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Don't Be Fooled: Boris and the Great Distraction

We are now into day five of the nonsense about whatever Boris has or hasn’t said about women wearing burkas. Older white man makes derogatory, ill informed comments about what women wear. That’s not news. That’s every day. 

I am not belittling the impact- but there is some mischief going on here. 

I just finished reading Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened”. It’s not for the feint hearted- analysing loss is an ugly business. But in the midst of the pain she makes a really wise comment about the way the media covered the more outlandish things that Donald Trump said during the campaign. Her view is that it did no further damage to Trump as everyone knew he was a buffoon (my word), but it dominated the news cycle and stopped people talking about real issues for days at a time. 

Over the weekend senior economic types (like the head of the Bank of England) talked about the danger of a no deal Brexit. The pound continues to tank. And the media is dominated- not even by a serious piece about how women are judged for what they wear or not- but about the inner machinations of a club with 124,000 members. It is entirely in the interests of our ineffective government that we waste time talking about Boris rather than calling them (and by them I mean the group of bullying men who are paralysing the PM in negotiations but are to feckless to stand up and lead) to account. Boris will happily provide an endless stream of such distractions so that his failing nostalgia project doesn’t get held up to the public roasting it requires. 

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