Janey Godley: Boris Johnson needs to try harder in Scotland

I used to think: “maybe they don’t know enough about stuff and they’re just plundering in without thinking”  - which is fine and dandy if you are giving skateboarding a go for the first time. Not when you are in charge of a country.

As the country is in the very tender stages of recovery from Covid, we are tentatively hoping that "running the nation" is something we can see the government getting back into. But alas, its not to be.

Watching the latest “We lost our phones” when an inquiry is being launched has been openly horrific as it is laughable.

Labour called for the inquiry into the use of Whatsapp within the government, after it was revealed a health minister replaced his old phone before it could be searched for evidence pertaining to the £85M of deals that are currently being legally challenged.

I like to call this “The Bethell Test”.

READ MORE: Pro-independence supporters protest Boris Johnson during Scotland trip

Mr James Bethell, who was in charge of the Covid contracts and awards for PPE equipment during the height of the pandemic, has been asked to supply correspondence from The Good Law Project. Fair to say, it’s not going well.

It seems some senior Tories either lost their phones, broke their phones or accidentally deleted their data. I didn’t know you could delete your data, did you?

I am not sure anyone believes them. But at least they had the utter bare-faced audacity to give out those excuses and stare down the giggles from behind the back benches.

The old ‘A dog peed on my chino’s, that’s why they are wet down the front’ excuse no longer sticks. Watching the Tories being dragged on Twitter for losing more mobile phones than a cheating spouse after a stag do has been hilarious. They literally don’t care anymore, do they? This inquiry will drag on and on as we watch from the side lines.

Step up to the plate Jacob Rees Mogg - he will save the day, surely? The Victorian Haunted Pencil who likes to sneer at the poor and show off his high IQ, he can make you all feel better about the Tories being in power. This is the man who supported the government’s latest initiative to teach Latin in comprehensive schools in England. Now both Mogg and Boris like to spout Latin at any given moment. They are the Romulus and Remus of Downing Street, and know their Pliny’s from their Plato’s.

Mr Mogg was publicly challenged on his masterful skills of the ancient language, failed to impress and then ended up looking like a total Homo Stultus (Latin for stupid man, I looked it up) live on the radio. Off he peddled on his penny farthing back down the Mall, shaking his fist at the sky. Poor Mr Mogg, preparation is everything, apparently.

Not to be outdone in massive brass neck-ness, however. Boris arrived in Scotland, showing off his signature hair style, which looked like it had been brushed with a toffee apple on the dodgems at a fair ground. The visit was marred by the press openly goading him for not meeting the First Minister, but after the last time when he found an escape hatch out the back of her Edinburgh residence, as the public jeered him from the front, you can see why he body swerved that debacle.  

READ MORE: Boris Johnson insists Covid recovery is 'priority', not referendum

Good ol' Boris. He threw himself into the global warming debate with as much panache as a bad open spot comedian at yer da’s working man’s club night out. He got up, on an offshore wind farm and giggled as he explained to the Scots that “Thatcher was ahead of the game in climate change, when she closed down the coal mines”. Complete silence, a fish popped its head out of the ocean and shouted “too soon mate”. Somewhere in London, Dominic Cummings sent a Whatsapp: “He’s told the Thatcher joke in public” as phones pinged across the home counties, then magically deleted themselves.

Back to Boris onstage tapping the mic as silence fell on the uncomfortable crowd: “Can everyone hear me?”. One man at the back “yes, but I am willing to swap parties with someone who can’t”

You could see the gaggle of Ross’s, Murray’s and Alistair’s on the side lines throwing their head in their hands, willing him to stop. Even they knew this wasn’t the kind of ‘joke’ that the decimated communities of Scotland were going to laugh off. Thatcher is still a bad word in many parts of our country and jokes about the mines… well… they don’t go down well.

Don’t forget, he was the first UK Prime Minister just this spring not to take part in a devolved Scottish election, much to the delight of the cherry red trouser gang from up by Elgin - they openly breathed a sigh of relief. He can’t stop gaffing his way round the country, leaving his party faithful explaining his words, in the same manner of shushing a drunk uncle at a sad funeral.

Good news is, his visit to Police Scotland didn’t involve rain, so there were no ‘upside down brolly’ tricks to laugh at as a sombre commemoration took place.

At the end of the day, Boris is going to have to try harder to convince the people of Scotland that he isn’t a man who would start a beef with a young footballer who wanted to feed hungry kids, his branch managers up here are still trying to convince many Scots that Boris is a global ambassador who can take the UK forward and quell the need for independence. Good luck with that.

Meanwhile a man at the back shouted “You’re not funny, sit down” and he did.