Is Johnson a "bad-luck" politician/Prime Minister?

I think he’s actually quite lucky in that he can blame so many of his failings as a PM on covid.

Early

vegansrock

Who goes for a run in a white office shirt and office type shoes?

John Crace in yesterday's Observer:

... His self-confidence is a paper-thin veneer that can’t disguise a man with no self-worth.

Or self-awareness, for that matter. It’s hard to tell if he’s merely a pathological liar these days* or if he just has a desperate need to reconstruct reality to accommodate his narcissism. Earlier that day he had been photographed going for a run in a white shirt and black walking shoes. We now have to accept that he’s possibly not just a fun-guy oddball but someone having a breakdown before our eyes.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/03/tetchy-boris-tries-to-play-down-shortages-as-bumps-on-the-brexit-road

* ... these days??? I'm guessing Crace has read Peter Oborne's The Assault on Truth.

Watching him being interviewed by Beth Rigby yesterday, he almost laughed at his own reply.

rosie1959

The Coronavirus was pretty unlucky no government in recent times has had to deal with anything similar

Well this is certainly true Rosie and no one can argue with this as it a fact, not an opinion.

vegansrock

Who goes for a run in a white office shirt and office type shoes?

John Crace in yesterday's Observer:

... His self-confidence is a paper-thin veneer that can’t disguise a man with no self-worth.

Or self-awareness, for that matter. It’s hard to tell if he’s merely a pathological liar these days* or if he just has a desperate need to reconstruct reality to accommodate his narcissism. Earlier that day he had been photographed going for a run in a white shirt and black walking shoes. We now have to accept that he’s possibly not just a fun-guy oddball but someone having a breakdown before our eyes.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/03/tetchy-boris-tries-to-play-down-shortages-as-bumps-on-the-brexit-road

* ... these days??? I'm guessing Crace has read Peter Oborne's The Assault on Truth.

If Johnson is so sure we are going to become a high wage economy why doesn’t he start the ball rolling by paying public service employees more? Could start with doctors and nurses maybe.

Who goes for a run in a white office shirt and office type shoes?

If I can see through him and see him for the charlatan he is, why can't everyone else?

Lots of people can, varian. It's just that they don't write the popular newspapers.

Only the moron Johnson could try to make a joke about the thousands of pigs that may have to be killed. No mention of the massive waste of food or the enormous financial loss for the farmers, it's just an opportunity for Jolly Old Boris to be "witty". I thought Andrew Marr was very restrained - I would have slapped him.

I notice Boris has really embraced the Donald Trump long tie look. The one he wore this morning was practically dragging on the floor.

Johnson was cringibly embarrassingly awful on Marr this morning, but he was cringingly embarrassingly awful when he spoke at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

If I can see through him and see him for the charlatan he is, why can't everyone else? How does he keep getting away with it?

fiorentina51

Don't know about anyone else but Maggie Thatcher's time in office was a complete disaster for my family and for most of the people I knew back then.

That’s the problem fiorentina51. Thatcher wasn’t exactly good for us, but Gordon Brown was more disastrous for my family.

Johnson really lost it on Marr when talking about the rise in National Insurance Contributions.

Yes Monica which is why I used the expression ‘events, dear boy events’ earlier in this thread.
However nobody can change who they are, not MacMillan, Churchill, Blair or Johnson, they just have to do what they can to mitigate things.
Nobody is unlucky...that would just be superstitious to think that.

Don't know about anyone else but Maggie Thatcher's time in office was a complete disaster for my family and for most of the people I knew back then.

TopsyIrene06

The PM is getting rattled on BBC 1.

Interesting interview!

He was quite confident talking about the Sarah Everard case. He was fluent, stuck to the point and there wasn't much bumbling.

As soon as Marr started questioning him about lorry drivers, there was obfuscation, bumbling, lots of "um- ah"s, changing the subject, avoiding the questions. He didn't have any answers and tried to deflect. It's his default "modus operandi".

No. If you remove the word "luck" from the title of this thread you get the truth - he is just a bad politician. Remove "a politician" and you get a deeper truth.

The pandemic might have done better if they hadn’t used it as an opportunity to bung a load of money to their mates.

The economic recovery would be a lot easier without brexit.

The New York Times doesn’t hold back www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/britain-fuel-crisis-johnson.html

Like BJ or loathe him, IMO being faced with an unprecedented, catastrophic pandemic so soon after entering Number 10 would surely count as pretty rotten luck!

The PM is getting rattled on BBC 1.

Nezumi65 exactly.

He’s not unlucky he’s incompetent.

His mishandling of Covid led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. His disastrous Brexit is starting to fall apart. God knows what will happen to the Union now.

But you know, he was funny of Have I Got News For You.

I found this exerpt from a speech by chance

You will probably recognise the quote. When Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked what was the greatest challenge for a statesman, he replied: ‘Events, dear boy, events’. The same is true for most leaders and organisations.

Events Happen. When they do a lot of things are at stake: lives, livelihoods, reputation. So knowing how to respond is a key survival skill for leaders and organisations of all kinds. In my own career I have learnt many of my most important lessons – including how to manage incidents - the hard way: by making mistakes. As President Kennedy liked to say: “Good judgement is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgement". www.gov.uk/government/speeches/events-dear-boy-managing-incidents-before-they-become-crises.

The problem with Boris is that he is incapable of learning from his mistakes

Mollygo

PM’s are lucky or unlucky depending on how they affect you and yours and after that, how they affect the country/future. Maggie wasn’t particularly unlucky for us, GB had a lasting unlucky impact.
BJ seems to be unlucky all round but then I ask myself what would any of the others have done about Brexit or how they would have coped with COVID and the ‘you can’t tell me what to do’ Brits.
What has become more and moreapparent to me, since Tony Blair’s time in office, is how being close to any PM can benefit you.

I'm not sure that was what I was thinking. Perhaps the events being the very ones that might expose his shortcomings might be it.

BJ seems to be unlucky all round but then I ask myself what would any of the others have done about Brexit or how they would have coped with COVID and the ‘you can’t tell me what to do’ Brits.

Well, they didn't turn out to be 'you can't tell me what to do' Brits at all, did they? They turned out to be astonishingly ready to do whatever was necessary to try to stem the covid pandemic. So that stupid excuse for Johnson's total inadequacy won't work.

My dog could have coped with covid better than Johnson.. There is no excuse whatsoever for him.

He makes his own bad luck by being a totally incompetent bullshitter...

JJ, so did I. I have always had a lot of time for GB, despite never voting Labour. Some politicians integrity and principles raise them above their party allegiances.

He’s been very good on radio etc throughout the pandemic. Talks such sense.