Boris Johnson's mock-Imperialism

Our Prime Minister is reportedly planning to reintroduce some more of our old Imperial system of weights and measures. The Guardian newspaper says it is to appeal to ‘Brexiter’ voters - shorthand for ‘thick racists’, for these journalists’ attitude is that surely nobody else could be proud of their country.

I have no time for such rootless metropolitan sophisticates, but then I have none for Johnson either. Johnson is a serial adulterer with a thuggish nature - remember his offer to a friend to have a journalist beaten up? He seems to me like the sort of psychopath who blinds you with roguish charm - he even had the team on HIGNFY laughing despite themselves 20 years go. On the one hand in 2012 he slipped down on a zipwire flaunting the Union Jack, appealing to the common man; on the other, he was happy to be part of Oxford’s Bullingdon Club and play the retro wild Regency Buck.

For all his flag-waving, Johnson used to be a Remainer (anti-Brexiter) like his newly-French father and according to Nigel Farage, still is. He has, I think, no moral core and piggybacking on Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee is typical of his crass populism.

How very different from the steely dedication to public service Her Majesty swore as a Princess on her twenty-first birthday, a promise she has never broken; that is why we shall celebrate her seventieth regnal anniversary.