph in 2007, Johnson explained why it would be so democratically wrong for Brown to take over as PM without going to the British people.
Cut to 2019, and Johnson wants to do exactly what Brown did.
The column really is full of gems.
He writes: "The British public sucked its teeth, squinted at him closely, sighed and, with extreme reluctance, decided to elect him Prime Minister for another five years. Let me repeat that. They voted for Anthony Charles Lynton Blair to serve as their leader. They were at no stage invited to vote on whether Gordon Brown should be PM."
Johnson continues: "They voted for Tony, and yet they now get Gordon, and a transition about as democratically proper as the transition from Claudius to Nero. It is a scandal.
"Why are we all conniving in this stitch-up? This is nothing less than a palace coup, effected by the Brownites, and it is possible only because Tony had run out of road."
"There's always a Trump tweet," the phrase goes. For anything he says as president, there's a tweet from years past that contradicts what he says. It's probably time for a new phrase: "There's always a Boris Johnson column."
You can read the full piece by clicking here.
And, would you believe it, Johnson also uses the piece to have a go at Scotland.
"Last week, the exuberant Scottish executive, led by the Nationalists, decided that they would scrap any kind of co-financing for Scottish universities. Scottish students would go Scot-free, and so would Finns, Latvians, Germans, French, Portuguese, Luxembourgers and everyone except, of course, the English, who will continue to pay."
This meant that English universities will be able to lure away Scottish lecturers thanks to the cash raised from fees, he argued, and so "it is unthinkable that Gordon Brown and the other 58 Scottish MPs should be able to sit and vote on higher education finance in England".
English Votes for English Laws, says the man who yesterday announced a plan that will tax Scots and give the money to rich pensioners in England.
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