My previous comments stand. And Zelenskyy's "entertainingness" has a very different foundation to Johnson's. A stand-up finds comedy in looking at the world around him, and Zelenskyy's finest hour came from understanding that for the sake of his country, he could not run away from Kyiv - summed up by "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride". Beyond that, he ha sensibly understood his limitations and left running the war to his (very competent) generals. Whereas Johnson is all about Boris Johnson and nobody else - and even that is a highly-rehearsed confection, see this from Jeremy Vine :csearle wrote:The counter argument is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is/was an entertainer and, when it came down to it proved to be a remarkable leader.Hallucigenia wrote:
I get so angry with that kind of attitude, it's like saying "well at least Johnson is really good at baking cakes". It's irrelevant. The only thing that matters for someone entrusted with the PMship is "how good are they at running the country?" Are they good with detail, at analysing complicated situations, reading the research on what works?
Running the country is not a branch of the sodding entertainment industry, and the people who think it is deserve to have their vote replaced with using Great British Bakeoff to determine the PM for the year.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my- ... son-story/
Boris had the look of a man who had been dragged out of a well by his ankles. His blond hair seemed to spring vertically from his head as he embarked on some opening remarks, where the occasional word, not always the obvious one, was shouted at double-volume. ‘…errrrr, Welcome to THE International. Errrrr…’
The catastrophe had happened. He did not know, could not remember, what event he was at. This is one of the biggest fears any speaker has, forgetting where they are. Johnson then did a crazy thing. To find out where he was, he very obviously turned around and looked at the large logo projected at the back of the stage.
‘…to the International SECURITISATION Awards! YES!’ he cried triumphantly, and to my amazement it brought the house down. There was a huge cheer. Everyone realised this was not going to be a normal speech. The chaos had descended on us, we were in it, and we were going to enjoy it.
‘SHEEP,’ he began. He started a story about his uncle’s farm and how OUTRAGEOUS it was that they couldn’t bury animals that had JUST died, as they used to do back in the sixties, seventies and eighties.....
Eighteen months after the marvellous securitisation night, I arrived at an awards ceremony for a totally different industry. I cannot recall whether it was concrete or chiropractors.... Did they have a pen, paper? Both were produced. A better ballpoint this time, and the back of the menu again. I watched, fascinated, as Boris pulled the paper tight across his thigh and wrote a few words – yes, SHEEP was definitely one – in a barely-legible scrawl.
Then he was on.
‘It is wonderful, and a privilege, to be here at – oh goodness.’
Laughter.
He turns, reads if off the screen.
Shocked expression, as if that has honestly never happened before, my God, I am so sorry, how embarrassing to forget which awards I am at.
Louder laughter. The hair everywhere.
Into the tirade about the uncle who is not allowed to dispose of a dead sheep on his farm...
He has had his ups and downs – before deciding that everything he does is part of a brilliant act, we should probably call as evidence his shambolic run at 10 Downing Street in the summer of 2016. His leadership campaign was kyboshed at the very press conference he had booked to launch it. MPs who turned up to support him sat with their jaws slack as he told the world he would not be able to do the job....
I realised that those two Boris speeches had made me pose the fundamental question, the one that concerns you most when you listen to a politician:
Is this guy for real?
This is the logic that has brought the country to where it is. The PM is not part of the entertainment industry, it's a desperately important job that needs to be executed with competence. I don't care how entertaining they are, I just need them to be competent at what they do.csearle wrote:I would prefer 1 entertaining Boris to e.g. 1000 boring Starmers, Mays, Daveys, etc. C.
. Zelensky was under fire and there was a real threat to his life. Churchill had a 21 mile moat to protect him 