slap down

That recent 'new' idea about a bridge to France appeared to be more attention-grabbing from a politician trying to keep a high profile. I expect he liked the alliteration as well. "The BoJo Bridge".

It's similar to the personal branding he applied to the bikes in London. I recollect that Ken Livingstone originally announced the plan for the bikes back in 2008, as a ten year project. Boris was in the right place when the scheme went live two years later and bagged the credit.

Now he's trying to do the same with NHS funding. As one of his colleagues recently commented "Foreign secretary, your colleagues need to trust you." Sadly, as a buffoon-emulating brawler toff, he has his political eyes on the route to power.

His pre-Cabinet release of an extensive self-publicity piece in the Times just about sums up his attitude. His lies were on that Brexit bus but now he's trying to salvage a positive position, which is also completely outside of his haphazard remit.

I'm honestly surprised that the Prime Minister hasn't ejected him from the Cabinet. I know there's all the speculation that he would immediately try to overturn her position, but BoJo is playing a longer game.

He knows that the current PM position is tainted with the problem of how to deliver anything approaching a value for money Brexit. We should not forget that along with Cameron, Osborne, Gove and Farage, he is one of the chief clowns who created the current position.

And he created it not through conviction, but through pure politicising. His continuing display of 'incompetence and disloyalty' (as described by Anna Soubry) seems to still pay off.